Jesus Navarro
Sociology 022 – In the Facebook Age – Spring 2010 – Dhiraj Murthy

Before anything else is said, let the record show that I love the Internet. I can’t find a better place to find cheap laughs, great laughs, great sorrows, and just great entertainment. I can find news stories, web communities, and funny videos. The Internet is possibly the best thing that has ever happened to this world. Having said that, the Internet is an awful place and I completely agree with Andrew Keen’s article “The cult of the amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture.”

For this blog, I will ignore the “bad” stuff on the Internet (ie porn, violence, warez, etc.). Instead I will focus on the “good.” “Good” is in quotation marks because what is “good” on the internet has nothing to do with quality. As I mentioned in the previous blog, “good” seems to be determined by chance, by what a random person who views the content happens to think. Keen seems to agree as well. What we instead get is good content being pushed aside for something mediocre/average/boring. For example, this video:

came out Christmas 2008. It involves ONE person recording himself playing various songs from the Legend of Zelda series. The not-mediocre part comes from the fact that he recorded himself playing different portions of the songs using various instruments, from wind to string to bongos to water-glasses. The result is a “mashup” of a perfectly synced one-man band, at one point having 19 different mashups of himself. This video was beat in a popularity contest by this:

So in the end we do get infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters and in few instances we get a monkey creating a masterpiece. It’s too bad that those masterpieces are being shunned in favor of a random kid in fast motion.

Good luck. Part of what makes Youtube popular is the fact that it allows anyone to upload any video they want so long as it doesn’t break the Youtube terms of service (porn for example). What Burgess and Green bring up in their article “Youtube: online video and participatory culture” is that people are looking to give and display but none are willing to receive and listen.

The obvious argument to this are viral videos that garner millions of views in a matter of days. I present the argument that these aren’t rules nor exceptions; some videos just get lucky.

There are cases of home-videos garnering not only millions of viewers, but media attention as well, such as the Justin Beiber girl. Other videos also seemingly become famous out of nowhere, such as the AC Transit Fight video. Neither of these videos, however, are considered “garage media” because they weren’t made by any filmmaker, whether professional or amateur.

Many of these viral videos are usually just home-videos that someone records and decides to upload. They aren’t necessarily better or worse than the other videos on Youtube (though I would have to say they are far worse and far less entertaining). In a sense, Youtube does allow amateurs to get their productions on display and gives them a chance , but their obstacle is not only the sheer magnitude of content/competition already on Youtube; it’s luck. Some videos seem to get seen by some viewer who is willing to send it to others. The videos themselves don’t seem to have a large effect on its own popularity; some of these videos are rather mediocre and average. I feel that the popularity of a video on Youtube depends largely on chance, which is the real reason why “amateurs” can become Youtube celebrities overnight.

Chapter 26 of The Information Society Reader revealed to me the things about the Internet I hadn’t really considered. The potential for public discourse on the Internet has always been there and it has always been utilized, whether or not that discourse has been about politics, science, of favorite bands. The real question is whether or not that means anything.

There are many message boards on the Internet, but now I can stop to think and ask myself “What are the chances that this message board will enact any change?” The answer is not likely. Having been on and posted on message boards, I agree that the opinions on these sites are most often hasty opinions. Most are never well thought out or rationalized unless that person has a deep passion for the topic at hand, in which case the Internet would not affect his opinion much. For the odd chance that one message board is full of diverse intellectuals who share their informed opinions with each other, it is still one webspace among a sea of trolls and flamers. Actually enacting change is just as hard online as it is in real life.

The problem with the Internet as a public sphere for democracy is not the Internet itself, but the legal system in the United States. Enacting any legislation was deliberately made complicated by our founding fathers to prevent hasty opinions from dominating public law. As such, enacting change is very difficult. Despite having access to a wealth of information, even if someone successfully filtered out all of it, the government itself does not allow a single individual to easily effect any change to public policy. With the current trend of the Internet, it seems more like a shout-box that allows people to express their opinions and/or vent their frustrations. Nothing more, nothing less.

Dalhberg’s article is interesting because things have drastically changed since 1998 when we consider the Internet. When the Internet just started gaining popularity, it was reasonable to think that consumerism and greed would take over the Internet. Today, that is mostly true, yet it has not inhibited the ability of the Internet to provide an ideal public sphere. In fact, it has become even easier.

Part of what Dalhberg’s argument is that the Internet provides an even ground for people to discuss issues, but capital would soon govern and control the Internet.  Today in 2010, the Internet has become deeply integrated with business, but it does not control nor govern the Internet at all. The government does not control the Internet either. Because so many people now use the Internet, controlling it is just very difficult and not viable. The increase in popularity has also increased the amount of knowledge available to others, which has lead to more people learning the ins and outs of the Internet, allowing people to circumvent any control at all. The death of this concern comes from the fact that it is simply much easier to start a public forum/discussion group. There are many free webhosts on the internet that provide webpage hosting, server software, and message board software.

It is interesting because in such a short amount of time, the Internet has evolved into such a huge thing and has been able to avoid any strict filtering and control due to its very open and public nature. The Internet is truly for the people, by the people.

The twitter assignment felt too much like an assignment than it did a new experience. I posted whatever updates on my life I could find. At the end of the day, it all just felt like a nuissance.

iTwitter seems to be a way for narcissistic people to garner attention from others, even if it means spitting out comments of every facet of their life from the food they are eating to the clothes they are wearing. For those who also care, they will respond to these tweets, giving the user the attention they seek.

For me, it was all just work. I got no satisfaction from twittering and found absolutely no use from it. I do not believe my life is so exciting that it needs to be public and I believe that most other people on Twitter also have boring lives and do not need to publish them.

The assignment however taught me that people like to do this, so perhaps Twitter is not just for me. People who use Twitter obviously stand to gain something from it and the benefit is big enough that they constantly update their Twitters. Twitter helps people get the attention they want, and we all like to feel important. However, I don’t see how posting random facts about your life makes you important.

The Internet has created many changes to the way American society interacts. In the midst of the new age, people have traded off letter writing and phone calls with status updates and tweets. A trend that was not predicted, however, was the type of information that Americans would disclose. As social networking sites continue to grow, more and more people are disclosing personal information. Following suit are countries such as Canada and the UK, who have also merged the Internet into its society and have also begun taking part in the Facebook Age. Information being disclosed includes name, age, birthday, and relationships. There are possible reasons for people to disclose private information in a public medium, but for every benefit of doing so, there are also dangerous consequences.

A study done by Amanda Nosko(2010) took 400 random accessible Facebook profiles and analyzed the information that each profile shared. Nosko’s study revealed what information people are revealing; of those profiles, 83.3% shared information about gender, 61.1% about birthdays, 72.2% about birth years, 61.1% had emails, and 55.6% had profile pictures(p.410). Because Facebook users cannot hide their name from others, an average Facebook profile contains a substantial amount of information about an individual. The study itself was also limited to what was considered “basic information” required to identify someone. Many more profiles share much more than just the information above, such as photos of oneself, photos of friends, and/or photos of relatives. Profiles can also include information about sexual orientation, political orientation, and religious orientation. The potential to display personal information on many social networking sites is staggering and many of these profiles tap into this potential.

The study not only analyzed what information was displayed, but who was handing out that information. Those who are disclosing personal information range from young teens to adults in their late 40′s. Nosko’s study reviewed that of those 400 profiles, the ranges of ages were 19-47 years old for women and 17-61 years old for men. Nosko’s study also revealed, however, that as the age of the person increased, the amount of personal information on the profile decreased(Nosko, 2010). Her study shows that Facebook is not limited to teens and is being used by people of all ages. The tendency to share private information, however, seems to fall in the hands of those in Generation Y. These same people grew up with technology and thus their views on privacy reflect a different era. The study is also limited to Facebook, leaving out the even younger teenagers on other social networking sites like MySpace and Xanga; the number of young people sharing private information is much larger.

So many people would not disclose as much information if there weren’t a good reason for it. For one, the more you know about someone, the better your choices can be for both parties. Social networking sites are used to make new friendships and manage existing ones. An important part of friendship is knowing each other and social networking sites greatly facilitate this by providing an organized way to share information(Hinduja, 2008). This follows Nosko’s findings about the correlation between age and information disclosed. Although in their early 20′s, these people are not completely “grown up” and are still making new friends. Those people are also likely to be in college and if that college is away from home, social networking sites make it easy to update the family on your life.

Like all good things, there are drawbacks. No security is perfect, and Facebook happens to make choices that moves its security backwards. Because Facebook does not hide a person’s name and profile picture, anyone with a malicious intent can gain a fairly decent amount of information from a profile picture. By simply registering an account with false information, you get access to much more information, such as a user’s friends, networks, and some of their interests shown by “fan pages.” Facebook itself collects information from its users for advertising purposes, as well as third party applications that run on software. This is all legal and allowed through Facebook’s privacy policy. Even though Facebook allows users to edit their privacy settings, a fair amount of information is accessible to many different people(Facebook, 2009).

Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, allow much freedom in what you are allowed to share with others. What most users don’t know is that this freedom is misleading. In the case of Facebook, users have a lot less control over the content and information on their profiles. People can use this information for harmful purposes, such as cyber-bullying, stalking, kidnapping, or worse. Today’s Facebooker needs to be aware of the many consequences of posting sensitive information online, as well as the terms through which they make this information accessible.

Bibliography

Anon. (2009). Facebook. Available: http://www.facebook.com/. Last accessed 19 April 2010.

Hinduja, S., and Patchin, J.W. (2008). Personal information of adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace. Journal of Adolescence 31 (1), 125-132.

Nosko, Amanda. (2010). All about me: Disclosure in online social networking profiles: The case of FACEBOOK. Computers in Human Behavior. 26 (3), 406-418.

The Internet is capable of amazing feats, such as helping many teenagers fight anorexia.

The song “Sophie” was written by Eleanor McEvoy and was never intended to make a public statement against anorexia. McEvoy described the song as “obscure” and was at the bottom of one of her albums. However, the song has reached millions of viewers via YouTube thanks to some person who created a video utilizing the song. The song addresses anorexia, but if nobody hears it than the song becomes nothing more than just a song. Why find the cure for Cancer if you aren’t going to share it?

“Sophie” is an example of how the Internet can provide people with data, information, and content that may help them but would have otherwise been inaccessible. The Internet provides an outlet for people, and due to the nature of the Internet, it provides an outlet for a large amount of people. With websites like YouTube that are directed towards those with even the slightest spark of creativity, many people can be heard, which increases the chances that someone will listen.

The research done on teenagers and their thoughts on Internet privacy surprised me.

We all went through the same phases. When young, most of us went through an identity crisis. In order to survive in middle school, we had to fit in. Thus came all of the questions: Who do I hang out with? How can I become cool? What do I have to wear? What do I have to say? It is a phase that we all must go through when we are growing up. In the end, we aren’t trying to fit in or be cool; we are trying to figure ourselves out. We want to know what OUR likes and dislikes are by trying out others’ likes and dislikes and in doing so we discover our true personality and our true friends.

The children that were part of the research represent this phase. The younger teens tended to use MySpace more often because it grants its users much more freedom in terms of content creation and display. Because MySpace allows people to change and add all they want to their profile page, it gives those “confused” teens trying to discover themselves a medium through which they can experiment their different selves. Perhaps they want sparkly letters or race cars. MySpace allows its page the freedom to change and change again, and the younger teens took advantage of this by constantly updating their profile and their selves as well.

The research showed that the older teens preferred Facebook because the overall aesthetic was plain compared to MySpace, allowing the users to concentrate on the essentials of who they are: their likes, dislikes, affiliations, networks, etc. By this time, most teens have discovered who their real friends are and who they themselves are. As Ellie, one of the teenagers interviewed for the research, states when comparing Facebook to MySpace,

“… It’s more just like talking to three friends and, seeing as my friends know me, there’s no real need for me to advertise my pseronality… On MySpace, everyone’s got these things like, I love this, I hate this, and trying to show off who they are, and I just don’t think that’s necessary if these actually are your friends.”

What one should get from all this is that social networking reflects the society it is built upon. There is debate on whether or not the Internet mirrors society, but these research points in the “yes” direction. The research may have only interviewed16 teenagers in the UK, but MySpace pages in the US share many parallels, which share parallels with teens in the US. I’ve seen MySpace pages of some of my younger cousins, and they all follow the same structure that was depicted in the research. As well as that, some of my older cousins who started off on MySpace have now moved to Facebook. Consequently, their profiles are more “plain” than their MySpace pages were. They all follow the same premise of “I just don’t think that’s necessary if these actually are your friends.” This is only one of the ways in which the Internet can reflect its society.

About a quarter-way through the article on Japanese race, something deep inside me said “Well no duh.” It has long been established that the Japanese are a very xenophobic people, so when I read that the Japanese Internet was made by Japanese for Japanese, there was no surprise.

The implications of the Japanese Internet are important when connecting digital culture to physical culture. Many times in class we have debated on whether or not social constructs are reproduced on the Internet. I had previously argued that this was false. Once on the Internet, the playing field is level and everybody begins at square one. A loser in real life can be a powerful force on the Internet. I am now beginning to rethink my presumption.

It’s clear that the Japanese culture is preserved in a digital space. So is Japan just an exception to the standard? Perhaps not. I still think that social divisions can and are often removed on the Internet and new divisions take place. However, as is apparently true about many case studies on the internet, I was limiting my view to America.

On the Internet, new social divisions can be made, but new social divisions are constantly coming and going in the United States. America’s boiler-pot society has always had room for views to come and go, even if some views lead to racism. Japan, however, has maintained their notion of racial superiority and successfully translated that into a digital culture. Rather than having new ideologies coming and going, the same ideologies that has been a part of Japanese history have not gone away. America allows people to come and go and so does its portion of digital space. Japan has always been a xenophobic culture and this tradition has leaked onto Japan’s digital space.

So perhaps the Internet is not an exact mirror of the social divisions that reside in a country, but I would say that it shares the same cracks.

As to whether or not cyberspace is real space is another question entirely. Supposing cyberspace is also real, is it possible for new ethnicities to originate from the virtual world?

For someone who has been online since the Internet Boom of the late 90′s, I’d have to say yes. They say that a society molds you, and the Internet has definitely changed the way I am.  As I changed over the course of the years, I went through many phases and met many different people, some who I still talk to to this day yet have never seen before.

Dictionary.com defines “ethnic” as:

pertaining to or characteristic of a people, esp. a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.

The Internet is filled to the brim with different cultures, perhaps some religions, languages (the ever-famous 1337 speak comes to mind). Many people who have spent a large portion of their lives chatting on message boards, playing online games, or any online activity that involves interaction with others has at the minimum subconsciously identified themselves as being part of some group. Perhaps many of these groups don’t have official names, but they certainly fit the bill on what it means to be an ethnicity, and many of these Internet cultures originated in cyber space.

Some examples of ethnicities originating from the Internet are:

1) The Noobs. People of this ethnic background are “bad” at the Internet. These people may have the technology, but they do not have the skill to properly and efficiently utilize the technology to achieve some end. Like all ethnicities, their are subsets present, such as noobs at a certain online game.

2) A/S/L-ers. This ethnicity spawned in the days of America Online when people actually went to chatrooms. People with this ethnic background tend to frequent chatrooms and ask people for their age,sex,and location in the hopes of actually finding a young women who is stupid enough to send a stranger pictures of herself. People in this group tend to be male.

3) Internet Tough Guys. These people use the anonymity of the Internet as a means to get away with insults and other remarks that are usually frowned upon in real life. These people insult others (known on the Internet as flaming) without any inhibitions because the likelihood of the victim responding with physical violence is small unless that victim is willing to track down his insulter and challenge him/her to a game of fisticuffs.

I’ve obviously satirized these cultures, yet they are still present and easily identifiable in any virtual world. Whether it’s an online chatroom or an MMORPG, there are always different groups and cultures within those places and do not exist outside of that virtual realm. It may not fit the normal idea of what an “ethnicity” is, but there are certainly people in these worlds who all share a set of common characteristics, much like people of physical ethnicities do.