Digc 101 Week 3: Analyzing Teh Interwebz

DIGC 101 week 3: Analyzing teh InterWebz Andrew Whelan [email protected] 19.2010

Overview 

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What kind of stuff is the web made of, and why care? Research traditions that inform web analysis What are we looking AT, and what are we looking FOR, when we ‘analyse the web’? Performing online selves, conducting online research

Serious business: “Among all the technological, political and economic infrastructures put in place to install the new world order and economy, just one may be mentioned as epitomizing the whole: networked information technology” (Alan Liu, Laws of Cool 2004: 6).

Teh interwebz is made of stuff !1!! Content/Discourse/Interaction etc.

Network

Hardware

(Software) FLOSS/Microsoft, Adobe etc.

Hardware

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What is it made of? Where does it come from? Who makes it?

Where does it go when we’re done with it?

e.g. a Dell laptop: “The components are sourced from various countries, which include: the chassis (Taiwan); hard disk drive (Thailand); BIOS chip (U.S.); floppy disk drive (China); AC adapter (China, but in the future, Thailand); CD ROM (Japan); fax modem cards (U.S.); docking station (Taiwan); and the memory board (Korea, Japan, or Singapore).” (http://cryptome.org/uscs092002.txt)

e.g. ‘Googleplex’ server farms

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‘Project 02’ in The Dalles, Oregon. See http://www.harpers.org/media/slideshow/annot/ 2008-03/index.html

Network

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Made by who?

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Controlled by who?

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Paid for by who?

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Accessible by who?

Who’s in, who’s not?

Global connectivity and the digital divide circa 2007 (http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000639)

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The digital divide is a continuum, rather than a binary with ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ Lack of access and poor access compound pre-existent inequalities (the ‘analog divide’) Access is marketised: e-inclusion is usually not the priority

Free networks, open spectrum, & ‘net neutrality’ E.g.: 

http://www.guifi.net/en

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http://www.coffswifi.net/

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http://www.openspectrum.org.au/

Interwebz is not ‘free’ 

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Access is a social equity issue, but it is also a ‘free speech’ issue The internet is not really ‘free’ – either in the sense of ‘free beer’, or in the sense of ‘free speech’

Why care? The point is …

Front end : where the action is 

Content/ Discourse/ Interaction etc.

Most web analysis focuses on content / discourse / interaction, not on the infrastructure enabling it. Why might that be?

‘There’s no there there’, BUT: Interwebz functions as ‘new space’ for 

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Social life and the organisation of social life The elaboration and performance of social identity The production and distribution of culture Hence …

(a few) Research traditions that inform web analysis Social organisation and the structure of social groups: Social network analysis, network mapping, online social networks, the ‘virtual community’ debate 

e.g. Barry Wellman, danah boyd, Howard Rheingold

More research traditions that inform web analysis Social identity, psychology and social psychology in virtual spaces Virtual identity as therapy, impact of virtual on ‘real’ selves 

e.g. Sherry Turkle, Yair AmichaiHamburger

still more research traditions that inform web analysis Computer mediated communication: Language use, sociolinguistics, and the structure of online social interaction 

e.g. Susan Herring TLDR LOL N00B l337 PWNED etc.: we're in your media trollin for lulz …

… ‘cyberculture’ Virtual anthropology, cyber ethnography etc. e.g. Christine Hine, Steve Jones, Nancy Baym, Lori Kendall 

Googleable? What kind of online presence do these people have? Are they easy to find? • • • • • • • • • •

Barry Wellman danah boyd Howard Rheingold Sherry Turkle Yair Amichai-Hamburger Susan Herring Christine Hine Steve Jones Nancy Baym Lori Kendall

What are they on about? Do they have more than one site? Do they ‘look good’ online? (professional, approachable, interesting etc.) Are their virtual presences ‘static’? Are they ‘institutional’? Do they link to others? How do their online presences position you, ‘the user’?

Why ask these questions? 

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Interwebz is not just a social space, as such it’s also a space being researched We need to know ‘how to look’ online (how to look at, and how to be looked at – how to be effective in response to the looks of others)

The abyss gazes also 

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Just as computer-mediated communication influences offline social life, so it influences social research and how it’s conducted. If it influences social research, it influences undergraduate education – where we’re at.

Hence …

check out the undergrad cyberculture course sites you can find through these links: RCCS: http://rccs.usfca.edu/

VoS: http://vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp

What seems to be being taught elsewhere? Which set of links is better/more interesting? Which of the above sites is doing better?

A few things to bear in mind: Interwebz:  is changing nature of research in the humanities  is changing the distribution of knowledge so produced 

Online research is cheap: research takes place in a social context

We can intervene in these processes: we are teh interwebz

Sorts of questions it might be useful to think about for your reflective piece: 

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what is teh interwebz made of? What kind of interventions are being made in relation to it? How do we ‘look’ online, and what might it be good to look like? What are YOU interested in looking at about/in online environments?