Several weeks ago, I wrote about the “fear of being missed (FOBM).” The flip side of FOMO (fear of missing out), FOBM captures the anxiety surrounding a complex and fast moving online realm in which it is easy to be buried, ignored, and/or forgotten. This anxiety is amplified by the online/offline connectedness, through which invisibility online can lead to neglect offline (personally and professionally). FOMO and FOBM speak to the difficulty of deleting social media accounts, the discomfort of a dead cell/laptop/tablet battery, and the drive to livetweet, status update, tag oneself in pictures, and be physically present for tagable photo-ops.

Soon after posting my piece on Cyborgology, I read Tiana Bucher’s article in New Media & Society about Facebook algorithms and the fear of invisibility. Bucher’s work offers a useful theoretical frame (Foucault’s Panoptican) for FOBM, and an equally good (if not better) term for the phenomena (fear of invisibility). In what follows, I describe Bucher’s piece and its utilization. I then offer critiques of her work. In this way, I hope to further the theoretical substance of FOBM, framing it with the tools suggested by Bucher, and refining it through juxtaposition to Bucher’s arguments.   

Bucher comes from a Foucauldian perspective, but takes a new angle. Foucault famously describes the disciplinary technology of the panopticon, an architectural form that grants power to the seer over the always potentially seen. Epitomized in prisons, schools and hospitals, the subject must always assume s/he is watched, and must therefore discipline hirself accordingly. Numerous researchers have applied Foucault’s panoptic model to digital surveillance (see examples here, here, and here). The key threat is ubiquitous visibility, an end to privacy, and instilled normative discipline.  Bucher flips this panoptic model. She argues that social network sites’ discriminating algorithms produce not a threat of full visibility, but instead, create a dearth of vlisibility. In short, the real threat is that of invisibility. As a case example,  Bucher describes how EdgeRank—Facebook’s algorithmic system that shapes News Feed content—works, resulting in about a 12% chance for one’s post to end up in their network’s Top News. There are 3 main components of Edgerank:

1. Affinity: those with whom a user is more intimately connected have increased News Feed visibility
2. Weight: Some interactions are weighted more than others. For instance, a “Like” weighs less than a photograph
3. Time Decay: Older objects are less visible. Newer objects are more visible

This algorithm creates a self-perpetuating loop, such that those who are less visible are less frequently objects of interaction, decreasing further their visibility. To remain visible and relevant within one’s network, the subject must manage these algorithmic preferences. S/he must update frequently (time decay), engage intimately (affinity), and participate substantively (weight).

Foucault is indeed a useful frame with which to understand the algorithmic and behavioral dynamics of visibility on social media. Bucher’s angle on Foucault is unique among the literature, and captures an important experiential component of mediated interaction in the contemporary era. As such, Bucher’s use of Foucault is a fruitful frame with which to theorize FOBM (or fear of invisibility as she aptly calls it).

Pushing Bucher’s work (and my own) further, I offer the two main critiques:

First, Bucher’s argument is algorithmically deterministic. Indeed, visibility and privacy are guided by algorithms, but far from determined by them.  Most significantly, visibility need not be directly tied to digital communication (e.g. posting and commenting on pictures). Rather, one can increase hir visibility while away from the computer by simply attending events in which others will check in, post pictures, send invitations etc.  Moreover, viewers actively surpass the algorithmic preferences through highlighting some Friends and types of content, and hiding, deleting, or minimizing others (for a full discussion of this second point, see my earlier post on reality curation). In this vein, a Facebook user may perform with algorithmic perfection, messaging, updating frequently, and posting lots of substantive content, but if this content is of the “wrong” type (e.g. politically inflammatory material, pictures of one’s children) or in too high an abundance, the user may find hirself manually removed from hir network’s view, or in extreme cases, deleted as a connection, rendering hir performative work—and hir very presence—obsolete.

Second, Bucher frames visibility as a juxtaposition between an omnipresent gaze and a laser sharp eye with discriminating vision. For instance, Bucher states:

“…visibility is not something ubiquitous, but rather something scarce.”

I argue that these poles do not exist in opposition, but in conjunction with one another. Hyper-visibility and invisibility are not mutually exclusive, and the tension between scarcity and abundance becomes part of users’ ambivalent experience with social media. As I have shown elsewhere, the potentialities of a connected era, coupled with competing desires, moral values, and goals of social actors, create a highly ambivalent relationship between humans and the technologies of the time. In the case of visibility, users simultaneously angst over an omnipresent gaze and relegation to the margins (or out of frame altogether). They worry about narcissism, surveillance, and invasions of privacy, while finding pleasure in sharing and micro-stardom.

I think there is a lot more theorizing to be done with regards to visibility. What I hope to have shown here is its complexity. Admittedly, the above post may do more complicating than clarifying.

Pic creds:

Anxiety girl: http://on-account-of.com/

Unfriend: http://blog.hudsonhorizons.com

Jenny Davis (@Jup83)  is a weekly contributor for Cyborgology. She wants this post to be visible, so please tweet it, respond to it, and share it on Facebook in an algorithmically effective way (hopefully no one will hide or Unfriend you for it).

  *12/01/2012: SEE UPDATE BELOW ORIGINAL POST*

Today (Thursday November 29, 2012), Syria’s internet shut down. This is a serious situation with literal life and death implications. We have been following the situation on the Cyborgology Facebook page since the story broke (largely, this consisted of seeing what was going on with Andy Carvin @acarvin). Much of this story has yet to play out, and we will certainly continue to follow/write about it as events progress and we learn more. Right now, I want to take a moment to explore one aspect of what this all means. Namely, I want to explore the question: why did the internet shut off now? To do so, I turn to Derrick Bell’s interest convergence theory.

Derrick Bell’s theory of interest convergence is a canonical statement on race relations. Bell famously argues that whites promote racial justice only when doing so converges with their own interests. The key example is the 1954 Brown V. Board of Education case, in which racial integration in schools served the larger U.S. message within the Cold War of human rights, freedom, and equality.

Although many scholars critique the strong version of Bell’s argument for its failure to incorporate agency among blacks, the root of the argument is quite useful in explaining power relations. In short, interest convergence theory tells us that the will of the powerful wades towards the direction of self-interest. When these interests converge with those of the less powerful, the less powerful are better able to achieve their will.

To a degree, I think this framework helps us understand the decision of the Syrian government to shut down communication channels. Syrian rebels utilized digital communication channels to both organize among themselves, and share their experiences—often in real time—with the outside world. This was instrumental in their cause both on the ground and internationally. The real question then, is why did the government maintain these channels for so long? This question is particularly blaring in light of extreme government atrocities, such as the mass killings of innocent citizens—including children. Moreover, why did the government decide to cut off these channels now?

Internet and communication blackouts are not unique among the Arab uprisings. Egypt and Libyan governments both shut down communication during their respective battles. The Syrian government, however, is unique in its deft use of digital technologies to quash protests, locate dissidents, and suppress the movement. In short, the interests of the powerful (i.e. the government) converged with the less powerful (i.e. the rebels). In addition to appearing somehow less oppressive to the international community, we see here a possible reason for maintaining Internet capabilities despite their strategic importance in the rebel movement.

However, we may speculate that the costs got too high for the government. We may speculate that in light a persistent rebel force, culminating in massive protests in Damascus—so large that the major airport had to be shut down—it no longer served governmental interests to maintain digital connectivity. The interests of the powerful and the less powerful no longer converged.

Certainly, there are other factors in play. This is a minuscule fraction of the story. With that said, this framework suggests that perhaps today’s act by the Syrian government was one of desperation. They were forced to give up a key oppressive resource (digital communication capabilities). This resource was no longer adequately effective for keeping the uprising at bay. Now, they must all battle in the dark.

Update 12/01/2012 2:19pm Central

Recent reports indicate that despite the government initiated Internet blackout, Syrian rebels have maintained spotty communication through the use of Skype. As a New York Times article reports

…[H]aving dealt with periodic outages for more than a year, the opposition had anticipated a full shutdown of Syria’s Internet service providers. To prepare, they have spent months smuggling communications equipment like mobile handsets and portable satellite phones into the country… If the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were Twitter Revolutions, then Syria is becoming the Skype Rebellion. To get around a near-nationwide Internet shutdown, rebels have armed themselves with mobile satellite phones and dial-up modems.

Problematic designations of “Skype and Twitter” uprisings aside, this speaks to the agency of the less powerful—the very agency that Bell is critiqued for not addressing. These alternative means of communication are indeed, weapons of the weak.

With that said, this new rebel weapon is used at a very high price. As the article further warns:

In recent months the Assad government, often with help from Iran, has developed tools to install malware on computers that allows officials to monitor a user’s activity… Using satellite phone service to connect makes Skype potentially more dangerous since it makes it easier to track a user’s location, said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco.

Far from powerless, the rebels are indeed at a power deficit. They can subvert the will of the regime, but do so on terms that are not their own.

“Prosumption” is a bit of a buzzword here at Cyborgology.  It refers to the melding of production and consumption. Although prosumption is not unique to the contemporary connected era, it flourishes within it. One slice of prosumption theorizing focuses specifically on identity. I first coined identity prosumption in an American Behavioral Scientist article (un-paywalled on my academia.edu page). Since then, references to identity prosumption have appeared periodically on the blog. For example, Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) applied identity prosumption to the asexual identity movement, Dave Paul Strohecker (@dpsFTW)  mused about the role of identity in Star Wars fan fic., and I pondered the liberatory versus categorically constraining role of identity prosumption.

Identity prosumption refers to the identity meanings associated with prosumed content. What we create reflects and constructs who we are, just as who we are reflects and constructs what we create. Identity prosumption is a merging of prosumed objects and prosuming subjects. It applies:  (a) when that which is prosumed can be connected to the prosumer in a defining way and (b) when the process of prosumption incorporates social interaction.

Today, I want to add a bit more nuance to the identity prosumption model. Specifically, I want to demonstrate that sites of identity prosumption (both online and offline) affect the identity prosumption process in non-uniform ways. I focus here on two key variations: collective vs. individualist orientation, and degree of control over identity meanings. I explore these variations through a comparison of two identity prosumption sites: Facebook and FetLife. The former is the preeminent social network platform, the latter an (ironically) mainstream social network site for people who like BDSM. To employ a twist on the Hipster trope, “FetLife: you’ve probably heard of it.”

These are good sites for comparison because they maintain quite similar formats (FetLife is crafted quite noticeably in the format of Facebook, including profiled content, “love” buttons, friend requests, and a ticker style newsfeed), but with different foci that hold key identity implications.

Collective vs. Individualist Orientation

Identity is complex and multilayered. From a social psychological perspective, identity refers to the internalized set of meanings that an actor attaches to hirself as a person (nice, mean, hard working, creative, lazy), as an occupant of a role (mother, father, writer, student, worker, athlete, spouse), and as a member of a group (woman, man, person of color, democrat, republican). These dimensions of identity range from individualist to collective respectively. Importantly, however, each actor, enacting every identity, maintains all dimensions of identity. What varies, with the enactment of each identity, is the salience of one dimension over the others. For example, as I write this post, I am a passionate (person identity) female (group identity) blogger (role identity). Although “blogger” may be the most salient dimension, I am inescapably a woman and certainly passionate[i]. Identities are inseparable from social structure, and different identities, as well as different dimensions of each identity, are called out in each situation. In this vein, Sites of identity prosumption structurally and architecturally promote particular dimensions of identity over others.

Those which promote group identity have a more collective orientation, as those which promote role and/or person identity have a more individualist orientation.  In the case of our two comparative sites, Facebook is more individualist, while FetLife makes group identity more salient.

Facebook emphasizes person and role identities through its broad identity platform. Facebook is a space in which to collapse network boundaries, share photographs and anecdotes from work, family time, friendly outings, and solitary moments. The architecture asks about an array of biographical and social information, such as religion, politics, family structure, musical preferences, consumptive practices, racial identification, professional affiliation, and geographic connections.  FetLife, on the other hand, makes group identity salient. The site itself is centered around one aspect of the self: deviant sexuality. To join the site is to join the BDSM community. To be sure, person and role identity are important here, as members define themselves as subs, doms, slaves, and masters; desired, desiring, adventurous, and selective. The person and role identity, however, exist in relation to the group identity: a member of the BDSM community. The space calls out the actor’s sexuality, and it is through this space, that a specific, highly intimate, aspect of hirself is collectively and individually prosumed through participation and interaction.

 Control over Identity Meanings

A second way in which sites of identity prosumption vary is in their degree of control over identity meanings. Some spaces are more open, others more closed. The former gives greater interactive freedom in identity prosumption, the latter offers more explicit guidance.

Continuing with our comparison, Facebook is relatively more open than FetLife. The biggest difference is the proportion of open ended responses prompted by the Facebook architecture, versus the abundance of dropdown menus on FetLife. For example, on Fetlife, one can select to define themselves through any number of variations of dom, sub, or switch, with numerous activity preferences, but these variations and preferences come from pre-set menus.

This is perhaps surprising, that a space dedicated to personal desire, sexual expression, and freedom from societal controls over the body would delimit the identity meanings of its inhabitants. It is less surprising, however, when we think about what identity prosumption does. Identity prosumption is a process by which identities are both produced and consumed through the production and consumption of content. At the collective level, identities can be prosumed into being. This is of particular import when thinking about deviant identities—those for which fewer meaning templates exist. One may have the tacit knowledge to perform womanhood, race, academic, employee, or boss, but lack the language and/or know-how for performing sexual deviance as defined by a particular label. FetLife, through its templated categories, prominently posted norms, and dropdown menus, guides prosuming subjects through the process of BDSM identity prosumption.  The site itself teaches the subject how to prosume content that creates a BDSM identity—both individually and collectively.

Here, I delineated two ways in which sites of identity prosumption vary, affecting the identity prosumption process in nuanced ways. In future posts, I hope to continue to explore differentiations, further refining practices, processes, and structures of identity prosumption.

Jenny is a Sociologist at Texas A&M University and  a weekly contributor to Cyborgology. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

Last week, in response to Jurgenson’s earlier typology of dualist theorizing,  I typologized empirical/experiential reality upon a porous continuum between pure digital dualism and pure integration. Each of these poles represents a problematic and unrealistic ideal type. The intervening categories, however, represent theorizable empirical situations. In an effort to explicitly link my argument to Jurgenson’s,  I labeled these intervening categories using the language of his typology. Jurgenson critiqued this linguistic choice, and I agree.  Having driven home the connection, and diagnosed the “slipperiness” of theory that Jurgenson decried,  I now re-work the language of my typology to more precisely represent the meaning behind each categorical type. Although the adjustments are slight (I change only two words–but very important ones), the meaning is far more lucid. Below is the original post, with my typological categories reworked linguistically. Changes are indicated by red text. Further suggestions/critiques are welcome. 

Several weeks ago, Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) further delineated his theory of digital dualism, laying out a typology of dualist theoretical tendencies in relation to the “augmented” perspective. In this post, he critiques existing theorists/scholars/technology analysts not only for being dualist, but also for shifting sloppily and often indiscriminately between levels of dualism. Here, I want to diagnose the problem of slippery theorizing and emphasize the importance of a flexible perspective. I begin with an overview of Jurgenson’s typology.

For any newbies to Cyborgology, Jurgenson coined the term “digital dualism” to refer to the false dichotomization of physical and digital. He argues instead for an augmented perspective, through which digital and physical, atoms and bits, are understood as unique, but inextricably intertwined. Last week, he located the augmented perspective within a dualist—integrationist typology. The following is taken directly from his post:

Strong Digital Dualism: The digital and the physical are different realities, have different properties, and do not interact.

Mild Digital Dualism: The digital and physical are different realities, have different properties, and do interact.

Mild Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality, have different properties, and interact.

Strong Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality and have the same properties.

Jurgenson champions the “mild augmented reality” approach, and I agree. He critiques other writers, however, not only for theorizing within the problematic realms of strong digital dualism, mild digital dualism, and strong augmented reality, but also for shifting seamlessly between perspectives. I argue here that this slippery and seemingly sloppy theorizing is the product of a slippery reality, in which objects of inquiry fall differentially and sometimes simultaneously into different levels of digitality. To be sure, Jurgenson and others have noted that some realities are more physical or more digital.  My idea here is not new. Rather, I simply hope to articulate the digital/physical empirical spectrum more explicitly.

To do so, I map Jurgenson’s typology onto empirical reality, arguing that theorists’ movement between typological categories may reflect their inadequate attempts at a general theory of technology rooted in particular technological forms. In order to transfer from theory to empirical reality, I have shifted the typological labels, and added one extra category. The key difference between Jurgenson’s theoretical typology and my empirical one, is that his has only one “acceptable” category, whereas each of my categories, excluding the first and the last, describe potential realities for technological objects of study.

Empirical Dualism/Integration Typology

Pure Digital Dualism: This is an Ideal Type in which digital and physical are fully separate, share no properties, and do not interact

Like Jurgenson’s strong dualism, pure dualism is an Ideal Type, a polar location against which to measure the level of digital/physical integration. One would be hard pressed to find such an example in empirical reality (in fact, I argue it would be impossible to do so). The closest one might come to the fully physical, would be the experience of a hike through the wilderness, mapped on paper, unshared via Facebook. The closest one might come to the purely digital would be bots playing video games. Of course, the hiker’s choice not post on Facebook (among other things) connects hir to the digital, just as the human creators of bots, and their programmed algorithms connect them to the physical.

Mild Augmentated Reality: Highly digital or highly physical, with small amounts of digtal/physical interaction

This is most closely analogous to Jurgenson’s mild dualism, but differs significantly in that it reflects augmented reality, rather than a true dualism.  Indeed, the examples above are, in reality, dualistic augmentation rather than purely dualist. Further examples include anonymous online spaces, virtual worlds, and face-to-face, non-documented/shared interpersonal interactions.

Augmented Reality: Physical and digital are explicitly intertwined and mutually constitutive, but maintain unique properties

This is analogous to Jurgenson’s mild augmented reality. Here, we can think of livetweeting through a conference presentation. The presentation and its surrounding conversation are simultaneously physical and digital, and mutually constitutive, but each component has explicitly unique properties. For instance, text versus speech, longevity of the content, temporal orientation.

Strong Augmented Reality: Physical and digital, though maintaining separate properties, are deeply intertwined, mutually constitutive, and inseparable

This does not have an analogous category in Jurgenson’s typology, but refers simply to augmented reality in which the digital and physical are *very* closely intertwined. Integrationist augmentation, for example, is represented by motion activated virtual reality, in which the digital environment guides cognitive and bodily movement,  is navigated through  bodily and cognitive movement, and adjusts to bodily and cognitive movement.

Pure Integration: The physical and digital are one in the same.

Like strong digital dualism, and pure digital dualism this is an Ideal Type, non-existent in empirical reality. The closest one might come to this are some medical devices in which the physical body and its digital regulatory technologies mutually shape one another and merge together (e.g. a pacemaker becomes part of the person and hir bodily rhythms, just as tissue and blood become part of the pacemaker).

My purpose in constructing this typology is twofold. First, “technology” refers to an almost infinite set of objects, with distinct particularities. Second, categorical attempt to capture empirical reality are always mere approximations, and their demarcating boundaries are necessarily porous.  With these two points in mind, I argue that general theories of “Technology” must be fluid enough to move through porous empirical boundaries, and precise enough to account for the particularities of “technologies.”   The augmented perspective, I argue,  possesses these key properties.

The theoretical missteps and slippery techniques that Jurgenson decries, I argue, result from attempts to either theorize all technology as though it fits within a single typological box, or contrarily, to move between typological boxes without careful attention to empirical nuances.

Pic: http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2007/01/01/how-interactive-can-a-video-game-get/

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

Last week, Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) further delineated his theory of digital dualism, laying out a typology of dualist theoretical tendencies in relation to the “augmented” perspective. In this post, he critiques existing theorists/scholars/technology analysts not only for being dualist, but also for shifting sloppily and often indiscriminately between levels of dualism. Here, I want to diagnose the problem of slippery theorizing and emphasize the importance of a flexible perspective. I begin with an overview of Jurgenson’s typology.

For any newbies to Cyborgology, Jurgenson coined the term “digital dualism” to refer to the false dichotomization of physical and digital. He argues instead for an augmented perspective, through which digital and physical, atoms and bits, are understood as unique, but inextricably intertwined. Last week, he located the augmented perspective within a dualist—integrationist typology. The following is taken directly from his post:

Strong Digital Dualism: The digital and the physical are different realities, have different properties, and do not interact.

Mild Digital Dualism: The digital and physical are different realities, have different properties, and do interact.

Mild Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality, have different properties, and interact.

Strong Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality and have the same properties.

Jurgenson champions the “mild augmented reality” approach, and I agree. He critiques other writers, however, not only for theorizing within the problematic realms of strong digital dualism, mild digital dualism, and strong augmented reality, but also for shifting seamlessly between perspectives. I argue here that this slippery and seemingly sloppy theorizing is the product of a slippery reality, in which objects of inquiry fall differentially and sometimes simultaneously into different levels of digitality. To be sure, Jurgenson and others have noted that some realities are more physical or more digital.  My idea here is not new. Rather, I simply hope to articulate the digital/physical empirical spectrum more explicitly.

To do so, I map Jurgenson’s typology onto empirical reality, arguing that theorists’ movement between typological categories may reflect their inadequate attempts at a general theory of technology rooted in particular technological forms. In order to transfer from theory to empirical reality, I have shifted the typological labels, and added one extra category. The key difference between Jurgenson’s theoretical typology and my empirical one, is that his has only one “acceptable” category, whereas each of my categories, excluding the first and the last, describe potential realities for technological objects of study.

Empirical Dualism/Integration Typology

Pure Digital Dualism: This is an Ideal Type in which digital and physical are fully separate, share no properties, and do not interact

Like Jurgenson’s strong dualism, pure dualism is an Ideal Type, a polar location against which to measure the level of digital/physical integration. One would be hard pressed to find such an example in empirical reality (in fact, I argue it would be impossible to do so). The closest one might come to the fully physical, would be the experience of a hike through the wilderness, mapped on paper, unshared via Facebook. The closest one might come to the purely digital would be bots playing video games. Of course, the hiker’s choice not post on Facebook (among other things) connects hir to the digital, just as the human creators of bots, and their programmed algorithms connect them to the physical.

Dualistic Augmentation: Highly digital or highly physical, with small amounts of digtal/physical interaction

This is most closely analogous to Jurgenson’s mild dualism, but differs significantly in that it reflects augmented reality, rather than a true dualism.  Indeed, the examples above are, in reality, dualistic augmentation rather than purely dualist. Further examples include anonymous online spaces, virtual worlds, and face-to-face, non-documented/shared interpersonal interactions.

Augmented Reality: Physical and digital are explicitly intertwined and mutually constitutive, but maintain unique properties

This is analogous to Jurgenson’s mild augmented reality. Here, we can think of livetweeting through a conference presentation. The presentation and its surrounding conversation are simultaneously physical and digital, and mutually constitutive, but each component has explicitly unique properties. For instance, text versus speech, longevity of the content, temporal orientation.

Integrated Augmentation: Physical and digital, though maintaining separate properties, are deeply intertwined, mutually constitutive, and inseparable

This does not have an analogous category in Jurgenson’s typology, but refers simply to augmented reality in which the digital and physical are *very* closely intertwined. Integrationist augmentation, for example, is represented by motion activated virtual reality, in which the digital environment guides cognitive and bodily movement,  is navigated through  bodily and cognitive movement, and adjusts to bodily and cognitive movement.

Pure Integration: The physical and digital are one in the same.

Like strong digital dualism, and pure digital dualism this is an Ideal Type, non-existent in empirical reality. The closest one might come to this are some medical devices in which the physical body and its digital regulatory technologies mutually shape one another and merge together (e.g. a pacemaker becomes part of the person and hir bodily rhythms, just as tissue and blood become part of the pacemaker).

My purpose in constructing this typology is twofold. First, “technology” refers to an almost infinite set of objects, with distinct particularities. Second, categorical attempt to capture empirical reality are always mere approximations, and their demarcating boundaries are necessarily porous.  With these two points in mind, I argue that general theories of “Technology” must be fluid enough to move through porous empirical boundaries, and precise enough to account for the particularities of “technologies.”   The augmented perspective, I argue,  possesses these key properties.

The theoretical missteps and slippery techniques that Jurgenson decries, I argue, result from attempts to either theorize all technology as though it fits within a single typological box, or contrarily, to move between typological boxes without careful attention to empirical nuances.

Pic: http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2007/01/01/how-interactive-can-a-video-game-get/

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

“Hey, don’t let me forget to TiVo Two and a Half Men”—said nobody ever.

NPR has been running a series that looks at the ways in which new technologies are changing how we consume television[i].  The latest installment, based on an interview with Jessica Helfand, author of Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual Culture has a troublesome tone. Helfand worries that on-demand television is ruining our attention spans, as we consume only what we want, when we want. She worries that we watch on our own time, rather than as part of a collective schedule-following community. She worries that content will have to get shorter, more easily consumable, and that the focus will shift from away from the story, and towards the medium itself. Referencing a colleague, she labels today’s media consumption environment as a “narrative deprivation culture.”  Below are a few representative quotes from Helfand:

“The impatience with which people have come to expect everything to be delivered to them is a terrifying prospect.”

“These are kids who don’t watch an entire episode of Saturday Night Live, they just go and watch the bits they want to see. They wait till a series comes out on Netflix, and they watch it all at once instead of the classic episodic nature”

“The unfortunate thing, I think, is that so much then gets expended on thinking about the box or the screen…instead of the content, and the ideas and the innovation that we bring to it, creatively and intellectually.”

I argue instead that the new one-to-many media ecosystem[ii] empowers the consumer, and has the potential to facilitate deep and complex programming. What Helfand sees as a “terrifying prospect” I see as consumers taking control of their consumptive practices. Why watch bad sketch comedy instead of isolating the quality pieces? Indeed, we can imagine that such selective consumptive practices inform content creators more precisely of their strengths and weaknesses, and potentially push them to achieve quality at a more ubiquitous level.

I take particular issue with her critique of watching shows continuously rather than in traditional episodic fashion. To continuously watch a show enables continuity throughout the season(s), with complex story lines and multi-faceted narratives. It rejects the stand-alone-episode style of traditional sit-coms and instead engages the viewer in a holistic and often dense narrative. Moreover, this type of consumption requires patience, as the viewer must wait until the show becomes available in its final form before consuming. For example, if I think a show is going to be really good,  I wait until the entire series has run its course before viewing any of the episodes. Concretely, this means that only once Treme’s final season is available via Netflix will I begin the series. I want to be immersed. I want to follow the nuance. Far from narrative deprivation, I actively seek out the full narrative experience. And because I want these things, I wait to consume. Finally, continuous (rather than episodic) consumption is highly ritualistic and potentially community building. Yes, I spent a full pajama-clad week watching The Wire, surrounded by pizza boxes and half-full cans of soda. This was a great F-ing week!! It was a week shared with similarly engrossed loved ones, marked by fond memories, deep discussions, and a sense of appreciation for a well told story.

In sum, I argue that the contemporary media consumer is not impatient, isolated, or short on attention, but purposive, selective, and highly engaged.

However, I do agree with Helfand that the changing media landscape should be looked at critically, and when viewed with a critiacl eye, it is indeed clear that this ecosystem is not without troubles. These troubles, however, are quite different from those Helfand presents. They are not a result of a decreased collective attention span, but a lag between a market system and consumer demands.

The main trouble is that “success” is measured in advertising dollars at a time in which the shows we really like, we tend to watch commercial free. The shows we really like, we watch online, through streaming services, or at our leisure—courtesy of TiVo. Although this facilitates an active and rich consumptive experience, it is not financially advantageous for content producers (i.e. major production companies and networks). Instead, this system privileges the shallow, templated, stand-alone-episode kinds of shows. The kinds of shows people half pay attention to while eating dinner. The kinds of shows that people happen to catch and settle to watch, rather than those that they think about, anticipate, plan for, and engage with in purposive ways. This system allows shows like two-and-a-half men to run for ten consecutive seasons.

The question then, is how to shift the economics of television programming to repair this schism between the interests of viewers and those of producers. Would we, as consumers, be willing to sit through advertisements to be able to maintain consumptive control and encourage quality content? If not, what other solutions are viable?

Jenny Davis is an (almost official) post-doctoral researcher at Texas A&M University and a weekly contributor for Cyborgology. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

Pic Creds:

1. http://www.smartgirl.org/writing/forum/archives/television.html
2. http://blog.tivo.com/2012/09/introducing-the-tivo-stream/

Sweaty palms. Racing heart. Mind wandering to extreme and alarming places.  No, this is not a horror movie or a bad dissertation dream. This is Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

FOMO is a colloquial phrase to describe the anxiety people feel in light of constant streams of information. Not only are broadcast news cycles 24 hours, but so too are social news streams. All day, at all times, the Facebook and Twitter tickers move forward, populated by people, information, and interaction. These streams go on with or without us.  It is impossible to keep up. And yet, widespread access through home computers, work computers, smart phones and tablets tempt many of us to try, often wavering between frenzied efforts stay afloat, and resolutions to let the digital world spin without us, determinately avoiding connected devices with clenched jaws, white knuckles, deep breaths, and quick sideways glances full of both longing and animosity.    

I experienced FOMO first hand during last Tuesday night’s second presidential debate. I watched the debate at my Mother in Law’s home, and for a variety of reasons (most of which were my fault), I was not able to access the internet.  While I spent most of the debate screaming at the TV along with my viewing mates, something happened as the debate approached its end. Perhaps it was Candy Crowley live fact-checking Mitt Romney. Perhaps it was the culmination of quotable lines and snarky opportunities, gone by in my digital absence. Perhaps it was the  hilarity of those in my viewing party, trapped in the confines of the physical space, replicable only through the flimsy and fleeting hardware of human memory. Regardless, at one point, I found myself  no longer screaming at the candidates, but plaintively wondering: “OHMIGOSH WHY AM I NOT ON TWITTER RIGHT NOW!??!”

I knew Twitter and Facebook were exploding, and that I was missing it. This realization was sharpened by the once-every-four-years nature of this particular media event. I fretted because I could never go back. I could never be part of this collective live-tweet energy.

But this fret was more than just Fear of Missing Out. Yes, I wanted to see what everyone was saying, but I also knew that the vast majority of people would not be saying much of substance. This applies even to the smartest members of my network.  I knew, with relative certainty, that the conversation would have devolved into partisan taunting and jokes about women in binders, just as conversation surrounding the first debate devolved into Big Bird references, and just as the vice presidential debate devolved into comparisons between Paul Ryan and Pee-wee Herman (obviously, the devolutions would be different for those with connections from different political orientations, but devolutions nonetheless).

No, this was not just about missing out. This was also about being missed. I wanted to partake. I wanted to reply. I wanted to make a bad joke about presidential candidates and bickering children. In short, I argue that FOMO has a counterpart: FOBM—Fear of Being Missed. With the 24 hour social news cycle, and the constantly moving Facebook and Twitter streams, it is easy to get buried, and easy to be forgotten.  The anxiety surrounding disconnection therefore revolves not only around missing out on content and information, but also around potential exclusion from the conversation and worse yet, exclusion from the collective purview altogether. Such exclusion is not temporally localized. Indeed, interaction begets interaction, and dropping out now can (and likely does) mean exclusion later.

I argue further that FOBM is tied up with the inevitable conversation devolution that I described above. To be sure, Twitter and Facebook can, and often do, facilitate meaningful conversation. However, they also move fast and connect broad audiences with varying interests, varying knowledge bases, and different levels of willingness to read/respond to complex content. As such, catchy, funny, easily sharable and easily quotable materials are the darlings of social media platforms. Users can easily produce, consume, and spread these materials, with little cognitive effort. Such materials enable users to remain competitive in a dense attention economy. Such materials facilitate a quantitative increase in visibility and presence, though often at the cost of quality and depth.

I conclude with some questions for further exploration

1. How does the combined FOMO and FOBM work to orient the live-tweeter?
2. How does the combined FOMO and FOBM work to orient the live-tweeted speaker?
3. What are the implications of FOMO and FOBM, and their concomitant bolstering of meme-esq content, for social and political movements?

Jenny Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Department  of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

Social media blurs private and public, production and consumption, play and work, physical and digital. There. I just saved myself about 500 words worth of work.

Now with this blurring framework in mind, let us take a look at Facebook’s newest feature:  Pay-to-Promote posts.

Back in May, Facebook began allowing brands to pay to promote their pages. This feature gave fan page administrators the opportunity to increase visibility. I say “brands” here, instead of “businesses” because fan pages represent a range of organizations, companies, and even individual “celebrities” (e.g. journalists, academics, actors, musicians etc.). Not much buzz surrounded this new feature, as paid brand promotion is a  well established and fairly expected course of action, even within social spaces. Then, on October 3, 2012 Facebook began testing promoted posts for personal pages. My Twitter feed exploded (though ironically, not my Facebook feed, but this is probably due to different networks on each platform).

This feature has actually been around for several months, just not in the U.S. Facebook first released the personal pay-to-promote feature in New Zealand in May, and has since made it available in 20 other countries. The feature allows personal users to pay money (tentatively, the amount looks to be $7) to promote posts (pictures, status updates, party invitations, announcements etc.), locating these updates at the top of their Friends news feeds. The customer then receives feedback on the level of improved visibility that their $7 bought. Reactions seem to sway between anger, discomfort, and dismissal. I want to talk theoretically about why we’re angry and uncomfortable, and speculate about the extent to which we can dismiss this as a doomed financial venture for Facebook.

The current Facebook algorithm tailors each person’s news feed based on user interaction and interest. If a user clicks and/or interacts with another page frequently, updates from that page are made more visible. Those with whom the Facebook user does not frequently interact become less visible. In this sense, interaction begets visibility, which begets interaction. I have talked previously about the curation of the social media landscape, where users make choices about who to follow and unfollow, who to Friend and UnFriend, who to highlight, unsubscribe, or hide altogether. We see here a sort of implicit version of this curation, by which user propensities curate the landscape quietly and without curatorial efforts. The pay-to-promote feature messes with this quiet curation, and that makes people angry. For example:

Users want to use Facebook to interact with Friends. The ones they care about. Yet, users are often Friends with more people than those with whom they care to interact. These are connections born of obligation, norms of politeness, or occasional curiosity. They don’t much care about the baby pictures, political rants, or drunken stories from these Friends. Up until now, Facebook has abided by this general disinterest, de-emphasizing the interactionally ignored without any explicit efforts on the part of the user (although users can and sometimes do hide these posts/Friends altogether).  The pay-to-promote feature disrupts the interest-based algorithm, and forces potentially unwanted content into a harmoniously accomplished setting, possibly requiring more explicit curatorial work.

This does more than make people annoyed. It also makes people uncomfortable. For example:

From my own Facebook page in response to a link and a prompt about the pay to promote feature (shared with permission)

 This speaks in many ways to the allusive term that Whitney Erin Boesel (@phenatypical) scrambled to come up with last week. Paying to promote a personal status not only makes us aware of identity work and the connection between network benefits and resources, but also, as Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) points out in the comments section of Whitney’s piece discussed above, isolates these connections within the realm of social media, obscuring their presence in the offline realm through juxtaposition.

Finally, some (including me) have been dismissive, arguing that this feature will likely not take off. I make the argument quite simply on Twitter:

I want to expand a bit upon this here. I argued that paid posts pose too much of an authenticity threat, deterring use. This was met with a flurry of questions about whether those viewing the post would see that it was “promoted.”  The general point behind this question was to argue that if the promotion were invisible, the authenticity threat would be ameliorated. I disagree. Jessica Vitak (@jvitak) finally showed that indeed, the promotional status will be visible. I want to argue that while transparency matters, it is not all that matters. The importance of seeing (versus not seeing) that a post was promoted rests on the notion of others as the judge of authenticity. It rests on the assumption that social actors work to seem authentic. This is not a wrong assumption, but certainly incomplete.

Social actors do not only work to seem authentic, but to be authentic. We try to keep identity work hidden not only from others, but also—perhaps especially—from ourselves. We come to know ourselves through the perceived eyes of others, but also by watching our own behaviors, seeing what we do. To pay to promote a status update—whether or not it is publicly visible—poses a strong threat to authenticity. The user has to see hirself  take the action, and moreover, document this action in hir tangible social media reflection.

With this logic, I speculate that individual Facebook users will utilize the feature rarely. When they do, it will likely be as a representative of an organization (e.g. promoting a fundraiser), not an  unsimilar usage to the brand promotion already available. This, of course, is an empirical question, and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.

P.S. Also check out Chris Baraniuk’s (@machinestarts) blog post inspired by the Twitter conversation displayed above

Jenny Davis is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83.

Previously, I wrote about the cyborg diet. Today, I want to not only elaborate on that post, but also engage in some self critique.

In the original post, I argued that despite our capacity for nutritional efficiency (i.e. the infamous food pill) we instead use our technological capabilities to optimize consumptive inefficiency. That is, we construct food products and pharmaceuticals that allow for maximum consumption with minimal caloric absorption. I have since reconsidered my position, and determined that my argument was incomplete, and worse yet, highly classed.

Perhaps the crux of the problem falls in my narrow definition of “efficiency” (which, incidentally, I failed to properly define in the original post). Well, if you’re trying to build muscle, the best supplement for you is a protein supplement, I’ve listed a few supplements, just click here to find out which type of supplement protein is right for your body. Let me do so here:  “efficiency,” as I used it previously, refers to a small amount of food that provides a large amount of energy (i.e. calories). Inefficiency then refers to a large amount of food which provides very little energy.   Operationally, we can think of this in terms of a calories-per-ounce ratio, such that high calorie-per-ounce ratios indicate efficiency, and low calorie-per-ounce ratios indicate inefficiency.

With this logic, my argument was not incorrect. Indeed, we see a growing cornucopia of inefficient foods/food practices and a growing market for them. These foods are tools in the “fight” against obesity,  as car (rather than foot or bike) travel become increasingly structurally required, and calories  become increasingly available for very little money.

*Wait, what’s that you say, Jenny? Lots of calories for very little money? Gee, that seems pretty efficient to me.*

And so I begin the self critique.

Food efficiency applies to more than calories-per-ounce, but also calories-per-dollar. With the inclusion of this latter component, an analysis of food efficiency becomes much more complex. Moreover, it requires that we take into account classed relations to food.

Inefficient eating is a highly classed practice. Better stated, it is a highly classed privilege. Not only are inefficient foods and pharmaceuticals expensive, but require increased consumption (bodily and financial) to achieve caloric satiation. Moreover, these inefficient foods are differentially available, as low income areas are often located in food deserts, with local grocers less likely to stock high price items.

The counter to caloric inefficiency is  the processing techniques that enable the production of calories at very low costs. In the original post, I gave several examples of calorically inefficient foods (e.g. defatted peanut butter). Let us look here at some bastions of calories-per-dollar efficiency:

1. Jack in the Box Bacon Sirloin Cheeseburger meal (includes fries and a regular soda): 1,845 calories/91 grams of fat. Price= $6.49 
2. Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies (entire package): 1,920 calories/84 grams of fat. Price=$1.25 
3. Hungry Man  Selects Friend Chicken: 1,030 calories/62 grams of fat. Price=$2.22

 

In my original argument, I said that we use technologies for the very human end of optimizing consumptive pleasure. I now add that we use technologies in ways that differentially advantage some over others. We implement technologies in ways that reinforce capitalist structures of inequality, and the hierarchical positions of socially staggered subjects. We create and use technologies for personal, human, pleasure, but include only a segment in the joyous adventure. The rest, we relegate to the drive through lines and the white bread aisles, unlikely spaces of capitalist reproduction, gazed upon with contempt.

Two weeks ago, I talked about the tension between empowerment and dependence in light of pervasive technological advancement in general, and its application to the body in particular. To briefly summarize, I argued that new technologies simultaneously empower us to take control over our own bodies—through bio-tracking, geographically unconstrained community support, and access to information—while embedding us in a relationship of dependence with the biomedical institution. We regain authority over bodily meanings, while relinquishing authority over bodily treatment. Taking the case of contested illness, I explained this complex relationship as a function of resources. To define embodied experiences biomedically is to actively place the body at the mercy of medical authorities whose techniques and serums remain inaccessible the subject, while opening access to insurance coverage, treatment protocols, and legal protections.

This trade-off, however (like all trade-offs), is not purely material. Rather, the empowerment-dependence tension, and the related earnestness of patient-consumers to embed themselves within the biomedical institution, has a strong social psychological component—namely, the reduction of moral stigmatization.

Erving Goffman canonically defined stigma in his 1963 work: Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity as that which is socially discrediting. Here, he demonstrates that failure to meet the expectations of  competent adult social actors results in marginalization, denigration, and exclusion from full social membership. He further designates moral stigma as a particularly egregious brand of stigmatization. Those with moral stigmas are understood not only as failing to adhere to social expectations, but having control over their stigmatizing status.  Indeed, much of the research since Goffman shows that while all stigmatization has negative mental and physical health consequences for the stigmatized, these consequences are amplified for those with moral stigmas. Illnesses without names, seemingly unfettered bodies that fall short of social expectations, are indeed treated as moral failures.

We can think of self-medicalization then, as a tool of remoralization. To locate one’s stigmatizing characteristic within the uncontrollable, the natural, the biological, is to divorce the characteristic from the self. This decoupling shifts the characteristic (and the person to whom it is attached) from a moral aberration to a treatable subject with a contaminating (but separable) condition.

The place of technology in this remoralization is twofold, as internet technologies enable collective action and identity prosumption, and biomedical technologies offer legitimacy and a viable means of separation of the stigmatizing attribute from the embodied self.

Defining embodied experience as a medically treatable condition is not a solitary task. Indeed, as with all identity processes, this requires collaboration and negotiation. Digital information communication technologies enable information sharing, story-telling, and support without the constraint of physical co-presence. Importantly, these spaces of information, stories, and support are tangible documents through which those with shared, abnormal, embodied experiences teach themselves about who they are, and beckon others to define themselves in accordance. These spaces—sometimes called electronic support groups— are both mirrors and magnets, through which contested bodies use bits, symbols, and narratives to define themselves and others.

Self-definition, of course, is not enough. In a bureaucratic, biomedical culture, the embodied experience receives legitimacy through institutionalized channels. These channels, which rely upon a biomedical logic, legitimize those bodies whose experiential claims can be verified through traceable abnormality. Here we see the remoralizing role of biomedical technologies in general, and diagnostic technologies in particular. Biomedical diagnostic technologies act as the gatekeepers of claims-making legitimacy. It behooves the morally stigmatized to not only locate their stigmatizing attributes within the natural body, but to be able to point to the offending gene, hormone, synaptic structure, or chemical (im)balance—An ability enabled only through advanced biomedical devices.

Of course, the technical and the social cannot be separated, and these two technological forms (electronic support groups and biomedical instruments) are invisibly but inextricably intertwined. Members of electronic support groups seek out biomedical information that enables them to medicalize their embodied experiences, they use biomedical language to define themselves, and coach one another in both locating “symptoms” and expressing these symptoms to medical professionals. In turn, medical professionals create and use biomedical instruments to seek out physiological “problems” which explain embodied abnormalities, legitimizing diverse bodies as medically deviant (e.g. looking for chromosomal “defects” to explain non-binary sex characteristics).

Within a biomedical culture, our bodies, logics, and resources—both material and psychological—are rooted in a social-made technical system that simultaneously grants and strips authority, frees and limits identity meanings, constrains and enables bodily accomplishments, and empowers without offering independence.

Jenny Davis is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83