As Edward Snowden settles into his new life in Russia, and Facebook inc. faces accusations of providing information to government officials about protesters in Turkey, issues of privacy are on the lips, minds, and newsfeeds of many global citizens.
Citizens sit with the uncomfortable and now undeniable reality that we are being watched. That our own governments, in many cases, are doing the watching. And that the economic, social, and interactive structures makes this kind of surveillance largely impossible to avoid.
I have noticed an interesting trend as people work through what many view as an unfortunate inevitability of pervasive surveillance: the use of play as a form of resistance. To be sure, PJ Rey (@pjrey) is our resident Play Theory expert here at Cyborgology. I am an admitted novice to this line of theory. As such, I hope that those with greater expertise than I will supplement my wide-eyed sociological noticings with established or developing social theorists and their theories.
Two particularly interesting examples strike me in their use of play as a serious form of political resistance.
First, we have Drone Hunting in Colorado. On October 8, the town of Deer Trail will vote on an ordinance to declare open season on government drones. Billed simultaneously as a tourist attraction and “symbolic protest” against government surveillance, the town plans to sell drone hunting licenses for $25/year, and offer a $100 prize to anyone who shoots down the targeted prey. There is even talk of a “fun-filled” drone hunting festival. This is a highly organized effort, One born of necessity, anxiety, and— perhaps ironically—a feeling of empowerment afforded by the spirit of capitalism. As reported by Denver Channel 7 News:
“They’ll sell like hot cakes, and it would be a real drone hunting license,” said Deer Trail resident Phillip Steel, who drafted the ordinance. “It could be a huge moneymaker for the town.”
Next, we have a less organized, but arguably equally as politically charged form of play: #NSAlovepoems and #NSApickuplines on Twitter. These are The Internet’s comedic responses to the less-than-funny news that NSA employees were using their power and access to data to acquire information about lovers and objects of romantic interest. In spy lingo, this misconduct is officially known as LOVEINT (Love Intelligence). The Twitter hashtags display NSA related pick-up lines, such as these:
Leaving aside an overreliance on the “roses are red” trope, these hashtags demonstrate the playful use of existing systems to combat undesirable conditions at the symbolic level.
Both of these examples, it seems, operate at the symbolic level. Twitter users express their discontent through an NSA accessible platform, complying with their own surveillance while speaking out against it. In Colorado, the residents of Deer Trail acknowledge that nobody will likely ever shoot a drone. In fact, drones aren’t even visible from the town, and there would be serious legal repercussions if someone did successfully damage the government’s property.
And yet, the symbolic matters. When a system is deeply ingrained, getting outside of the system may seem—and may indeed be—impossible. But dissenting from the system is not. This is open reflexivity, an activity instrumental in fostering—to use C. Wright Mills’ term—a Sociological Imagination. The public nature of these forms of play/protest alter discourses, and give regular citizens a chance to frame the discussion.
This is serious play. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s accessible. And, using personal tactics, gets at the heart of public issues.
The Today Show recently did a special on sexting, and NBC reporter Abigail Pesta wrote a piece about it, with a video link, here. Much of the piece is based around the expert opinion of Catherine Steiner-Adair, a psychologist who wrote a book on the topic based on interviews and observations with teenage students in the U.S.
In what follows, I leverage a rather harsh critique of the piece and the research that it cites. I do so because I think they show promise, but go wrong in very important ways. This critique is meant not as a fight, but as a push to researchers, policy makers, and general citizens to check their assumptions about the relationship between bodies, behaviors, and technologies. And moreover, it is an imploration to address root level issues, rather than seeking out blamable objects with naive hopes of eradicating social problems through destruction of material stuff.
Pesta’s main argument is that sexting has negative implications for both boys and girls. The focus on boys and masculinity is perhaps the strongest part of the article. I also appreciate the way in which the article troubles the over-simplified hunter-prey relationship between boys and girls. For instance, Pesta quotes Steiner-Adair saying this:
It’s insufficient, superficial and polarizing when boys simply get cast as aggressors and girls as victims. It’s such a bad part of our culture to think that boys aren’t also harmed. We are neglecting the emotional lives of boys
In addressing boys, however, the article, and the research it cites, fail to grapple with teen sex(texting) in all of its complexities. Instead, the piece recasts boys and girls as the combined victims of social technologies, looking back idyllically upon romantic note-writing and prescribing face-to-face family time as the key strategy of push back.
In doing so, Pesta juxtaposes text-based communications to the more “real” and “nuanced” FtF communicative practices. She reports:
For boys and girls alike, crucial lessons in how to relate to each other are getting lost in the blizzard of tweets and texts, experts say. The cues kids would pick up from a live conversation — facial expressions, gestures — are absent from the arm’s-length communications that are now a fixture of growing up. The fast-paced technology also “deletes the pause” between impulse and action, said Steiner-Adair, who calls texting the “worst possible training ground” for developing mature relationships. Dan Slater, the author of “Love in the Time of Algorithms,” agrees. “You can manage an entire relationship with text messages,” he said, but that keeps some of the “messy relationship stuff” at bay. “That’s the stuff that helps people grow up,” he added.
As Amanda Hess points out, this is problematic first in its either-or approach, assuming that text based sexuality and romance are necessarily zero-sum. Furthermore, it explicitly privileges communicative practices of speech and voice over text without justifying this gigantic assumption. Some people communicate better with mediating tools. They are more comfortable, articulate, open. Of particular importance, research shows that underrepresented and vulnerable groups benefit the most from mediated forms of communication, as technological mediators provide more time, less interruption, and a buffer between the speech act and a world that disempowers the speaker (see link above). I believe teenagers, in general, are a vulnerable population. At the very least they are awkward, and awkwardly fumbling through intense physical and emotional interpersonal relationships.
Dawson’s creek was a teen angst tool at the turn of the millennium.
Dawson’s Creek—and I am embarrassed to admit that I know this—was written as a hyper-articulation of teen angst. The writers and directors purposely created an unrealistic show in which the characters said all of things that teenagers feel, but don’t quite know how to express. The show itself, then, became a social tool. Perhaps we can think of digital social technologies in the same way. Talking about and expressing sexuality is hard. So is talking about and expressing emotion. Especially for people whose bodies only recently started leaking and sprouting, whose hormones suddenly insisted upon touching and being touched, and whose vocabularies are years away from SAT ready.
To be sure, mediated sexual interaction is not always a growth facilitating thing. On the contrary, like all sexual interaction, it can be downright violent. In this vein, Steiner-Adair talks about girls crying as they recount explicit messages they’ve received, of boys hacking into each other’s accounts and sending girls crude messages about multi-hole penetration, of boys feeling pressured to re-enact the behaviors displayed in pornography. Such things are clearly troublesome. Such things represent a real social problem. Namely, Rape Culture.
The way the article addresses the issue, however, is to decry “hookup culture” with an emphasis on the role of particular technological objects. In doing so, new technologies become the surface level scapegoat, the convenient receptacle for social problems into which parents, commentators, educators, and policy makers can throw their blame, avoiding the mess of a largely imbedded social ill.
This skewed cultural understanding becomes the basis for teaching teens about negotiating social interaction in general, and sexual interactions in particular. This is a problem. Rather than wade through the complex terrain of how and when it’s okay (and not okay) to show, see, talk about, and touch one’s own or others’ bodies, the focus on technological objects invokes fear and suggests safety through disconnection. Not only is this unrealistic (teens are not going to stop using digital technologies for sex or sociality in general), but also counterproductive. How are teens to develop sexual and social maturity if the whole of their sexuality is boiled down to particular material objects?
Certainly, materiality matters. Digital media affect how people communicate and engage socially, including how they negotiate and express sexual relationships. Materiality is not, however, deterministic, nor does it exist in cultural void.
EXTRA!! EXTRA!!! DIGITAL MEDIA CONSUMPTION WILL SURPASS TRADITIONAL TELEVISION VIEWING THIS YEAR!!!!
The folks at eMarketer just released a study which projects that this year, adults will spend over 5 hours consuming digital media, as compared with about 4.5 hours watching television. This makes for a nice headline. It also makes for a wonderful example of the social construction of knowledge, and relatedly, the embeddedness of digital dualism.
A root assumption of Science and Technology Studies (STS) is that both science and technology, though billed as objective, are anything but. Knowledge systems, and methods of knowing (i.e. epistemologies), are necessarily based in human values, cultural norms, power structures, and historical context. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar famously deconstruct the notion of scientific objectivity in their 1979 anthropological study of Laboratory Life.In this vein, Emily Martin illuminates the gendered ways in which biologists depict the egg-sperm relationship within the reproductive process. And a few months back, I argued that to be a Quantified Self requires quite a bit of qualitative interpretation and decision making. In short, Big Data, statistical techniques, and laboratory procedures produce knowledge that is equally as biased as storytelling or ethnographic interpretation. Sorry, Enlightenment.
Looking at the eMarketer study, the digital dualism becomes clear. First, the group is called “eMarketer.” Anything with an “e” prefix automatically gets the side-eye. Next, the decision to compare digital media consumption to traditional television consumption is hugely value laden. Why these two things? The report spends no time considering how these media relate or diverge from one another, but jumps into data presentation with the assumption that their comparison is sociologically and economically important. And then there is the definition of “digital media consumption.”
In this study, digital media consumption includes texting, reading on a tablet, using social media, doing *anything* on a digitally connected device, and using video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.
Right. The authors compare doing a lot of different things (texting, Hulu, reading etc.) with doing one thing (watching cable or network television), and then report that people will spend more time on the lot of things than the one thing. In the sage words of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Does the word ‘Duh’ mean anything to you?”
The eMarketer report clumps together a diverse set of activities under the heading of “digital media consumption,” inherently separating out digital as its own homogenous category, and utilizing this category as a meaningful comparison variable. The design of the study is fraught with dualist assumptions, which are perpetuated when the results—presented in dry numeric form complete with tables and statistical values—spread into public discourse. Moreover, since a major goal of Enlightenment style scientific study is cumulative knowledge building, the eMarketer results set the stage (and the legitimacy) for new studies which will operate uncritically with the same problematic assumptions.
As a final unsurprising but conveniently timely note, the eMarketer report is peppered with the language of “online” and “offline,” reinforcing the need to critically examine language, as I argued last week.
As the American Sociological Society Annual Meeting approaches, I want to take this opportunity to give some theoretical attention to the language of digital technologies. The following is perhaps an overly verbose way of asking what to do with heavily integrated but problematic vocabularies? The timing here is significant, as I believe the meetings next weekend will include a lot of dualist language that we, as a discipline, aren’t quite sure what to do with.
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Bloggers here at cyborgology ascribe to several different theoretical and methodological perspectives. However, we share two related assumptions. First, humans and technologies are—and always have been—mutually constitutive. In light of this, our second shared assumption is that it is problematic to discursively dichotomize humans and technologies. The first point refers to an augmented perspective, and the latter point refers to the digital dualism critique.
Over time, we have all written extensively in an effort to articulate, tweak, argue, and apply the augmented perspective and digital dualism critique (see links above). As many of us now look towards constructing more formal essays (i.e., peer-reviewed books/chapters/articles) from this line of theorizing, we find ourselves struggling with linguistic precision. Language is tricky, as it is always value-laden and yet masquerades as neutral, quietly coaxing speakers and writers into complacence and uncritical usage. Or put more simply, it is easy to rely upon existing words, difficult to see the problems with those words, and really difficult to come up with new words that a) avoid problems with existing words, and b) effectively communicate meaning.
In tackling this language problem with regards to new technologies, several of us got together to hash out some of the stickier points. The following discussion is born of this meeting.
During our meeting, David Banks informed us that the terms “online” and “offline” were first used to reference whether or not a town was on the railroad line.
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We spent the better part of the morning talking/fighting/coming up with numerous analogies about the language of “online” and “offline.” These terms are of particular importance because they are both inherently dualist—as they imply that “on” and “off” are separate and mutually exclusive states— and also very widely used in both common parlance and academic writing.
Our main question was this: How do we talk about the colloquial words online and offline, and in particular, the conditions under which actors[i] can be designated as online or offline, in a way that captures its many normative uses yet avoids problematic dualisms and definitional conflations?
In response to this question, I offer the language of “ network access.” I argue that the language of network accessallows for precision while remaining comprehensible to a broad audience and maintaining dialogue with established works. I begin with a delineation of the many things that people mean when they say online and offline, and then offer network access as an alternative linguistic tool.
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When people say online and offline, they actually mean several different things, some of which are contradictory. We can categorize three meanings of online and offline as currently connected, potentially connected, and maintaining a presence.
1) Currently Connected: Something an actor is currently doing
An actor is online if they are interacting on the Internet, with a device connected to the Internet, right now. They are offline if they are not interacting on the Internet right now. For example, I am online right now because I am currently interacting with WordPress—an Internet connected blogging platform. When I close my computer and walk to the kitchen to get a snack, I am no longer online. While out with friends, I may spend a few moments sending a Tweet. For those moments, I am online. When I put my phone back in my pocket, I am offline.
2) Potentially Connected: Something an actor could potentially be doing
An actor is online if they can potentially interact on the Internet. For example, students in a WiFi connected university library are online in the sense that they can, at any given moment, connect to the Internet using a university ID and password. They need not actually do so in order to be online. Rather, connecting must simply be an available option. Visitors to the library without a university ID or password, however, cannot potentially connect to the Internet, and are therefore offline. Similarly, the University is online if they offer WiFi, but offline if they do not.
3) Maintaining a Presence: An actor exists on the Internet
An actor is online if they maintain any sort of online presence. That is, the actor is online if someone can find them—or their traces—in any capacity. For example, if a teenager maintains a Facebook page, a business maintains a website, or someone posts an image of a piece of architecture to Instagram, these actors are all online. Without the Facecbook page, website, and Instagram image, these actors would be offline.
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Clearly, online and offline are over-coded terms. A more precise way to talk about the multiple meanings of online and offline, I argue, is with the language of network access:
When an actor is currently interacting with a device that is connected to the Internet, we can say that the actor is accessing the network and/or accessed by the network. This maintains a sense of active doing, but also recognizes the precarious role of intentionality. An actor need not decide to access the network to be on the network. For example, I am accessing the network through WordPress (active doing) but as I work on this post in the airport terminal, some other actor may also put me in the network through, for example, taking and sharing an image of me with their phone, or recording me with Google Glass—with or without my knowledge and/or consent. That is, I am both accessing the network, and potentially accessed by the network.
When an actor could potentially interact with a device that is connected to the Internet, we can say that the actor has access to the network. Here, we can talk about issues of digital divide, discerning who has access, when, and to what extent. For example, I may not have access to the network while riding on the metro, entering a particular building, or hiking through the woods, but do have an active network connection in my home, on my phone, in a coffee shop, etc. In those moments in which I cannot access the Internet, such as when I go through tunnels on my metro ride, I am not online. In the moments in which I do have access to the network, such as at home, at my university, in the airport terminal etc., I am online. Because my access to the network is relatively robust, being offline, in the sense of having access, is always a temporary state. Similarly, when a conference offers participants access to the network, the conference is online, but when the network falters due to overload we can say that the building and conference are offline. We can compare this to situations in which lack of access is more persistent, such as cities without digital infrastructures, or people who may only have access in public places, and/or have no access due to lack of infrastructure, lack of technical knowledge/skills, lack of connection-capable devices, etc.
Finally, when an actor maintains a presence on the Internet, we can say that the actor is accessible via the network. For instance, one can input a Google search for Theorizing the Web (TtW) and access its many artifacts. In this sense, TtW is online. However, these artifacts are limited to past and near-future Theorizing the Web conferences. Temporally distant TtW conferences do not yet have an online presence, and are therefore not accessible via the network. As such, TtW 2013 is online, but TtW 2015 is (for now) not.
*****
The metaphor of “on” and “off” implies a dualism that the augmented perspective works to avoid. As such, the more precise language of network access understands the conditions of connectivity to be always variable, often intersecting, never mutually exclusive, and never conflated.
Importantly,variations in type and degree of access are rooted in an assumption of inevitable connectivity. This assumption is one that we here at Cyborgology believe to be central. It is impossible for any actor to be unaffected by the Internet. Once the Internet (or any technology for that matter) exists, actors always live in relation to it in some way. That is, when asked: is an actor affecting and affected by, the Internet? The answer is unalterably, at this point, “Yes.”
As PJ Rey points out, one can log off, but can never disconnect. Those who refuse to access the network, and those electing not to maintain a presence online, do so in defiance of—but very much in relation to— digital connectivity. Moreover, refusing to access or present on the network does not preclude the network from accessing the actor, as engaging in a connected world with connected others inevitably leaves digital traces of the refusing actor(s) sprinkled throughout the web. Further Those involuntarily excluded from network access suffer consequences of that exclusion vis-a-vis those who do have and use their access.
I close now not with a prescription, but with a big question. What do we do with the terms online and offline? They are widely used, widely recognized, and convey meaning in important ways. And yet, we have just spent a good deal of work (me writing, you reading) discussing the problems with their usage. What happens if we throw them out? What does it mean if we do not? If these terms hold dualist connotations, do we perpetuate dualisms through continued implementation? On the other hand, do we break off dialogue (and if so, with whom) by excluding the terms from our intellectual repertoire? This is an important question for the terms at hand, but also more generally. Online and offline only scratch the surface of dualist language. If the goal is theoretical progression while maintaining broad communication, we must tread carefully in our treatment of established linguistic tools.
[i] “Actor” does not necessarily mean “person.” Rather, and actor can be a person, institution, company, collective, or object.
Jenny Davis is a regular contributor to Cyborgology. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis
George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the murder of Trayvon Martin. And yet, Martin, a 17 year old boy, is dead. Killed by Zimmerman’s lethal gunshot. Protestors have taken to Twitter, Facebook, and the streets. Here, I want to try to make sense how this case is far more complex legally than it is morally. In what follows, I argue that both bodies and laws are technologies—or more specifically—materialized action, and that the intersection of their imbedded values and assumptions afford justices processes which feel, at a visceral level, generally unjust.
Much of the outcry in response to the George Zimmerman verdict centers around the implicit charge of guilt against Trayvon Martin in light of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law (SYG). The law essentially says that people who feel like they are under bodily threat have the right to fight their attackers with the lethal force of a firearm. Because of this law, the key question in the case was whether or not Zimmerman was acting in defense; whether he was, in fact, under bodily threat. The prosecutors argued that Zimmerman was not under bodily threat, while the defense argued that Trayvon did pose a serious threat to Zimmerman. Within the trial, the distribution of violent acts remained disputed, with both the defense and prosecutors claiming a taped voice calling for help was Zimmerman or Trayvon respectively. Although some protestors continue to focus on the distribution of violent acts, the broader argument is that Zimmerman targeted Trayvon because of his race, followed the boy, and created a violent situation.
The outcome—a not-guilty verdict for Zimmerman— suggests that Zimmerman did experience a dangerous situation, and his actions—fatally shooting 17 year old Trayvon Martin—were justifiable. To be fair, the verdict technically says that there is a “shadow of a doubt” surrounding Zimmerman’s actual threat level, but the fact remains that 1) Trayvon did not get the benefit of any sort of doubt, and 2) Zimmerman’s innocence necessarily implies a degree of guilt for Martin. This is not to say the verdict was legally wrong. Rather, it is to say that the law needs to be examined in a more critical light.
Protestors’ critiques highlight implicit racial assumptions perpetuated by the case, and relatedely, the ways in which laws are always subjective and unequally applied. Concretely, protestors demand that we recognize how Martin’s black body, clad in a loose fitting hoodie, came to be construed as a threatening body. A body which deserved to be followed. A body which deserved to be confronted. A violent body, from which any aggressive act—no matter the act’s provocation—was dangerous enough to justify a lethal defensive response.
I have argued previously that the body is a technology, or more specifically, the body is materialized action. By this, I mean that the body is an adaptable mediating device, one with multiple meanings and a mutually influential relationship with the world around it. The body communicates and is communicated with. The body simultaneously acts agentically and is acted upon, in both expected and unimaginable ways, with both expected and unimaginable results. Importantly, bodies and embodiment—though meaning, movement, and experience are often taken for granted— begin always with human subjectivity. Bodies are construed, experienced, and altered through available cultures, languages, troubles, and desires. In this vein, I also argue that laws are technologies, acting upon humans, but always imbued with cultural assumptions and human bias.
It is with this framework that we can understand the necessarily un-objective nature of laws as they act differentially with regards to different bodies, producing at times, uncomfortable results.
Laws of self-defense (such as the SYG law), are intended, no doubt, to protect the rights and safeties of those under attack. They are intended for people like Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, Fla who used SYG to justify firing warning shots at her allegedly abusive husband against whom she had a protective order. These laws are imbued with values of personal freedom, personal responsibility, and bodily protection.
And yet, as technologies, these laws can act in unimaginable ways.
For instance, the SYG law became a legal justification for George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin. While incidentally, the law failed to protect Marissa Alexander, who ultimately received a sentence of 20 years in prison for attempted murder. The mitigating factor, I argue, are the meanings of the bodies/technologies towards which laws are applied.
Oh, did I mention that Marissa Alexander is a black woman?
Laws are imbued not only with values, but also assumptions. In the U.S., laws are imbued with assumptions of equal application (due to embedded values of equality in general). This becomes problematic when, in fact, humans are not equal. Laws cannot be colorblind, because people are not. As such, designations of “criminal” and “victim” can vary wildly, as both interpretations of the conditions of a case, and larger designations of what is or is not deemed criminal activity, are always raced, classed, and gendered, without any explicit claim to their root biases.
Intersecting the technologies of the body with the technologies of the law, the chart below (borrowed from Sociological Images), shows that the SYG defense works a lot better for white defendants than black defendants.
(Data Source: John Roman and Mitchell Downey from MetroTrends Blog: http://blog.metrotrends.org/2012/03/stand-ground-laws-miscarriages-justice/)
Trayvon Martin’s black body appeared threatening to George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. Legally, this was self-defense. The law is a racist technology.
Over the weekend, I noticed that Facebook hashtags are now linked. “What!? When did this happen??” I quickly asked my network.
This simple shift opens avenues for deeper discussions about the social media ecology of which I wrote a few weeks back. In particular, it shows the relational nature of the ecological system, and the back and forth multiply influential relationship between humans and technologies, all of which shape each other in a multiplicity of ways.
By social media ecology I refer to all of the media on and through which users are Social (in the capital “S,” linked and connected sense of the word introduced by Whitney Erin Boesel and Nathan Jurgenson). As social media increasingly integrates into the flow and logic of everyday life, users draw on a variety of digital tools to meet a diverse set of needs. The social media ecology refers to the set of tools users draw on, and the ways in which these tools, and their users, are connected and/or compartmentalized.
This social media ecology is deeply relational, in that each object (i.e., individual tool) is explicitly linked or separated from every other tool. The status of two objects as linked or unlinked (and their degree of linked-ness) is always a simultaneous product of both built in physical architectures (i.e., code) and human decisions. For instance, Twitter can be architecturally linked to Facebook, such that Tweets show up as status updates, but users must opt-in to this system. Similarly, one can import Facebook Friends to create Snapchat contacts, but does not need to find network members in this way (you can also import your phone contacts). On the other hand, one cannot link Twitter to Snapchat directly. However, one could potentially screenshot a Snap and Twitpic it to hir followers. In short, levels of integration between objects varies, and we would expect those objects with stronger links to take on more of one another’s characteristics. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, though distinct objects and quite different in several respects, are highly integrated through linkable content, similarity of layout, and (relatively) similar user bases—along with actual shared ownership in the case of Facebook and Instagram. It is therefore unsurprising that the practice of hashtagging—originating on Twitter and continuing on instagram—has seeped into the Facebook dialect.
This brings me to my second point: technologies and humans—especially those connected in an ecological relationship—work to shape one another both architecturally and normatively. The hashtag story goes like this: Twitter uses hashtags to categorize conversation threads, linking all Tweets with a shared hashtag to each other; Instagram (owned by Facebook) also uses hashtags to categorize images, linking all images with a shared hashtag to each other; The logic of hashtags bleeds into other spaces, as people start categorizing written, oral, and visual statements with hashtags on both Facebook and in informal conversation (FtF, SMS, e-mail etc.); Fast forward several years, and Facebook alters its code to link Facebook posts with shared hashtags with each other, architecturally establishing a Twitter-style practice in which Facebook users were already normatively engaged. What this means, is that the technological setup of Twitter—a medium with fast growing popularity and mainstream usage—altered 1) general linguistic practices; 2) user practices on a second technological object (Facebook); and 3) the architectural setup of this second technological object.
The spread from Twitter and Instagram to Facebook is significant, not only in that the practice is now embedded within multiple sites of the ecology, but also because Facebook is such a strongly integrated ecological point. The use of hashtags in discourse is growing, and creating a particular kind of discursive grammar, one in which primary text garners meaning through its location in categorical schemas. How this affects the logic of thought and speech more generally continues to evolve. As with all patterns of language, however, the true effects sneak in largely unnoticed, providing fodder for future theorists who can look back at cultural shifts with an historical full-scope view. #OverAndOut #BrainOverload.
Jenny Davis is a regular contributor on Cyborgology. She is generally bad at designating hashtags, but tries to do it anyway. #FollowMe @Jup83
Earlier this month Geoffrey Miller (@matingmind), the now infamous professor of evolutionary psychology, punched out a really awful tweet. He said this:
His message is blaringly ironic, coming from a man who clearly lacked the willpower to think through the statement before making it public #truth. Although he later deleted the tweet, his followers had already created screen captures and sent the image into a spiraling journey of virality.
I don’t want to spend my post today harping on Miller’s particular indiscretion. Others have been busy doing just that, quite eloquently, for the past week and a half. Instead, I want to talk about Fatness as a moral stigma, and the ways in which Miller’s tweet first, exposed the moral nature of body size and in turn, offered Fat Activists an opportunity to publicly reject Fatness as a marker of immorality. This was facilitated, I argue, by the affordances of new technologies coupled with determined and conscientious social actors.
Like all other “isms,” sizeism constructs a hierarchical system which imbues different kinds of bodies with different meanings, and explicitly devalues some kinds of bodies while venerating others. In turn, this hierarchical arrangement of bodies places differential values on the people who live in each kind of body. In the present example, American society differentially values Fat and Thin, degrading the former while lauding the latter.
Another way to talk about “isms” is through the language of stigma. Stigma, as famously described by Goffman, refers to a mark of Otherness, that which designates a person as non-normative in a negative sense. Although all forms of stigma hold negative consequences for stigmatized subjects, those with moral stigmas endure amplified effects. A stigmatizing characteristic takes on moral meaning when the stigmatized subject is perceived to maintain control over the stigmatizing attribute. So for example, while both race and “excess” body fat are stigmatizing attributes, the latter, but not the former, holds moral meanings.
Importantly, designations of (im)morality, though often deeply embedded within cultural logics, are not stagnant or deterministic. Rather, they are products of social relations, and so always subject to change. Fat Positive groups have sprung up in a collective effort to engage in such resistance with regards to the stigma of large body size. As stated by Joy Nash in her Fat Rant below:
I’m fat, and it’s OK. It doesn’t mean that I’m stupid or ugly or lazy or selfish. I’m fat. . . . F-A-T. It’s three little letters. What are you so afraid of?…Fat is a descriptive physical characteristic. It’s not an insult or an obscenity or a death sentence.
The internet has been instrumental in bolstering the Fat Positive movement, by connecting people and spreading their message. One might say that through digital technologies, coupled with passionate people, Fat Activism and the identity as Fat Activist have been prosumed into being. However, these are still niche communities, as evidenced by their minuscule presence in comparison with weight loss oriented groups and the meanings that these latter groups reinforce. By default, thin is still “good” and fat is still “bad.”
Fatphobia is a persistent systemic problem. One of the things that makes stigma so powerful is its ability to hide from conscious awareness. We are often unaware of own biases, and yet these biases, on a collective level, manifest in tangible ways. Scores of research, reviewed powerfully here by Puhl and Heuer, show the breadth of penalties endured by people—especially women— with large bodies. Socially, those with larger bodies are seen as less desirable friends and romantic partners than their thin counterparts. They are less likely to be selected for professional positions, and less likely to be promoted. They suffer ill health beyond that caused by “excess” body weight, as doctors narrow emphasis on weight leads to a) misdiagnosis and b) patients who avoid visiting doctors due to the shame-inducing experience. In short, people hold prejudices against fat bodies, and these prejudices are pervasive. Or, as wonderfully stated by Marianne at xoJane:
…honestly, any given individual instance of people hating on fatties is not a surprise to me. Nor is it shocking to me that PhD programs might be discriminating against people based on their appearance. Hello, it is 2013. Don’t we all know about racism, classism, and general appearance bias? Academia is not, alas and alack, a shining bubble of equality based solely on academic merit.
Miller’s tweet, as distasteful as it was, reflects an underlying social logic with material implications and institutional embeddedness. Miller said what a lot of people didn’t even know they were thinking. Namely, that fatness is a thing to be avoided, and that those who fail to accomplish thinness are somehow less worthy. In doing so, he also created a platform for Fat Activists to place their message on display.
Twitter just about caught on fire with the vitriolic responses to Miller’s comment, so much so that he quickly locked his profile and began vetting all followers. Outrage. This was the overwhelming response. Outrage, and the vigorous sharing of links. Take for example the Tumblr set up by Dr. Cat Pause entitled “Fuck Yeah! Fat PhDs” on which self-defined Fat Academics can post pictures of themselves. Within days, the blog collected well over 100 images, and continues to collect contributors daily. Or look at public letterwriting campaigns and prefab tweets of protestation.
The Fat Positive movement has its personified enemy in the form of Dr. Geoffrey Miller. In his egregious professional misstep, he inadvertently handed Fat Activists a microphone and a spotlight, along with damnable evidence of their long suffered discrimination. He gave them an opportunity to say “Hey Internet, Look over here!!” The message is one of moral redemption for those with large bodies, and moral denigration of those who shame peoplefor their body size. With Fat Activist and Fat Academic taking hold as claimable identity categories, Miller’s tweet–to a sizeable following of connected people–became a spring board for the Fat Positive movement as they work to relocate body size away from moral judgment.
So in the end, Thank you, Geoffrey Miller.
Jenny Davis is a regular contributor for Cyborgology. She tweets @Jup83. She did not try to follow Geoffrey Miller.
Over the past few months there’s been a lot of hoopla around the “mass exodus” of teens from Facebook, with particular reference to Facebook’s decreasing cache of cool. Despite several refutations to the mass-exodus hypothesis, people—academics and non-academics alike— still ask me all the time: “So Jenny, what’s up with all the kids leaving Facebook? I hear it’s not cool anymore.”
Now let me be clear; I am not cool. I hold no pretense of being cool, and hence have no business making any sort of objective hipness-rating on anything. Seriously. I just used the word “hip.” I am, however, a social scientist, and I want to take a moment to talk about some data—an area in which I am qualified.
Pew recently released a study of teen social media usage. Their data show that 94% of teens who use social media are on Facebook. Not only is this a huge percentage, it is 1 % higher than the 93% who used the site last year. Moreover, teens are sharing far more about themselves on the site than they were in 2006, showing an increased presence of the site in teens’ lives.
Clearly, Facebook is not going the way of MySpace as many self-satisfied headlines have suggested. This is largely the case because Facebook has become less a trendy site, and more a hub of social interaction. Like Google, Facebook is architecturally linked to and through numerous other sites, such that one can sign up, and sign in, to other services using hir Facebook account, and can share hir activities in both digital and physical space via Facebook. Facebook has dug its heels in as an integral part of not only the social media landscape, but the interactive social landscape more generally. Facebook’s continued presence, however, is also not indicative of a stagnant social (media) landscape.
A key finding from the Pew study is that Twitter use has seen a huge bump—up to 24% from 16% in just one year. Further, in qualitative interviews, many teens expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook due to drama, parental presence, and general issues of context collapse. For example:
It sucks… Because then they [my parents] start asking me questions like why are you doing this, why are you doing that. It’s like, it’s my Facebook. If I don’t get privacy at home, at least, I think, I should get privacy on a social network (17, Male).
I think Facebook can be fun, but also it’s drama central. On Facebook, people imply things and say things, even just by a like, that they wouldn’t say in real life (14, Female).
Moreover, many teens talk about shifting parts of their interactive activities to other sites with different norms, structures, and architectures. For example:
Well, because Facebook, everyone sees what I’m doing. But Snapchat is just to one person, unless they’re a jerk and they screenshot it and post it on Facebook. But mostly it’s just the person that you’re sending it to, so it’s like a conversation (16, Female).
I am basically dividing things up. Instagram is mostly for pictures. Twitter is mostly for just saying what you are thinking. Facebook is both of them combined so you have to give a little bit of each. But yes, so Instagram, I posted more pictures on Instagram than on Facebook. Twitter is more natural (16, Female).
In short, teens are not “logging off” of Facebook, fleeing for the new and more popular interactive platform, but rather, actively constructing a sophisticated interactive ecology. Here, teens utilize platforms to fit varied interactive needs: privacy, connectivity, humor, support, information sharing, romantic exploration. Each space becomes its own Generalized Other, with normative expectations about who a person is and how that person should be in the world.
Importantly, these spaces are not without architectural and content-based overlap, but this overlap is not uniform (between or within individuals), nor is it compulsory. For instance, one might link Twitter updates and Instagram photos to Facebook—or not. One might share the same (kinds of) images on Tumblr and Twitter—or not. One might create a Vine loop to accompany a Tumblr post, in which s/he includes a Storified Twitter conversation—or not. Within this ecology, in which multiple spaces maintain varying degrees of integration with one another, teens navigate the complexities of social life, decoupling pieces of the self through technologically mediated means, negotiating holistic selves which none-the-less maintain multiple dimensions.
Jenny Davis is a regular contributor on Cyborgology and performs part of her Self on Twitter @Jup83
I have been thinking a lot about technology and emotion. Most likely, this is because the past month has been an emotional rollercoaster—in the best possible way—and I’ve found myself directing a lot of that emotion at my phone.
Although I officially graduated in December, my partner (also a sociologist) and I both decided to do the whole ceremonial graduation thing at the end of the Spring semester. At the beginning of May, members from both of our families came down to Texas to celebrate. They traveled from Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. This was wonderful. I love my family—immediate and in-laws alike. Like, gooey, gushy, here-take-half-my-sandwich, capital “L” Love these people!! But I may or may not have thrown my phone angrily onto the bed and refused to look at it for a full 30 minutes after an onslaught of text messages and phone calls in which everyone was confused/upset/annoyed about logistical arrangements (okay, I did do this). I also laughed with my brother when we both rolled our eyes and tightened our shoulders upon the simultaneous beeping from both of our phones as family members, who again, we both love very much, contacted us to tell us about a change of plans. Over the course of the weekend, I fake strangled my phone, threw it (see above), twitched my eyes in response to its beckon, and smiled sadly into it after everyone left and the text message beep brought news that we were missed, loved, and the source of pride.
James and his proud Mom at graduation. I am off to the left struggling to hear my dad as he tells me that his flight has been delayed another hour
Then, this past weekend, we went house hunting. I recently accepted a job at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. In all of the excitement of obtaining gainful employment, however, I apparently pushed matters like living arrangements to the back burner. As Whitney Erin Boesel (@Phenatypical) detailed in an earlier post, finding a place to live can be something of a challenge. This challenge was sharpened by our recent acquisition of a third dog. For my partner and I, it was far more surprising than it should have been that nobody wants to rent to people with three dogs. Long story short, we decided to buy. This entailed a plane ride, two road trips, and numerous back and forth emails, phone calls, and text messages between us, our Realtor, several sellers, and of course, our family members—all of whom maintained insights on how the process should go. Through all of this, I throttled my phone as it froze while giving us directions to the Real Estate office; I tightly gripped my phone and stared nervously and intently as we looked up properties comparable to the ones in which we were interested; I jumped to answer my phone, almost dropping it in excitement, as I waited to hear if we got The House (we did—pending inspection).
The sweet babe who prevented us from renting. How do people say no this face!?
In thinking of my recent technologically mediated emotive responses, I am reminded of an earlier life, one infused with chat rooms, AOL instant messenger, and if I’m being totally honest, illegal downloads of N’Sync songs (don’t worry, I also had some Nirvana, Beatles, and Smashing Pumpkins). In this earlier life, I remember the many feelings that the AOL instant message *bing* would illicit. Sometimes a twinge of excitement as that boy I was crushing on popped textually onto my screen. Sometimes a comfortable giggliness as a girlfriend referenced an inside joke. Sometimes an intense anger as fighting words assaulted the text box in a stream of hostile, overlapping, dings.
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Technology did not, and does not, cause these emotions. Rather, technology mediates between the environment, the context, and a bodied emotive response. And the response is, indeed, very much bodied. The bing of an instant message, flicker of a glitching screen, and familiarity of a ringtone rhythm can bring about widened eyes, a quickened pulse, gastrointestinal knots or alternatively, a small swarm of jubilant butterflies. One might tighten hir shoulders, clench hir jaw, hasten hir step, jump up, or alternatively, sink down. In the examples above, I responded in a seemingly automatic way to technological stimuli, much like Pavlov’s dog. Unlike Pavlov’s Dog, however, my responses to the same stimuli were always variable, shifting with situational meanings. The very same text message tune could bring me to hopefully dash for the vibrating object or close my eyes in frustration, determined not to feel obliged towards the message initiator on the other end.
Rather, my mediated emotive interactions with technology more closely reflect Clifford Geertz’ notion that humans very humanness is characterized not by the ability to incorporate culture and complex symbol systems, but, due to lack of instinct, the evolutionary necessity of complex cultural schemas. The human brain does not simply tell the body to act, it pauses, interprets, processes, and only then, brings about response. Similarly, as noted by George Herbert Mead, adult humans act and react, but do so only through interpretation, through the incorporation of myriad clues, cues, and ingrained personal and shared histories. Technologies have always played a role in this, as language is the key symbol system through which cultures and selves are constituted. Technology is intertwined with shared symbol systems, as a mediator, conduit, and representation.
Technologies are part and parcel of our humanness, and humans are emotive. Technologies then, are part and parcel of our emotive selves.
The Cyborg project, as articulated by Haraway, is at its core, a utopic project. It is the melding of mechanical and organic, digital and physical, human, machine, and animal in such a way that categorizations cease to hold meaning, and in turn, cyborg bodies break through repressive boundaries.
And yet here we are, at the pinnacle of a cyborg era, inundated with high tech, engaged simultaneously in digital and physical spaces, maintaining relationships with organic and mechanical beings, constituted with and through language, medicines—and increasingly—machines, and we STILL have to deal with bullshit like this (click below to view):
Let us break down the problems. This is a classic play on the Car Show Girls who act as ornamental adornments for capitalist goods. These women (described problematically as girls) are literal objects. This objectification is laid bare by the replacement of sexy “girls” with sexy bots. “Respect the Tech,” the commercial instructs, implicitly including both the bots and the car. Further, with a terrible attempt to portray feminine strength, the bots physically dominate a male admirer who handles the product inappropriately (again, the product here extends to the female bodies represented by the bots). This #FeministFail portrays female strength as ironic and unexpected, exciting in its performative enactment by sexualized bodies, and activated in response to threats not against themselves, but against the capitalist good through which they are constituted.
This speaks to the social, cultural, and structural embededness of technology and technological representations. Technology is made and used by humans. Technologies have culture written into them. When culture is sexist, racist, and homophobic, or progressive, sex-positive, and accepting, so too will be the technological default. Perhaps the cyborg project is a utopic one, but our culture is not. Technological objects and their portrayals are rooted in raced, classed, sexed, and gendered environments. They are used for varied ends, disproportionately so by those with greater financial and social resources. Far from de-categorization, the portrayal of technology here hyper-categorizes. The Car Show Girl has always represented a patriarchal view of the ideal woman—silent, pretty, fun, subordinate — and yet she has always been limited in her perfection by the quarrelsome nature of her human body with its leakiness, sweat, smells, moods, emotions, needs. The bot brings this ideal woman to full fruition, replacing these objectified female bodies with fully sanitized objects in an ideal female form.
So is the utopic cyborg project for naught? Can we expect only hyper-categorization, solidified forms of racism, sexism, classism, digital dualism etc.? For my money (which to be fair, isn’t much), I say no. These built-in “isms” of technologies may be the default, but they are not the inevitable ends. The purposive architect and/or user can certainly create, construct, or utilize technological means for radically equalizing purposes. To do so, of course, one has to take note of a problematic default, and explicitly guide technologies down an alternative route. This KIA commercial is an egregious example of how the cyborg project, when left to default standards, can go awry. And yet through my words in this post, facilitated by myriad technologies—a keyboard, a blogging platform, YouTube— I’ve taken this object of popular culture and used it for my own ends. The object now exists, easily spread, shared, commented upon, as not only a sales tool, but a blaring specimen of deeply embedded social inequalities. I—and we—can co-opt the object, reformulate it.
Put away your fluffy utopic visions, my fellow cyborgs. Instead, bring out your sharp eyes, employee your analytic skills, utilize available tools. The cyborg project is not a naïve journey, nor is it a lost cause.
Jenny Davis is a regular contributor for Cyborgology. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83
*Special thanks to Jill Detwiler and Matt Gasner for bringing this KIA ad to my attention
About Cyborgology
We live in a cyborg society. Technology has infiltrated the most fundamental aspects of our lives: social organization, the body, even our self-concepts. This blog chronicles our new, augmented reality.
