Session 8-9 Presentation

SESSION 8-9 SOCIAL NETWORK SITES DEFININING SOCIAL NETWORK SITES web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (Boyd & Ellison, 2) Pew Internet and American Life, 2007, “Social Networking Websites and Teens”: “A social networking site is an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users.” PEW: “More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites” 1

Among the key findings of the report: • 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. • 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible by all internet users. • 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day. • Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and, • 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% boys have done so. • 91% of all social networking teens say they use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently, while 82% use the sites to stay in touch with friends they rarely see 2

in person • 72% of all social networking teens use the sites to make plans with friends; • 49% use the sites to make new friends. • Older boys who use social networking sites (ages 15-17) are more likely than girls of the same age to say that they use social networking sites to make new friends (60% vs. 46%). • Just 17% of all social networking teens use the sites to flirt • Older boys who use social networking sites are more than twice as likely as older girls to say they use the sites to flirt; 29% report this compared with just 13% of older girls.

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THE DATABASE AS PANOPTICON Chris Hughes: “We model people's real lives at their individual schools in a virtual space that enables them to exchange information about themselves. We are not focused on meeting new people, dating or anything like that. Instead, we want to manage information efficiently so that we can provide our users the information that matters most to them.” Mark Andrejevic (2004): “The de-differentiation of spaces of consumption and production achieved by new media serves as a form of spatial enclosure: a technology for enfolding previously unmonitored activities within the monitoring gaze of marketers.” Alexander R. Galloway: “The clustering of descriptive information around a specific user becomes sufficient to explain the identity of that user.” (69) 5

Fred Scharmen: “If a body is recomposed as information, it is all the more subject to the specialized techniques of control: distributed surveillance, data aggregation.” folksonomy: https://www.newsvine.com/ http://del.icio.us/ http://reddit.com/ http://digg.com/ http://www.stumbleupon.com/ http://technorati.com/frontpage/

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Andrejevic (2004): “Instead of promoting power sharing, the contemporary deployment of interactivity exploits participation as a form of labor. Consumers generate marketable commodities by submitting to comprehensive monitoring. They are not so much participating, in the progressive sense of collective selfdetermination, as they are working by submitting to interactive monitoring.” DIGITAL GARDENING?

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M. Andrejevic, 2004. “Little Brother is Watching: The Webcam Subculture and the Digital Enclosure,” In N. Couldry and A. McCarthy (editors), MediaSpace: Place, scale, and culture in a media age. New York: Routledge. P. Bourdieu, 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. A.R. Galloway, 2004. Protocol: How control exists after decentralization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. d. boyd, d. 2006. “Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace,” at http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html, accessed 28 August 2006. d. boyd and H. Jenkins, 2006. “Discussion: MySpace and Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA),” at http://www.danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html accessed 28 August 2006. A. Williams, 2005. “Do You MySpace?” New York Times (28 August), p. 9.1 A. Wittel, 2001. “Toward a Network Sociality,” Theory Culture & Society, volume 18, number 6, pp. 51-76.

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