Hassan Rone
Sociology 022 – In the Facebook Age – Spring 2010 – Dhiraj Murthy

In the first reading assignment for this week, Andrew Keen offers a scathing view of YouTube. He views YouTube and the related video content as a dilution of our culture. In Keen’s worldview, the culture of our time is held up by “the very traditional institutions that have helped to foster and create our news, our music, our literature, our television, and our movies.”He views YouTube to be so threatening to our culture that he essentially compares the users to the monkey-typewriter example of T.H. Huxley. If the users of YouTube are the monkeys at the typewriters, then Keen is still waiting for them to produce a masterpiece.

In the second reading assignment for this week, Henry Jenkins offers a compiled review of the different purposes and viewpoints on YouTube and what it can offer groups with different interests. Essentially all the groups desire to put out content that reaches people through conversation, but the end goals are different. The first perspective he offers is one from a “do-it-yourself” perspective. In this view YouTube offers an outlet for conversation and cultural exchange despite the question of whether it can truly occur over a commercial platform. Other views espouse YouTube as a means to promote issues with an alternative view of the issue, others seek to promote issues (like human rights abuses), and others just seek to expose themselves through their own personality or culture.

Overall, the two viewpoints offered by these articles represent skepticism and idealism. I believe that the skeptical view is the best lens to examine YouTube through. I think that the idealist viewpoint is just that. It ignores the plethora of other YouTube content that offers nothing to conversation. An example of that is how YouTube is essentially a music streaming site. I particularly approve of the typewriting monkeys example. I can understand how the author feels that YouTube has yet to produce a masterpiece despite the millions of users posting inane content. The question becomes what defines a masterpiece on YouTube or even what gives a video a kind of legitimacy that cannot be attacked using the typewriting monkeys example?.

I believe that the answer to my question is that it is dependent on the individual. For me, the pinnacle of YouTube media is Harry Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise. I love that video so much, but if I would place myself into Keen’s shoes, I don’t expect that he would view it as a masterpiece or the pinnacle of what YouTube has to offer.

Keen states in his article that the Huxley he was referring to was not Aldous, but his grandfather T.H. However, I think that it is useful to look at the work of Aldous in understanding YouTube (in a sense). Over the last few weeks, I had been reading A Brave New World (but I’ve stopped because the text was too confusing for me to continue). For the 3/5th’s of the book that I have read, I have gotten the impression that the purpose of the World State is to condition people from the reality of the human condition, which is a lot more harsh than even the Epsilon Morons (the lowest caste in the World State) can imagine. I think that if we take Aldous Huxley’s World State and replace it with YouTube, then we realize that YouTube has the capacity to shield us from reality in a way that allows us to think that we are engaging with others on a dynamic level, when in reality, we are being “drowned in a sea of irrelevance”.

This link from my stumbling is an excellent summation of how I am viewing A Brave New World

Both authors from this weeks readings analyze the “Public Sphere” and the internet. Zizi Papacharissi examined the public sphere of the internet through lenses of information accessibility, globalization/tribalization,and commericalism. In her article, she takes the time to define what a public space on the internet means and what a public sphere on the internet means. A public space according to Papacharissi is a place where the internet could provide “another forum for political deliberation”. Similarly, Papacharissi states that “as a public sphere, the internet could facilitate discussion that promotes a democratic exchange of ideas and opinions”.  When discussing information access, Papacharissi acknowledges the presence of the digital divide and how technological accesibility does not necessarily condone “enlightened political discourse”.  This is a viewpoint that I strongly agree with. Later on, Papacharissi explains how the internet merely copies existing political arrangements, meaning that fragmentation is more prevalent then communication between the divided groups. In regard to globalization versus tribalization Papacharissi cites various authors that essentially state that the internet does not catalyze cross-cultural communication and that political expression may leave people with a false impression of empowerment because in reality no one is listening. Overall, Papacharissi took a negative view of the perceived democratizing effects of the internet and quite poignantly stated that the internet better resembles the “bourgeois public sphere of the 17th and 18th centuries” as opposed to the over-romanticized public agora alluded to in the introduction of this section in the text.

I have saved the discussion of the commericalism in Papacharissi’s essay because it meshes well with a discussion of the reading by Dahlberg. In Dahlberg’s reading, he points out how the net enthusiasts view the commercialization of the internet as a good thing simply because they believe that the private market will be able to meet users demands better than the internet, and they want to avoid the censorship that government control could potentially invite. Dahlberg in his reading points out the other sides of his argument which helped to advance his own. Papacharissi and Dahlberg come to the same conclusion involving commercialization and the internet. Dahlberg states that the accesibility to the internet because of commericalization will not make everyone a competent user. Papacharissi takes this idea a step further by stating that “new technologies offer additional tools, but they cannot single-handedly transform a political and economic structure that has thrived for centuries.”

After examining these articles critically, I realized that I approve of the skepticism that both authors have toward the idea of the democratizing potential of the internet. The most interesting part I found from either of the readings was from Papacharissi. She mentioned at one point how existing political fragmentation is copied over onto the internet. This goes back to a previous author (when discussing digital divides) who stated how the existing inequalities our society are copied over onto the internet. I feel that the consequences of the existing political organizations being copied over on to the internet is insignificant for the most part. Every organization of significance now has a website. I was reading the Economist about the upcoming General Elections in the United Kingdom, and the author of the article that I was reading (Take a Punt on Me) at the end discussed how the three main parties (Conservatives, Labor, and the Liberal Democrats) are issuing lengthy manifestos about their parties aims. Thankfully, the Economist summed them up in a convenient table, but I thought about how without the internet, how these parties would distribute their information. Would anyone really go get the 130 page Conservative manifesto? The internet merely serves as a base for those with existing connections to reinforce them. However, I am not rejecting the power of the internet to introduce people to new causes, but I am instead saying that the internet has a more reduced capacity to do that. The internet also has a great ability to create the sense of false empowerment by allowing people to sign online petitions or send emails to world leaders. I remember a few months ago that an article was on msn.com that stated that it takes about 30 or 300 emails to be equivalent to the influence of one phone call to a congressional office.  There are exceptions where the internet allows groups to actually be empowered such as Citizens United, which overturned the Bi-partisan campaign finance reform act in order to distribute media that was critical of Hillary Clinton. These articles made me realize that the ability of the internet to create tangible political change or introduce others to new causes is more exceptional than I previously imagined, and I am highly skeptical.

When I first saw this assignment on the blog, my second reaction was my concern about how the assignment would affect my privacy. I wasn’t concerned as much about the possibility of surveillance. I eventually decided to treat my tweets like facebook status updates, but in a different way. My general policy on my own Facebook updates is that it must be something that I wouldn’t be ashamed to say in real life, which serves to exclude anything embarrassing or degrading to myself and others. For example, one recent Facebook status update was a quote from a conversation that my roommate and I had about IKEA (which is a double edged sword), and he said “I eat at IKEA.” On Facebook, I would not be as concerned about surveillance because my updates would only be seen by friends. On Twitter, the possibility of my updates being seen by the general public had me concerned because of the follow feature. Whereas on Facebook, you have a mutual relationship with someone, on Twitter, the relationship had the potential to become one-sideded. For my Twitter account, I never sought out the classmates that had decided to follow me. Instead, I merely returned their following with my own following. As I grew to use twitter, I realized that my privacy did not feel threatened, and I certainly did not feel like I was trapped in the panopticon.  Surveillance was a non-issue mostly because Facebook has de-sensitized me to feeling like I am being watched on the internet. However, my Twitter did make me question the issue of narcissism that was raised in the last class.

Earlier, I mentioned that my second concern was about how the assignment would affect my privacy. My first concern was along the lines of “why are we doing this?” My original answer to my own question was along the lines of “because you are making us.” However, that question does not critically engage me with the reasons. Instead, I looked within. I thought about whether I am interesting enough or even have such an opinion of myself that I need to resort to a Twitter account. I also thought about now that I have this Twitter account, what do I write about? If anything, the Twitter assignment was introspective in way that I never imagined it would be. Tweeting never made me feel like a narcissist. Instead, tweeting was difficult for me because I don’t consider myself that interesting to constantly inform others about what I was doing. At first, I thought that I could make my tweets more interesting, but I found out that there isn’t much that you can do to make “staying up to read environmental policy for my gov paper” more interesting. I wonder if everyone else felt the same way I  did proceeding through this assignment. If my twitter posts could be summed up into one sentence,  it would be “My name is Hassan Rone, I like to eat lunch right after class and not have to wait for my friends, I don’t like calculus, and organic chemistry and my government  class monopolize my time and energy”. I don’t consider my summary of my posts to be narcissistic, so I also wonder if narcissism doesn’t drive people like me to tweet, than what drives people like me to tweet otherwise?

This weeks readings focused on privacy and surveillance. The first reading was by Michel Foucault about a strange concept called panopticism. According to the reading, panopoticism is a “mechanism [that] arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately” (Foucault 302). Panopticism is strange concept because it suggest to me that you can have constant surveillance over people at all times. It is even stranger considering that this essay was based upon the work of Jeremy Bentham who lived in the 18th century. The other article was an article by two MIT students on Facebook. It was an interesting article because it analyzed trends based on data collected from the Facebook networks of MIT, Harvard, NYU, and the University of Oklahoma. The article came to several expected conclusions such as users that update their statuses more frequently tended to be more open with information about themselves. The conclusion of that article was that users should be more aware of how providing information on Facebook can be disseminated to others and third-parties under privacy settings and the terms of service.

This article made me critically think about my own perception of privacy on Facebook. I was particularly intrigued by the way that the authors collected information. I thought that the idea of the script was really invasive, and it made me re-examine my own privacy settings. While some of the things that the author mentioned such as the unprotected authentication of passwords is no longer issues. The data that the authors collected for their own MIT network about the information that users provide such as Dormitory, High School, AIM username, and Phone number. I thought about how those trends corresponded in my own Network. For Dormitory, no one provides that information, everyone provides high school, >50% provide their AIM username, and about 15% provide their phone number. This made me realize that the trends that the authors collect from their own data mining can transfer from a large network perspective to an individual. One of the points that the authors make about users not being informed of their privacy is not true. Facebook provides a terms of service agreement that users can read, but as the authors own statistics show, 91% of the users do not read the terms of service agreement. While I personally have never read the Terms of Service Agreement, I manage my privacy settings to prevent people I do not know from knowing more than the basic information about me. With the growing popularity of Facebook and the stories about privacy settings going awry (such as the professor story), the users are becoming more informed about controlling access to their information. Panopticism through Facebook was a possibility with the old facebook, but it is becoming less of an issue as users begin to utilize their privacy settings.

This weeks readings were very engaging. The first reading I completed was the article in the Guardian newspaper about the song “Sophie” by Elenanor McEvoy. The article, which was written by David Smith, documented the history of the song. The song Sophie was originally written by McEvoy over 10 years ago, and while it does not reflect her own struggle with anorexia, it does reflect the struggle with anorexia that she has observed in others. While this song was not originally intended for publication on the internet, it has become a recurrent theme in the videos of girls who want to overcome their anorexia and eating disorders. The main point that I took from this article that is independent of the subject material is that the internet does have the capacity to bring people closer together through self-expression. The other article that was assigned for this weeks reading was focused on self-expressionism along with the topic of risk. According to Livingstone who is the author of the second article, the main point is to explore “teenagers’ practices of social networking in order to uncover the subtle connections between online opportunity and risk”, and the classification of social networking. The interpretation of risk that I gathered from the article was that risk was simply the idea of putting information about oneself out into the public sphere with little regard to its dissemination. Livingstone used a very interesting approach to examine her questions. I particularly like the definition of privacy that Livingstone cites from another author: “privacy as ‘the rights of individuals to enjoy autonomy, to be left alone, and to determine whether and how information about one’s self is revealed to others’”. Livingstone through her case study presents a reasonable connection between privacy and risk which are always in a constant state of equilibrium.

While there is a chance that I could be completely misinterpreting the connections between risk and privacy, I thought the relationship between them would be interesting to explore critically. First, the idea risk is one that needs to be further clarified. Livingstone, as I understand, presents risk as something that results from the presence on a social networking site, and the information that is dispensed via that social networking site. I think that only once information is dispensed via the medium is there anything that can be close to risk on mainstream social networking sites, and that presence alone does not equal risk. . My conclusion would stand stronger compared to a medium like Facebook, where  the risk is being amongst friends, unlike ChatRoulette (which is less mainstream) where there is an intrinsic risk. The information that one chooses to dispense through a medium like Facebook is where the real risk occurs. Despite the moniker of “friend,” not everyone on Facebook is your friend, and the information that you display cannot be taken back once seen. The risk becomes a question of “How do you want to portray yourself?”

This is also where the issue of privacy shows up. The definition of privacy that Livingstone cited from another author, shows that privacy is no longer just the withholding of information deemed to be personal. but instead controlling the dissemination of the personal information to groups of people. The answer to my question at the end of the previous paragraph now becomes “It depends on the person.”The idea of zones of privacy was something that was mentioned by Livingstone and hinted at by the participants in her research study. Zones of privacy are important in the debate between privacy and risk because they allow the user to control information to certain people in accordance with the revised definition of privacy. This is particularly true in Facebook where new privacy settings allow a user to create zones of privacy and therefore zones of accessibility. The issues of risk and privacy on will constantly change based on individual preference for self-expression, and not necessarily societal pressures.

Hassan Rone

Sociology 022: In the Facebook Age

6 April 2010

Language and Virtual Ethnicity

Virtual ethnicity is a difficult concept to understand at first. It requires one to look beyond what can be seen on the outside of person, and look inside to the collective experiences, languages, and histories that bond people in a way that transcends skin colors, races, or nationalities alone.  Ethnicity “allows for a spectrum of color, not just black and white. Nor does it purport to have a scientific or biological basis as race does. It embodies a wide range of experience” (Leung 12). Virtual ethnicity can best be defined as the “categorization as to which representation of ethnicity could be said to be objectified or self-produced or found to be fragile where the web is concerned” (Leung 173). The Internet allows anyone to create an image of himself or herself intentionally and unintentionally. Removing physical details that would allow someone’s ethnicity to be pinpointed in the tangible world leave only language and activities as a source of identification. As language remains one of the only sources of identification, it becomes the only real source for identifying a person’s virtual ethnicity. Mark Poster in his essay about virtual ethnicity concludes that, “The technical reproduction of culture then transforms the constitution of identities, even ethnic or national identities” (189). Ignoring the implications of this statement for the tangible world, the question becomes “How does this technical reproduction of culture transform the constitution of identities on the Internet?” The answer lies in an examination of language usage. The use of language can be broken down into a positive-use model and a negative-use model in order to understand virtual ethnicity.

The positive-use model means that using a more widespread language on the Internet such as English allows one to present an image of belonging to ethnicities such as American or British, or even identify as a member of the Western Hemisphere. The guiding idea behind the positive-use model and the eventual negative-use model is that use of language can be equated with virtual ethnicity because it is the best descriptor for real ethnicity as well. According to McLelland, the Internet’s most popular languages are English, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish (814). As McLelland further elaborates, these languages (excluding Japanese) are used commonly between multiple nationalities and diasporic communities (814).  Under the positive use model, the use of those languages allows one to identify with the culture associated with the language or one to mask their identity behind the language (Warschauer 155). Poster drew some conclusions about the use of language in Internet communities (MOOs and MUDs) that fits nicely into the positive-use model that “the predominance of white American users often leads to the presumption that one is interacting with a white American person” (Poster 204). The English speaking white Americans are able interact with other English speakers because the use of language on the Internet creates a shared virtual ethnicity which allows people to indentify based solely on the language characteristic. Languages remain a barrier to large populations that are monolingual, so that communication remains widespread across communities that share a common language, but not between communities of different languages.

The exclusionary aspects of the Internet can be seen through the negative-use language model. The negative-use model means that using a more widespread language on the Internet as opposed to the national language of a country with a large native Internet community disconnects a person with that community. This model is prominent in McLelland’s essay on the Japanese Internet, and McLelland states that the “Japanese [Internet] functions very differently from English, Chinese and Spanish to the extent that it is indentified much more closely with a specific ethnic group: the Japanese” (815). He further goes on to argue that the Japanese Internet is a cultural space for the Japanese (815). McLelland’s study is based around the popular forum “2-channeru.” On “2-channeru,” race is a real issue when the language of preference is not Japanese, and the use of broken Japanese or use of English results in being assigned a virtual ethnicity of Korean (McLelland 823). Being virtually identified as Korean is only negative based on the historical/cultural attitude of the Japanese toward the Koreans. Failing to use Japanese disconnects the user with the larger community because rejection of the language is equated with rejection of the culture. Because the Japanese Internet emphasizes homogeny over diversity (with a common language bond), the Japanese Internet creates separate virtual ethnicities for Japanese and the non-Japanese, and no real cultural exchange can occur.

English remains the most used global Internet language, but national languages are gaining pace. As they do, the conflicts between the positive-use and negative-use models begin to represent the need to connect on different scales. In the positive model, the connection over language allows for a shared virtual ethnicity, which leads to interaction on a global scale. However, the negative use model focuses on re-localization as people turn to “their own language to reach websites or join discussions in their own country or region” (Warschauer 157). Nonetheless, this separates interaction from the marginalized within the nation and observers from the outside because the existence of separate virtual “[ethnicities which are] constructed on the principles of exclusivity…[that attempt] to forge a singular narrative of national culture” which excludes everyone that is not from that nation. Virtual ethnicity is a characteristic that is either assigned (negative-use model) or intentionally used/implied (positive model), and has an important role in the global role versus national role of the Internet.

Works Cited

Leung, Linda. Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Reistance, and the World Wide Web. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005.

McLelland, Mark. “‘Race’ on the Japanese Internet: Discussing Korea and Koreans on ’2-Channeru’.” New Media Society 10.811 (2008): 811-29.

Poster, Mark. “Virtual Ethnicity: Tribal Identity in an Age of Global Communications.”  Computer-Mediated Communications and Community. Ed. Steven Jones. Sage Publications 1998.

Warschauer, Mark. “Language, Identity, and the Internet.”  Race in Cyberspace. Eds. Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000.

Project Presentation

Project Paper

The major purpose of this week’s readings was to examine digital divides from two different perspectives. Witte and Mannon explore digital divides through demographic splits. Norris explores digital divides by analyzing divides as global, social, and democratic. The only real conclusions that I received from the Witte and Mannon reading was a lot of statistical data to support their claim of digital divides being present across all demographic groups. The one thing they did mention that had the semblance of a conclusion was that the inequality of the internet cannot “be captured by thinking of the issue in terms of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’”. Norris’s global digital divide is the best way to think about digital divides from an international perspective, and Norris is correct to point out that it need to be addressed despite the attitude of the cyber skeptics. The issue of social digital divides is a subject that Witte and Mannon focus on using an American perspective. However, I find myself agreeing with the attitude of the cyber skeptics that “technologies adapt to society.”

The democratic divide was an issue that Norris focused on that I found really interesting. The idea that minority groups can use the internet to get there points out  just as majorities and other groups can use the internet along with their traditional resources to get their points out seems to be a uniquely 21st century occurrence. While the minorities and fringe groups that use the internet to get out their points do not become mainstream, the fact that they are able to utilize the internet means that they can function in order to connect to others that may share a common ideology or unifying goal. This article made me think about the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Citizens United was a fringe group that produced a documentary that was critical of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency. It sought to use both television and the internet to distribute their documentary. However, the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act limited those kind of productions within a certain time limit of primaries. However, Citizens United challenged this law under 1st amendment reasons to try and overturn the law and allow their movie to distributed. The digital age allowed this small group to utilize its limited resources (relative compared to larger groups) to produce a documentary that would later be a culprit in overturning a significant Act of Congress and end the restrictions on campaign finance. This gets right to Norris’ point that insurgent groups can “challenge he authority and expertise of government ministers, civil servants, and elected officials on their own turf”

Privacy as a modern invention: I suppose that in the world of the information society that privacy is relatively new, but it is still a strange way to state it.

The moment where the two ladies were sitting in the same room and one was blogging an the other was reading is so insightful. Two people sitting in the same room conversing with one another not looking at each other but conducting a conversation is one of those things that define what a information network society is. It is redefining the relationship between others by blurring the lines of what communication actually is.

When the woman needed to decide about the type of heart valve and she turned to her blog community to make a decision instead of deciding with her husband, she showed the extremes of our connectedness to the virtual community. I completely understand the reasoning behind her husbands ultimatum because she is so offensive to me. I find it somewhat ironic that the interactions that she has with the doctors later on is so sobering to her outrageous personality.

I like the way that this episode ends where she says essentially that there is an element of personal relationships that cannot be had over the internet. This episode would have actually helped me with my paper in hindsight.

The authors believe that facebook represents an understudied offline to online trend. The statement about how SNS supports the formation of new connections is not entirely true and we k ow this from our discussions in classs and from our perspanl experiences. Again antiher article defines social capital which is a very important thing to have. This Article also mentions bonding and bridigng social capital. There appears to be some issue about whether social capital can be gained or lost through the Internet or in person. The authors point ou bow facebook can supplement bridging social capital by helping to maintain weak relationships. Of the first two hypotheses that the authors present one of them is a hypothesis that I can agree with. The idea that facebook can be positivley associated with bridging capital is valid to me. I also agree with the third hypothesis in both parts. I think the reason that I cannot agree with the second and this hypotheses is due to my own personal biases because I view the bonding social capital as something that can only be increased offline. I agree with the fifth hypothesis that the increased use if facebook can help our perceptions of social capital simply because it allows us to maintain relationships with people who we ordni arily would not try so hard to maintain a relationship with. The third table supports my idea that facebook relationships are amongst people that you already know. The fifth table has helped me to better understand what bonding and bridiging social capital are and it has reaffirmed that my interpretation of then is correct. I feel somewhat vindicated because my feelings about the hypothesis were correct. Essentiallly facebook is for bridging capital and not bonding capital.

I like the premise of this article at the beginning. Examining the use of social networks in a corporation is something very new to all of us. I think that this article is significant becuase it describes social capital which is a term that I have heard before in class but never knew the meaning of. The idea that large networks can contain a significant number of tenuous connections is nothing new for us as a result of our own personal experiences. The main point of this article seems to be about exploring the social network of IBM but I am not sure yet.

The fact that people behave differently on company sponsored social networking sites is not surprising becuase I imagine that people want to keep their personal and professional lives separate. However the article states that the employees are using beehive to connect with new peole which is very opposite to our personal trends on facebook. A hypothesis of the author us that the social networking sites will allow a greater social capital. I am not sure how the survey data manages to support the hypothesis yet. The authors did not let me down by failing to support their points with additional detail such as bridiging and bonding social capital. I did not understand the data as it was presented in the tables. However the synthesis if the data at the end was helpful to explain what it meant. I thought it was interesting how the different regions use the site to connect in different ways. The authors appear to come to the conclusion that greater use of beehive does allow for increased social capital. What type depends on the region and the intensity of which it is used. I am still confused about whether they believe that they have proven their hypothesis or not.