http://www.screencast.com/t/gCQoQSwh

*note- you will need Adobe Flash on your device to view my presentation.

My apologies for the awkward narration, I do not have a future as a voice over actor.

Have a great summer!

I liked starting this semester with a short history lesson on the advent of the internet. Its strange how much I already knew about the internet from my class with Dr. Markman last semester, and yet I couldn’t have told you anything about its origins. One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over this semester is the fact that we (as internet users) drive the development of new technologies, and yet so many of us participate in the doomsday rhetoric associated with the degradation of communication and our own safety at the hands of technology. I hope our readings this semester, and especially our text book by Nancy Baym has provided a new perspective for others as it has for me. While I’m still concerned with privacy especially, I think about online interactions, and particularly the concept of space very differently. For example, a lot of people point to the fact that teenagers spend too much time indoors “nowadays” and that mobile phones and game consoles connected to the internet are partly to blame. However, if they are getting the same, and maybe even more, social interaction with their peers online outside of school, does it really matter where that interaction is happening?

I had not read much about online communities before this semester, and that topic will be one of my main take aways from this semester. I had read before about the advantage of having large weak tie networks to access diverse information, but it hadn’t occurred to be how much emotional benefit some individuals get from online communities. The IRL documentary in particular was eye opening for me, because we were hearing the story from the users. However, as the next generation grows up with technology (like the iPhone and iPad) literally at their fingertips from birth, what will the consequences be? Maybe there won’t be any, but I wonder how spending so much time in front of a screen will effect their ability to translate facial expression, problem solve, or change the way they think of private versus public information. If their mothers have put naked baby photos of them on the internet since birth, what will they think are the socially acceptable limits of self-disclosure?

Lastly, I appreciate how Baym talks about finding a balance. I don’t believe that we’re reached a “norm” with mobile as we have with other kinds of computer mediated communication like email. I hope we can all find a balance to use technology to enhance our lives and have the good sense to put it away at the dinner table.

The findings of Smith in the Pew study were no surprise. Once again we see that individuals under 30 and those with at least some college education are more likely to use mobile technologies. However, I was surprised to see pictures catching up with text messages at a 92% rate.

“Would be forecasters often forget that human societies coevolve with technology” (Raine & Wellman, 2012, p.276). This quote from our readings this week pretty much sums up my feelings about the discourse within computer medicated technology and where we are heading in the future. There is so much doomsday rhetoric in our society about the role of technology and the degradation of “real” communication as a result, but our readings this semester have provided research to combat that argument. There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention, and we are the reason these technologies are coming to fruition. Take the Lifelogging technology that is talked about in the Raine & Wellman reading, it seems like science fiction, but is it really different than the way we currently document our lives? Instagram and Facebook currently use their photo hosting to keep track of your location, the event date and time and keep it all in chronological order for you, so lifelogging seems like an expansion on the same thought process.

The concern we need to have in the privacy of our information once its loaded into these mediums. The boyd & Hargittai reading confirmed that Facebook users are aware of their privacy settings, and manage them actively. However, with news breaking daily of hackers stealing credit cards numbers in mass from store databases and the CISPA, how much will adjusting our privacy settings matter?

The next few years will be exciting and frightening as our memories are cataloged in chronological order or us but also as our information becomes more vulnerable. As I mentioned in other classmate’s comment section, one of the more exciting things I’ve seen recently is 3D printing. However, I’ve also read an article recently on how this technology could be used to make weapons in the home. All of this is enough to make one’s paranoia spin out of control, but we have to keep in mind all of the pros of technology we now take for granted. For example, instead of being bound to a classroom at least one night a week for 12 weeks, we got to use these blog posts to facilitate our academic conversations.

Both readings from Pew Internet studies reinforce the idea that civil engagement follows other communication theory:  connected nodes attract more nodes. As a person involved in their church is more likely to be recruited by someone to volunteer or participate with another organization where they will meet more people who will recruit the, and so on and so on. Basically, the more connections you have, the easier it is to make other connections. Social capital then translates into civic engagement. People involved in church groups may be more willing to be involved in organizations in general, but they also have more exposure to outside activities through organizations their church partners with or individuals they meet at church. Think of it as a more benevolent pyramid scheme.

Internet enabled devices and social media add a layer of connectedness between the individuals and the organizations. I’ve been prompted many times to attend and event by a Facebook invite or tweet to attend an event. The studies also showed that young people are more likely to use social media and be involved in more than one group. While I do believe the internet plays a role in this, I think other factors in play as well. Church members are more likely to have families which explains their involvement with sports groups and young people have more free time (no families/kids yet) to be involved with organizations.

Lastly, the graduate reading on the topic of political discussions in online forums confirmed what I’ve already suspected. Political groups online are likely to have a homogeneous group, at least in their political views, so not much constructive or bridging discourse takes place in these environments. However, take a look at the comments sections of CNN or the Commercial Appeal and its like I’m paying 1000 political correspondents to give me their opinion. Political discussions take place in everyday lives, in almost every situation, so it correlates that these discussions would take place online outside of political forums.

Norris (2004) brings up some worrying trends in his studying of bridging and bonding social capital on the Internet. While its promising that there is concrete evidence, not just from the Norris reading but also from the IRL documentary we watched two weeks ago and from my own observations of the online community I am following for my short paper 3, that bonding is happening on the Internet, it is also troubling that bridging is not happening with the same success. There has been some discourse recently on the dark side of our disinterest with bridging, even when we inadvertently avoid it. For example, when your Yahoo home page allows you to personalize your news feed to bring you only the content from your specified areas of interest, you are unlikely to be exposed to articles that have a different perspective than the one you already hold and connect you to people that have similar areas of interest. This “digital bubble” we can create for ourselves is representative of the internet’s bonding capital strength, but if we aren’t exposed to differing opinions, or individuals from different backgrounds, are we are ally growing in our understanding? This was the subject of an interesting TED talk if you want to know more, http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html.

Ellison et all (2011) confirmed information that I had already been observing through Facebook myself. The lowered cost of maintaining a large network meant that one could utilize latent ties to access more diverse sets of resources. For example, today on my news feed, I read an interaction between two mutual “friends” who don’t know each other well but when one requested medical advice through a status update, the other who is a nurse was able to respond within minutes. Without a platform like Facebook, the original “friend” may have had to go to the doctor to receive the same information. This bridging capital exchange at least calms some of my concerns about the “digital bubble” previously discussed. Additionally, the reading on CouchSurfing confirms that a sense of belonging is necessary within a community if individuals are expected to maintain membership and engagement over a sustained period of time. This was evidenced by the reinforcement of engagement and belonging felt by members who either participated in a face to face interaction as a result of membership and those who received targeted communication rather than mass emailings.

Social capital builds over time and I’m convinced that it thrives only when users are willing to open up to “friending” people outside of their established face to face community. While I’ve expressed my concerns about deminishing bridging behavior, the opportunity of bonding and the ease of maintaining large networks that SNS provides is invaluable in my personal life. I’m able to have more meaningful and rich relationships with people who live outside of my physical location and tap into latent ties for everything from restaurant recommendations to selling furniture.

So how do social network sites and communities differ? Both often include synchronous chat features, profile pictures, and identities somewhat defined by not only your own content but also by your relationship to others within the site. Often communities are connecting strangers that share an interest other other common tie, whereas much of the scholarly research on social network sites shows that people predominately use the services to maintain larger networks of people they already know. Baym used the idea of space largely to define communities, whereas ties seem to be a key identifier in SNS.

Boyd & Ellison (2007) argue that we need to change our phrasing from “social networking sites” to “social network sites” as users are more often not networking at all. To network, you would need to be making new connections to people you do not already have an established relationship to, whereas most users are utilizing the sites to maintain their existing network. While that might sound as if is diminishing the role of SNS, its strength is its ability to lower the cost of maintenance on such a large network of relationships for each individual. Hargittai & Hsieh (2011) help to further define SNS by its types of users. They identify 4 types of users, Dabblers, Samplers, Devotees, and Omnivores, all separated by their usage and intensity habits. They also explore the differences in gender and demographic group usage.

Beer (2008) on the other hand, wants social network sites set apart from other types of user generated content sites such as YouTube or Wikipedia and suggests that we use Web 2.0 as a monkier to lump these types of sites together. Beer also wants us to considering the morphing nature of the term “friend” in light of the new dynamic that SNS presents. In SNS the term “friend” can be applied to a wide range of people from your mother to your boss to your actual “in real life” (to borrow a term from last week) friends. Finally, and perhaps most of all, Beer wants us to reconsider how we think of SNS. Many of us know that the sites are free for us to access, and take it at face value. We know there are ads in the sidebar that have been specially designed for us based on our demographic information and previous search history, but we all tend to blissfully ignore the ads in the sidebar and continue to scroll through our newsfeed. Beer argues that we should see SNS as commercial spaces designed in many ways to profit on us, the users. This brings up new concerns about privacy as we transition from users to customers.

This week’s study of online communities took me back to our first couple of weeks of the class when we explored the fears that society has established around the mass adoption of the internet. Many said that people would leave their social circles and other personal communities and migrate online, spending hours alone in front of a monitor. In watching the documentary about “The Bronze”, I hope some fears were finally put to rest. For me, the documentary was clear evidence that online communities are not taking people away from their communities, but adding communities to their existing lives. Many of those interviewed for the documentary expressed that they were able to socialize with people through “The Bronze” who shared interests that they would not have otherwise encountered in their face to face social circles. In this case, it demonstrated that “The Bronze” added a social circle without removing them from any existing lives.

Howard Rheingold’s interviewing and reading was a bit uptopian. Howard seems to believe that we, as a mass people using the internet” are forming new communities that rival the strength of our identities as nation states. While I think we might be a solid 100 years away from that being truthful, we are reorganizing ourselves around internet communities in ways that we have in the past and currently organize ourselves (and subsequently identify ourselves) around religion, ethnic background, and nationality. Additionally, one thing Howard said in his interview stuck me as the most truthful statement from this week’s studies, “I don’t like to describe the real world as real, because online is real too.”

I haven’t experienced being part of an online community. However, but I imagine people join them most often when they are compelled by a special interest such as a book, movie or tv series or sports team. People may join them because they are unable to meet people in their existing social circles with the same interests or to simply enjoy being emerced in a “fan experience”. Many fandom websites today have lots of interactive games, and are rewarded with sneak peaks or exclusive merchandise offers. The incentives could be widely varied, but most people are probably seeking a social connection or some kind of escapism.

Once again this week it seems that gender roles, as much as I hate to admit it, play out in observations by researchers. Consistently, females CMC users write more words, use passive language, and are compelled to present themselves in an attractive light. Males users by contrast use fewer words, are more assertive, and tend to pick pictures of themselves that obscure their facial features in some way.  Additionally, this plays out in ethnic presentations as well. Grasmuck, Martin & Zhao (2009) explored Facebook users’ “about me” sections and found that, “ In summary, the African Americans, Latinos, and Indian ancestry students project a visual self that is dramatically more social than do Vietnamese or white students. African Americans to some extent and Latinos in particular also stand out in their greater willingness to invest in the more direct “about me” narrations than do the other three groups.”. In a previous communications course when this topic was discussed among other graduate students, several of us conjectured that minority students may be more elaborative with their online profiles as these social media platforms allow them to connect with others within their own ethnic background more frequently than they are otherwise able to do in face to face interactions. Online they are able to find and socialize with many people that share their ethnic background so they are more motivated to create a more robust online presence.

While we have already read a length about the gender differences in CMC, it only struck me today that my blogroll is 90% female bloggers. Our blog post prompt wanted us to explore what different contexts of CMC shape how we present and interpret gender and ethnicity, so I decided to review not the bloggers that I follow, by myself as interpreting these bloggers. I found out more about myself than I did the writers, when as previously stated, I discovered that I was seeking out bloggers that presented in traditionally female roles. Many of the women I follow shy away from stating any concrete opinions for fear of alienating their readers, and despite their blog purpose topics ranging from travel to music, many of them still post about fashion and celebrity culture regularly.

With regard to my interpretation of gender and ethnic backgrounds of my fellow classmates, I’ve only thought about gender as most of our names and writing styles give that away without trouble. As far as ethnicity is concerned, I haven’t thought about that as much as I might in traditional classes because I don’t see or know many of my current classmates. Other than one who as written openly about being an immigrant and bi-linguist, its been out of sight – out of mind for me this semester.

I will start by saying that my blogger, Joanna, may be outside of the norm because she is a professional blogger. However, I find that she does fit the profile set by our readings in most cases, maybe even to an exaggerated extent. Baym argues in chapter 5 that reduced cues and social risk influence users to be more honest online. Joanna is excessively honest, revealing things about herself that break down digital distance and make the reader feel personally connected to her through revealing posts.  Because she makes her living through her blog, she is the product she is selling and has incentive for revealing more about herself and her personal life in order to attract readers. Posting between 5 and 10 times weekly, Joanna’s post have a wide range of subjects spanning from fluffy posts about life in New York to more disclosing accounts of marital intimacy. As Baym acknowledges that the more space there is to fill online the more truth is revealed, I have come to find that Joanna may need to write about her private matters not only to connect to her readers, but simply to have subject matter to fill the amount of content she needs to generate. Additionally, on Fridays, Joanna has a weekend prep posts that focuses solely on links to other content. This content can range from products she recommends, to humorous YouTube videos or posts by other bloggers. In this way she confirms her own image by connecting with outside content or individuals.

Walther’s article brings up the issue of self presentation as we alter it depending on the situation and relationship to the person we are interacting with. Obviously we act differently towards our bosses and professors than we do with our friends and families. In Joanna’s case she is presenting to a world of strangers in the same space as her friends and family through her blog. However, because she makes her living from her blog, she has more incentive to present in a way that attracts new readers, essentially strangers. Walther argues, “When CMC users are motivated to do so, these processes allow them to manage impressions and ultimately exceed parallel FtF partnerships in social orientation or intimacy, according to the hyperpersonal perspective.”. From this I gather that Joanna may be crafting an image through her more personal content to create what feels like a personal relationship with each of her readers (simulating a FtF connection) and provide incentive for them to continue to follow her blog.

Turkle’s article largely focuses on users who are either “working through” their own personal problems or “acting out” through the medium of MUDs. While I couldn’t find much parallel between the figures in his article and my blogger, Joanna, I did find the article useful in understanding how many non-professionals might use digital space to work out issues of their own identities. His example of Dr. Jekyll/Mr.Hyde was helpful in understanding the difference between self presentation versus self display, and I can see this from other bloggers in the spot light. Several years ago a blogger who goes by “Perez Hilton” created a bully style image in which he made fun of or revealed information about celebrities. At that time he was more of a caricature, playing an exaggerated bad guy role. While he still makes a living reporting celebrity news, his image has softened extensively. Several years ago when bullying was first big in the media spotlight he vowed to stop his abuse of celebrities and refocus his gossip blog.  His example has played itself out much like those featured in Turkle’s piece.

As much as I hate to admit this, my smartphone isn’t even as far as the bedside table at night, its under my pillow. It began in college when I lived away from home for the first time, and drove an unreliable car. However, I didn’t become fully aware that my mobile had literally become an extension of myself until last semester when a reading from Dr.Markman’s course last semester described me as a “cyborg”. Sad, but true. My father grew up in the 50s and 60s in a home with his 8 siblings, parents, grandparents, and aunts. By contrast, I grew up in a home only with my one sibling and parents. This shift is typical of the American communities as Wellman describes in his Wisconsin radio spot, moving from geographically based communities to social networks, and more recently digital networks. I’m very close with my father’s large family, but a good bit of the “work of our relationships” is done online. We Facetime and Skype, text and email constantly. In this way I have ignored the advice of Eric Schmidt from the Baym radio spot, and I actually am living part of my life by the glow of a monitor. And you know what? I’m grateful for it. These technologies have allowed me to have rich and meaningful relationships – remotely. However, I would be lying if I didn’t say that the “technology Sabbath” embraced by one family from the radio spots didn’t sound refreshing to me. What would it be like to be unplugged for a blessed 48 hours? Would the flowers smell sweeter?

I am particularly irritated by the unfounded and overzealous criticisms of CMC so it was refreshing to see this quote in Rainie&Wellman, “Anxieties about the withering of relationships are not new, but began many centuries before the coming of the internet…in past decades, they were tied to industrialization, bureaucratization, urbanization, socialism, and capitalism.” p.117. This reminds us that with every generation and development of new technology, there is something labeled the day’s boogeyman. Quotes like this help us keep things in perspective. Also from this particular article was a reminder that superficial observations of behavior can lead to incorrect assumptions. What at a distance might seem like an addiction to one’s cell phone is actually a manifestation of an extrovert’s online socializing.

The Pew study once again points out the differences that most often fall along gender lines. Not surprisingly, women use calling and texting more often than men and most often for socializing while men use it significantly less and for more utilitarian reasons. And again, safety is brought up as a pro for mobile technology. However, I’ve yet to see any research that shows we are actually safer thanks to our mobile technology, but that doesn’t stop my mild panic attacks when I realize I’ve left my house without my phone.

For those undergrads in the class, you missed a good reading in on Sawchuck and Crow about grandmother’s using technology to connect with their grandchildren long distance. Once again, research contradicts the popular belief that older generations reject technology, here we have an example of the embracing of technology to overcome a hurdle of distance. This is exemplary of the changing dynamics of our society discussed on Wellman’s Wisconsin radio spot which described our society’s change from physically located communities and extended families in the home to digital communities and social networks. I am seeing this very situation play itself out with my mother in law who has asked me to teach her to text and Facetime so that she can interact more frequently with her grandchildren that live in Indiana.

Overall, I think these studies are a good reminder that the changes in our society pre-date our mobile technology. For years we have been morphing into a culture that is more open to moving a long distance from one’s family to pursue work or education, and the mobile technology allows us to maintain relationships across these distances. Of course our relationships and the way we communicate with one another has changed as a result, but the telephone changed relationships in much the same way, and I don’t recall the letter writers of old being up in arms about the changes. It seems to me that often the negative assumptions are, as Baym reminds us, without proof.