The Cult of the Expert

or One Monkey’s Random Clickity Clacking

It seems somewhat ironic that I went out and bought Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture”, a book dedicated to pricking the Web 2.0 bubble.  Why is this ironic?  Because I became aware of this book through the very channels that Mr. Keen seems to take issue with… that is, the blogosphere and citizen journalism.  I had no idea who Keen was until I read a weblogg-ed’s June 13th entry entitled “Web 2.0 as ‘Cultural and Intellectual Catastrophe’“  referring to Keen’s blog on the Britannica website, then I read an MSNBC story about his new book which I found through digg, then I realized that Keen himself is the keynotes speaker at the upcoming Web 2.0 conference that I will be attending.

So everything that I read about the book beforehand was very harsh, including the comments left for Keen on his own blog.  But the title and the argument were provocative.  There are certainly a number of issues and criticisms one can have regarding Web 2.0, however I refused to believe that this was solely a criticism regarding the one thing that I see as being the MOST beneficial aspect of Web 2.0… it’s democratizing effects.  I had to read the book for myself and understand what Keen was trying to say.

A really interesting thing about this book is that I don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of the “facts” that Keen reports, in terms of how the Internet is undermining “truth” and “democratizing” media information and art.  However he approaches non-democratized versions of truth (that is, personal individualized truth) as invalid or somehow less true than the truth which is bestowed upon us from the Cult of the Expert.  His elitism shines through by referring to the Internet as perpetuating the “infinite monkey theorem” subtly suggesting that the majority of current Internet users are monkeys, clacking away at the keyboard, hysterically laughing and playing with themselves as they gibber and interact with the other monkey’s gibberish that surrounds them.

Keen’s view on the democratization of culture is that it is revolutionary and negative because it means fewer profits for big media… because it means less cultural control of the traditional hegemonic institutions and it means that the “monkeys” get to run the show.  He states that user-created content “sucks economic value” out of commodified culture. And I must agree with all of these “facts”.  However my reaction to all of these aspects of cultural democratization is… Woohoo! Bring on the Cultural Revolution!

It’s odd because Keen was an Web 2.0 insider at the beginning of the revolution.  He was all for democratization until he realized the very real potential it had to provoke fundamental change.  He states: “the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers.”  He seems to be afraid of all this user created content and market empowerment; viewing it as threatening the jobs of some of the highest paid elitist groups in our society… academics, journalists, editors, publishers, television, Hollywood; the bourgeois if I may evoke the ghost of my old friend Marx.  Essentially Keen is speaking out against post-modern culture and the notion of post-modern truth.

But as hard as he tries to convince me, the reader, that this is a bad thing… I just don’t draw the same conclusions as he does from the evidence he supplies. And can come up with counter-examples to his proofs.  For all of his railing about unsubstantiated subjective information, he in no way provides empirical evidence of a causal relationship between the rise in Web 2.0 technologies and the supposed decline of civility in our culture or accuracy in our information.  In fact, most empirical evidence which ties Web 2.0 technologies to the real world shows that the Internet actually reinforces and enhances community networks and social ties among people.

Keen presents the traditional (and current) authorities of information, those “cultural gatekeepers” as having provided Western, literate and leisure based societies with an ideal and satisfying culture.  Perhaps the message is “better stick with the predictable evil you know than go with the stupid ignorance you don’t”.  Somehow, someway, Keen appears to differentiate the quality of substance between dancing monkeys on YouTube and a television show like The OC.  There is an obvious disconnect throughout the whole book between the Internet and real life.  When was Millennial and Internet culture not critically bound up in the corporate-consumer-culture that constructed it?

Perhaps the most laughable (and frustrating) aspect of the book is the assumption of integrity in today’s media, particularly with regards to journalism.  He speaks to information unreliability and misinformation, the problem with amateurs offering their personal understandings of the world via the blog, and the false truths about the Web 2.0 collective consciousness.  He states that professional media is less likely to report falsity, and is more objective than Joe Blogger because there is an industry standard of practices and ethical conduct (It is interesting to note here that this very point is one which has been echoed in a critical academic discourse regarding why academic knowledge is more valuable and true than the truth perpetuated by the media).

What Keen neglects to account for is competitiveness in the 24-hour news cycle, where much hearsay and speculation is discussed as time allows for light to be shed on the facts of a Fast-Breaking News Situation.  Recall during the 2004 election, the infamous RatherGate debaucle.  Recall the wasted and panic-filled news day on January 31 2007 as CNN reported mysterious electronic devices being found across the Northeast which ended up being a promotion for one of it’s sister stations.

Keen frets over online anonymity and those who would easily fake their credentials.  Recall author James Frey and his memoir novel A Million Little Pieces.  Recall the 28 year deception of the Dean of Admissions at MIT. People have been, and will be faking credentials long before Web 2.0.

Keen claims that “This undermining of truth is threatening the quality of civil public discourse encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft and stifling creativity.”
He states that the advent of Web 2.0 will result in “less culture less reliable news and a chaos of useless information.”  It’s hard to blame Web 2.0 for the chaos of useless information.  Recall the dedicated top of the hour news time dedicated to Anna Nicole-Smith and Paris Hilton.  Just sit back and try to count the amount of irrelevant and useless information we are fed on an hourly basis by traditional media.

I’d say that the undermining of the currently consented to version of truth actually enhances the quality of civil public discourse.  It brings more perspectives to the table, amateur perspectives from those monkeys on the street that actually keep this current system running.  Besides, bad information is presented to us every day.  It’s even published in our books and newspapers and encyclopedias, it is flashed on a ticker scrolling at the bottom of our television set, it is reinforced by our music and movies.  Yet it is Web 2.0 technologies that are threatening the integrity of knowledge and wisdom in our society?  At least if someone publishes something false on Wiki it can be rectified immediately… rather than having to wait 6 months for an errata to be published and mailed out to all of Britannica’s customers.  If a journalist writes a biased piece, critics can immediately comment as to how that piece is biased. Immediacy of correction and connection between reader and disseminator of information are things that can assist in clarifying the mis and disinformation that threatens the civil public discourse.

Regarding plagiarism and intellectual property theft… cutting, pasting and passing off as your own is a problem.  It is sleazy and it sucks.  Perhaps if educators offered students original curriculum to be analyzed, plagiarism wouldn’t be such a widespread problem.  I am somewhat against the notion of intellectual property mostly because as the amount of information produced increases the harder it becomes to decipher “original” versions of that information or idea.  It’s a bad idea to let lawyers and lobbyists decide who owns the rights to what information and ideas.  And I can’t even begin to imagine how giving monkeys tools and technology to produce and collaborate their own culture can stifle creativity.  I think monkey culture might be pretty cool.

Keen is right, Web 2.0 is changing our culture and value systems, but change is not necessarily bad.  Culture evolves alongside of technology… and revolutionary technology changes our daily realities.  When we started driving cars, we had to adapt our infrastructure and our daily life changed.  We were able to live outside the communities where we worked.  Blacksmiths probably had a tough go of it back then as their livelihoods were threatened by this new technology.  But did we say “stop driving cars because these Blacksmiths might be put out of a jobs”?

I agree with Keen when he says that as a society we are “easily seduced, corrupted, and led astray.”  But I believe that in most cases this happens through the very institutions that we are supposed to bestow our blind trust in.  While he makes some really good arguments and addresses a lot of issues that need to be thought about and brought into the public discourse on the matter (especially those in the chapter titled “1984 (version 2.0)”); what he doesn’t seem to see (or he does see it and thinks it’s irrelevant) is that the very culture and value system that he wishes to preserve or save from the unruly cultural chaos of Web 2.0, is the main perpetrator of the cacophony in and of itself.  Celebrity culture, the pursuit of money wealth and fame, the sense of entitlement that exists in advanced post-industrial societies, these are all things that make Myspace and blogspot so popular.  They are all the things that drive the culture of narcissism.  So is he for it or against it… this reader is left confused.

The integrity of information and fragmentation of our inundated collective consciousness is something that we should be concerned about.  We are moving from a top-down to a bottom-up societal epistemology and culture and the network that is the Internet is dragging us there whether we like it or not.  It has a life of its own now and is more powerful than any of us really want to admit.

Those who are feeling most threatened and vulnerable to it right know are those who stand to lose the greatest in terms of power, status and authority.  It seems to me that if those traditional gatekeepers of our knowledge, information and culture continue to oppose it… and become distant from it… they are only going to make themselves more irrelevant to it as it continues to grow and live.

While he raises some valid points regarding the need for a critical understanding of information and deciphering truth, I personally find it hard to blame Web 2.0 for the perpetuation of mis- and disinformation wars.  Whether it be for personal, political or private gain.  And I don’t believe that regulating it is the proper approach to harnessing it.  Because implying that regulation of the Social Web is possible and desirable, does not respect the organic nature of it.

Foucault on blogging (Link)

My co-worker Ted, has finally started blogging!  Here is the link to his brand spanking new blog! Getting to know the Multi-University

The Internet and Decision 0h-Eight.

While I try to limit my amount of prognostication (particularly where the Internet is concerned, as I was almost disappointed I didn’t get to use my Y2K emergency kit), I feel the urge to tap out a few predictions regarding the impact of Social Networking Sites, and indeed the Internet as a whole, in the upcoming American Presidential Race.
While I am not an American, I am fairly familiar with the political structures and games that go on down south as I am a media junkie. It is hard to be a media junkie and not pay attention to American federal politics.

Anyhow, I wanted to expand on a thought that my husband, David, had the other night…

“I think that the Internet is going influence the upcoming election in ways that we can’t even understand yet.”

This is a great overview of the buzz being generated about the Internet’s growing political swagger… Fox and Google are reaping full benefits, as candidates invest time, presense and money into campagins being fought out on MySpace and YouTube. This was ever so blatant in the case of the Barack Obama MySpace site… where Fox… I mean MySpace, directly intervened and handed over the splace to the Obama camp.

Hilary is asking voters to vote for her “campaign song” on her website… Campaign spots are being produced directly from YouTube… Must I go on?

Everyone is after that highly sought “youth vote”… And because of that, this election will perhaps be the first of it’s kind. In a typical political campaign, candidates appeal to those who already vote. This election, though, is the first where candidates are pandering to that non-voters, rather than voters. This traditionally disenfranchaised demographic has been so for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, I believe this is mostly due to sheer boredom… but the candidates know they have to sex it up a bit (thank you Hilary and Obama). Thanks to the Internet, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, it’s hip to be politically engaged these days, and its equally hip for politicians to be hip to the Internet.

Let’s do a little comparison of websites shall we? Rating for hipness and web 2.0 integration. By “hipness” I mean having that particular personae that is neatly marketed to anyone who is younger than a boomer, or is thoroughly engaged and embedded in the Social Web… It is being used somewhat ironically.

Democrats
Obama
It’s a nice clean site. The muted blues and greys are soothing. Jammed with widgets icluding those for “Barack TV”, “the Obama HQ blog” and the “Obama Store.”
Obama’s campaign appears to have become part of Web 2.0 by creating a profile-based password protected sns application called “My.BarackObama.com” The pages for Obama, in this order are Home, Learn (about Barack), Issues (his list of campaign issues), Get Involved (dedicated to MyBarack and event planning), Blog, States, People (a dropdown of groups of people who support Obama, with the first option “People of Faith”), and of couse… Donate. The bottom of the page displays buttons for the larger Obama Web 2.0 presense… Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, partybuilder and eventful… fairly impressive. And Obama has youth and impeccable looks on his side. My arbitrary Web 2.0/Hipness rating for the Obama Camp… 8/10

Clinton
Two major problems to point out for Hilary before I even get into her site. 1) when you Google “clinton” the first hit is for Bill Clinton’s Wikipedia entry… 2) the first click from Google to her site displays a sign-up form for her campaign… fortunatley sign-up is not required to view her site, but… for me personally, I like to look at a product before I agree to buy it or give out my personal information. Once you get to the site it’s not much different than Obama’s, same colours but the widget frames are more pointed and square. Hilary’s site also features the logos of the Big 4 sns’s Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. Hilary also has a blog, and a store, and a variety of video clips. Her top links in this order are Home, Hilary, Issues, Take Action, Newsroom (which the Obama site widgetized), Blog, Video (again Obama smartly widgetized his videos into the clever Barack TV), States, Contribute. If one didn’t know any better, they might think that these sites were created by the same design teams… however, I find Obama’s more visually appealing… Hilary tries to be hip, but the difference between her and Obama is that he actually is hip without trying too hard… Hilary sometimes tries a little too hard. My arbitrary Web 2.0/Hipness rating for the Clinton Camp… 7/10

Edwards
John Edwards is going for a family friendly appeal. First click from google displays a lovely black and white portrait of Edwards and his family looking very Kennedy. Again, I dislike that first click does not take me directly to the page, the option to sign-up for updates and support does. However, the photo on this commercial is far more appealing than Hilary’s… you get sucked into the handsomeness of the All-American Family. The colour scheme of Edwards site is noticably red, white, and blue, perhaps trying to reinforce that Americana ether… His top links break ranks from Obama and Hilary… They are About (where he has links to bio sites of both himself and his family), NewsRoom (interesting second choice), Events, Multimedia, Issues (which in fact does not have any dropdown links as Obama and Clinton), Take Action and Contribute. Edwards also has the big 4 sns logos, but is not using many widgets. I like the little “to do list” on the right-hand sidebar, but the predominant image is actually a slideshow instead of static image like on Obama and Clinton’s site. I can’t decide if I like this or not. It’s somewhat distracting. Edwards site tells me that, although his campaign wants to take advantage of Web 2.0, his managers don’t quite grasp it… or are not as convinced about it… or wanting to use it to reach out to a traditional voter base, rather than a hip one. For this lack of hipness and aesthetics… I give the Edwards camp 5/10. (They know who their target audience is, and it’s not hipster youth… because most hipster youth are afraid of children) A half-assed rating for a half-assed site.

Republicans
Rudy
First of all Rudy was smart in not putting his last name in his url. In fact “Join Rudy” is a nice little tagline for the personae of the former New York Mayor who took on the terrorists. In saying “Join me” he’s empowering the voter as someone who matters… Rudy needs your help… Join him. No sign-up pages to start… that’s a point. Rudy’s colour scheme also goes with a red, white and blue… far more in your face than the grey’s and blues from Obama and Hilary. Obviously missing from Rudy’s site are his sns logos and Web 2.0 software integration. Although it is a much more static website, rather than interactive, it looks nice… not exactly hip, but clean and tight. Rudy doesn’t use drop-down menus on the site, which is minus one point for ease of finding exactly what you want… Particularly if you want quick navigation to his stance on “the issues” Within the pages, there is more Web 2.0 integration on the pages, with digg and del.icio.us buttons. Overall I give Rudy’s site 7/10, his web integration is not the worst, but certainly not the best, but Rudy is pretty hip among Republican hipsters.

McCain
McCain must be behind with the hip web demographic (probably after Jon Stewart tore him up on his latest appearance on the Daily Show)… his campaign site is fourth

down on a Google Search for “McCain” (with McCain foods being the #1 hit). He has a sign up page first… negative one point… You can tell the demographic McCain is going for as soon as your eyes gain focus from the impressive banner… the military vote. In fact, at first glance you would think you hit the US military recruitment site. Dark Grey and white with general’s stars and the obligatory candidate in front of the flag image. The site also has a much more “commercial-feel” to it. An advertisement for his book is fairly prominent… you can tell this is the website of a hawk… And no sns integration either… Not very hip (since the anti-war cause is “in” right now for those psuedo-hipster intellectual stars like George Clooney) My bias shows through here in making these rankings all the more arbitrary by giving McCain a -4/10. (But the website is good so really it gets 4/10)

Romney
Now in the case of “Mitt” my political views do not overshadow my assessment of his web presense. He has a nice clean site that mixes the muted greys in with the red whites and blues. Following Obama, he also has a “Mitt TV” widget… very clever. Also clever is the use of his first name only which is plastered all over the page. The MittWire is also very clever. Mitt is the only republican who is using the SNS logos… but he doesn’t have a Flickr site… (minus half a point). And very nice blog button for the “Four Brothers Blog” which is appealing to those “faithful” voters. Although it pains me to do so, but I’d have to give the Mitt site an 8.5/10 for Web 2.0 campaign architecture, except for his fundamental flaw… he is simply not hip… so he drops to 7.5/10 in my arbitrary ratings.

Other (Possible Underdogs)
“Unity ‘08“
This campaign might fizzle before it gets off the ground, the website is already displaying banners that are dated for an event happening 4 weeks ago (minus one for lack of updating). Depending on the candidates on the Unity ‘08 ticket… and showmanship at the debates and online, this campaign might prove to have a bit of teeth. They had Sam Waterson (McCoy from Law and Order) doing some PR in the media… which leads me to believe that Fred Thompson (who plays the DA on Law and Order) may be one of those candidates. In terms of hipness and buzz though, Unity ‘08 is a high-scoring campaign… but mainly because anything obscure with a niche of consumers can be hip… not because of anything particular that they are doing on their website. This is a campaign that has not quite made it into reality left, but worthy to note in this discussion because right now… it is an idea that has potential to expand. That being said, the first thing you notice when you go to the Unity ‘08 site is not an image of a candidate, but an image of a group of youth. They know their target audience. As previously mentioned a large banner is outdated… Right now the site is bare and subdued, not nearly as good as it could be. Unity ’08s rating is twofold, their website gets a 3/10… but their potential to successfully implement a bottom-up campaign is hopeful. **** I’ve upped the U08 rating to 4.5/10… see comments as to why.****

Ron Paul

Now technically, Ron Paul should be under the Republican heading, however let’s face it… He will never get the Republican Nomination… but could really shake things up as a third-party candidate (or on the Unity ‘08 ticket). I’m not sure what I think of Ron Paul, he is not exactly the picture of hipness, but his charisma with the talk show circuit scores him major points. Some people think that older candidates deter the youth vote. I’m not so sure about Ron Paul… he’s spunky. When you click on his website (right now anyway) it kind of looks like he’s MSNBC’s presidential hopeful. His colours are nice, subdued reds whites and blues. Prominent display of the sns sites used… and they are using web 2.0 jargon as well. Ron Paul is the only candidate with a visible digg button… that gets a point. Ron Paul gets a whopping 9/10 for his Internet campaign.

Of note, as well, is the Internet buzz about Ron Paul, he’s been the top technorati tag since his spectacular performance at the last Republican debate. He’s been endorsed by Bill Maher, and is one of the only candidates brave enough to make an appearance on Stephen Colbert.

It seems that even if the Internet doesn’t affect the outcome at all, there are an awful lot of people who are acting “as if” it’s going to.

And why not? Democratization of society is one of those heralded outcomes of the Internet, even if some people view democratization with scorn and fear. And democratization it has the potential to be… if users are able to remain in ultimate control of their political fates.

I am anticipating an exciting campaign…

In Palinode’s Palace… (Link)

My friend Palinode’s blog about Facebook… he is a superb writer!

Separating public and private

Sometimes it’s hard for me to distinquish the public and the private on a number of levels, especially when it comes to the virtual. 

I am a public Internet user… that is, I use the Internet for leisure.  I am personally embedded in the fibres of the Social Web.  I have formed emotional and social bonds with perfect strangers, I have crafted out a textual narrative of my virtual identity. 

In being a public user, I have a private life that ebbs and flows with the chaotic structure of this version of virtual.  I am interacting with other public users following the values and structures of the virtual communities where they are occuring.  

I am also a private Internet user… that is, I have invested in the Internet as a site and source of livliehood (in my case research interest).  My investment has consisted mostly (and predominantly) of time, but also a certain amount of brain-power.  I’m not sure of a good way to measure brain-power, but I suspect mine is a moderate contribution, in terms of some of the minds around here.

As a private Internet user, I rely on the public use of the technology.  I am using public mechanisms and observing the part of the Internet which exists in the public sphere.  I am interacting with other private users following the values and structures of the virtual communities where they are occuring.    

I’m going to analogize here with the good old spider.  As a public Internet user I am the spider.  I am weaving my web based on whatever geographical and environmental boudaries I have to work with.  As a private Internet user I am the human observer of the spider, trying to calculate the exact measurements of my own web. 

This deconstructs even farther, when trying to negotiate this status with sociological and ethical definition of the public and the private.  Where, as a quantitative social researcher, I am supposed to separate my public and private experiences and view the two realms as distinct.  I have to conceptually define the boundaries between my public and private user statuses. 

From the ethical standpoint of a researcher, I am obliged to follow certain principles of research design and data collection.  I have recently been pouring through a stack of articles which speaks to methodology of online research trying to figure out a way to negotiate this.  The problem that I am finding is that most of these articles approach online research as the human observer first… and I am afraid that I am the spider first.  Therefore I am finding that traditional (institutional research) means of observation and knowledge-sharing to be incomplete, in terms of how I am to proceed with turning it into research-based knowledge.  Particularly in dealing with issues of bias and referencing none academic-journal type references.  The academic referencing blogs, however, is a topic I’ll save for another day. 

Another level of public and private deconstruction is the ecomonically-based.  It has to do with the disconnect between what the social researcher would consider a public space for observation and data collection, and what the owners and developers of the commodified virtual community (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter etc) could assert as a private space, where user data as being the most valueable resource. 

More negotiation of definition…  The public user who joins one of these communities agrees to the private ownership of their data.  The public user still own the rights to their own data, but in the act of granting propriety, they essentially consent to the commodification of their own user behaviour.  Does this make it unavailable to the social researcher as a form of public knowledge? 

To continue with the analogy… the private is represented by the mean old man telling the human observer to get off his porch, where the spider has spun the web.

I would appreciated any insight into some of these issues, in articles/authors/blogs I should read, advice, or personal experience in how I might start negotiating these disconnects.  Or is it simply that I have to choose whether I am the spider, the human observer…                   

             

    

Smashing Rocks « Tangents

Smashing Rocks « Tangents

Another Facebook blog…

It’s been two weeks since I deleted my Facebook profile, and aside from a few fleeting moments, I haven’t really missed it much.  I’ve gotten a number of emails asking me if I was “OK” because I deleted my profile.  I find that amusing.  As if Facebook was such an important part of my life… why on earth would I delete…  disable my profile?

You can’t delete your Facebook profile… only disable it.  I delete all of my profile content before disabling it… but I wonder if anything is really deleted from The FaceBook? 

I have heard from a few others who are also considering leaving, for reasons similar to mine.  In a phone conversation with one friend of mine, he indicated that he was getting all these friend requests from people who he didn’t really like in high school and was happy to have out of his life.

Another friend of mine has had to deal with an old friend coming back into her life (via Facebook) and sleeping with her partner.

Interesting that when you disable your profile, a little multiple choice survey comes up and asks why you are leaving… it offers things like, too confusing, too hard to use… but the very last option is “Facebook is creating too much social drama in my life”

My husband still has his profile (and has just posted a fantastic blog about his experience with Facebook) but is getting annoyed with all of the new apps… in an effort to stop getting people to send him requests to add this widget or that one… he updated his profile to read “David is suggesting that the new Facebook applications are just another form of data mining your personal information and he will not them.” 

A few of his friends are now thinking of leaving as well.

A few thoughts/questions here:

1) If you disable your profile does The Facebook still have rights to your data and content?  The terms of service are unclear on this point. 

2) I’ve seen a few blogs/stories like this one, and I think… who on earth would want to have the intimate details of their live be available for public (or private) scrutiny?

3) Facebook is having some serious real-life consequences.

This third point is one I want to address a little further.  For me, real-world spill-over is one of those markers that indicate a “virtual community” is successful.  I think, and have always thought, that the virtual can be used to enhance community and individual networks.  It is, after all, one of those indicators of the value of virtual capital. 

However, one has to sit back and evaluate whether those real-world “leakages” (as Barry Wellman has called them) are having postive or negative effects.  So far, the negative effects I’ve heard about outweigh the positive, in terms of how they relate to the individual.  Facebook is causing anxiety, and uncertainty, and forcing some people to open their closet and face some skeletons.

And now, this morning, David tells me of the most recent and unassuming victim of Facebook… a tree.  Seems a couple of those Facebook “rival” groups decided to take it to the next level… the physical one.

Technically, The FaceBook is the superior Social Networking Site, there is little doubt in my mind about that… but, there are some serious social complications that really need to be addressed here before things really get out of hand.

While I applaud and encourage the use of the Social Web to the fullest extent of its abilities… while the thought of Smart Mobs excites me… the thought of Stupid Mobs scares me.  

See I’m one of those people that wants to have her cake and eat it too.  What I want is to be able to implement the Social Web in an “ideal” world.  I want user-data to be used to improve the quality of life of the user, not the quality of the application… I want knowledge producers to have an equal voice to the information and entertainment producers… I want to see the Internet adapt/evolve through the faithful appropriations, rather than the ironic ones… But alas, this is not the world we live in.

There are two paths that this technology can take, and I’m getting more and more concerned about the trends that I am observing.

   

The social side of Web 2.0

A while ago, when I first started searching for connections between Giddens’ Structuration Theory and how it applies to the “virtual”, I came across Adaptive Structuration Theory (deSanctis and O’Toole) which essentially makes that connection.  AST is a theory which, simply put, looks at how computer-mediated communication can assist in the decision-making processes of small groups.  

To back up a bit, for those of you unfamiliar with Structuration Theory, it is a sociological framework which views society as being comprised of the processes that flow between the micro (individual) and the macro (institutional).  It is the interaction itself which determines how society is structured.  Without getting too bogged down in Gidden’s, individuals exchange rules and resources with the structures as the structures feedback those rules and resources through legimitizing institutions.

This process becomes “Adaptive” when individuals working in groups collaboratively decide and work to adapt the rules and resources to attain group goals.  The overall theory highlights how advanced communication technology can facilitate the collaboration and work to promote adaptation to it. 

AST speaks to the “duality of the structure” which means that the rules and resources are “both the medium and the outcome of interaction; they affect and are affected by what is done“, with the “Spirt of Technology” being “the principle of coherence that holds a set of rules and resources together.”  In a group settings, adaptation can occur either “faithfully” (where the technology is appropriated in a way that is consistent with the ”spirit”) or “ironically” (where the technology is appropriated in a way that opposes and tries to defeat the intended use of rules and resources)

I can conceptually see how Web 2.0 exemplifies the “Spirit of the Technology.” If we are willing to entertain the possibility of applying Adaptive Structuration Theory to large groups and virtual communities, we can maybe draw a theoretical line between the ”Faithful appropriations” of individuals and groups using the Internet towards its grassroots purpose and use of a democratizing technology, and the ”Ironic appropriations” of individuals and groups that use the exact same processes and tools towards commercialization and privatization, ends which defeat the rules and resources of the that grassroots spirit.

It is in this distinction that I have found myself wanting to make distinctions about Web 2.0, using the term “Social Web” to capture that group of “faithful” appropriators and keeping “Web 2.0″ to capture that corporatist, or “ironic” appropriation….  This is also what I mean when I talk about the dualism of the Internet and the importance of context in understanding it from an epistemological point of view.  Phew! It took a while for me to get there though, didn’t it?         

Abstracts accepted!

Ted and I submitted two co-authored abstracts to the upcoming “Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0” conference, and got word that they were both accepted (as reported here, Abstracts accepted! « The ACSIS Blog)

Here is the one that I am first author on

Which Web 2.0? – Why context matters

Web 2.0 has provided the individual with a variety of online community venues to participate in. Critics of Web 2.0, and indeed the broader concept of “virtual community,” argue that involvement in such online contexts can detract from, and erode elements of the self and interpersonal relationships (Kraut et al., 1998; Kroker & Weinstein, 1994; Stoll, 1995). The Internet has been described as a technology which can either fragment the user, causing the individual to dichotomize their identity into “real” and “virtual” (Turkle, 1996), or socially construct the User into a homogenous “amorphous being without gender, form, place, time, knowledge, voice or power” (Rose, 2003:7). This paper argues that neither approach is sufficient to fully understand the effects of online participation to the self and “real” life (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Katz and Rice, 2002).

In approaching the online self as a research subject, it is important not to assume that all social networking sites will have the same effects on identity and interpersonal relationships (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Kennedy, 2006; Robinson, 2007), like all social research, context matters. These contextual differences are demonstrated with comparison of two leading social networking sites online today, Facebook and MySpace. In general, Facebook and MySpace are viewed as interchangeable types of social networking sites, many tend to believe that both sites provide the same services and have the same general purposes for the user. However there are definite contextual differences between the two platforms. For example, Facebook is a closed-system network which encourages online contact between existing friends, and friends of friends. Conversely, MySpace is an open-system, and friend requests from strangers are not uncommon. These differences can lead to different assumptions of user-control of content and privacy, and safety, but also towards the purposes of individual use; where MySpace best serves the user who wants to “pimp1” themselves to a global community, and Facebook best serves the user who wants to “play with” their existing real-world contacts in a virtual environment.

This paper will be a comparison of these two leading social networking sites, in terms of their potential social and personal value to the individual user. Drawing on experience with both sites, observation, and existing research on the topic (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Carroll et. al, 2001), it will be argued that context matters as much online as in the real world, particularly in terms of how and why the user participates in certain online communities.

1 http://www.pimp-my-profile.com/ 

Charlene Croft – Croft is a currently completing her Honour’s degree in Sociology/Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University and is research coordinator for the Atlantic Centre for the Study of the Information Society. Croft regularly gets to put theory to practice by using the participation architecture of the internet, such as Web 2.0, to communicate with our research communities and build critical interest around the centre’s activities and projects.

Ted D. Naylor – Naylor is a manager and researcher with the Atlantic Centre for the Study of the Information Society. Naylor is studying the changing nature of Canadian higher education in a doctoral dissertation at the University of Alberta. In 2004 he received a major doctoral studentship award from the Inter-university Centre for the Study of Work and Globalization (CRIMT), University of Laval.

References

Boase, Jeffrey and Barry Wellman (2004) “Personal relationships: On and off the Internet” (draft)

Carroll, Jeannie, Steve Howard, Frank Vetere, Jane Peck, John Murphy (2001) “Identity, power and fragmentation in cyberspace: Technology appropriation by young people” In Proceedings of Australian Conference on Information Systems, 2001. Coffs Harbour, Australia.

Katz, J. and R.E. Rice (2002) Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, involvement, and interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Kennedy, Helen (2006) “Beyond anonymity, or future directions for internet identity research” New Media and Society, Vol. 8(6): 859-876

Kraut, R., M. Patterson, V. Lundmark, S. Kiesler, T. Mukhopadhyay, & W. Scherlis (1998) “Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?” American Psychologist, 53, 1017-1031

Kroker, A. and M.A. Weinstein (1994) Data Trash: The theory of the virtual class. New York: St. Martin’s Press

Robinson, Laura (2007) “The cyberself: The self-ing project goes online, symbolic interaction in the digital age” New Media and Society Vol9(1): 93-110.

Rose, Ellen (2003) User Error: Resisting computer culture. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Stoll, Clifford (1995) Silicon Snake Oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York: Doubleday.

Turkle, Sherry (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.