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Theresa M. Senft
Presentation Abstract:
ICA Pre-Conference on Mobile Communications
Each day, new social software applications are being developed that allow users to affiliate with one another over the Web, contact one another via text messages on cell phones, and meet up in physical spaces on a moment’s notice. Each day, users of these services are discover something sociologists already know: friendship doesn’t travel as well as we think it does. In this project, I use ethnography to explore the context-dependent nature of social ties forged over DodgeBall.com, a service that rings your phone to let you know where your designated friends are meeting in local bars. I am particularly interested in what DodgeBall users call “ex-girlfriend problem”: the desire to list someone as a friend in the context of a social networking service, yet whose live appearance in a bar seems too close for comfort.
It is common to hear the tracking capacities of social software/mobile communication hybrids discussed as what Clay Calvert calls "mediated voyeurism,” a term that depends on cinematic gaze theory as its reference point. Yet I suggest that rather than the cinematic gaze or even the televisual glance, the term "grab" (with all of its connections to temporality, embodiment, power and politics) more accurately describes the dynamics of these new technologies. Continuing in a psychoanalytic vein, "grabbing" represents not voyeurism, but rather commodity fetishism and its attendant belief that what matters is what can be owned, if even for a moment. Yet I believe these technologies are interesting not because they seamlessly enable commodity fetishism, but because of their inevitable failure to please all consumers/viewers, all the time. The persistence of the ex-girlfriend problem demonstrates that contrary to hype, all economies of social capital reach points of diminishing returns.
At this juncture, both users and developers of Dodgeball’s software seem to view the live presence of an unwanted witness summoned via cell phone to a public gathering as a social disaster of the first order. Yet there are many populations who could use the presence of a live witness connected to the situation only through affinities articulated online. One example might be members of online communities devoted to helping women deal with domestic violence who volunteer to list themselves on Dodgeball as "on call" should someone require a witness to document aggression in a public place. In the second part of this project, I build on the work of political theorist Jodi Dean to discuss what I call "networked reflective solidarity": a commitment to use networks in order to seek out others who may not yet acknowledge themselves as connected to us. I end by considering how Web/phone hybrids might be used for networked reflective solidarity, suggesting that in the near future, "friends" who are technically strangers (but with whom we feel certain types of affinities, and on whom we might count on at a moment’s notice) might be just as significant than in-the-flesh drinking buddies we now buzz with our phones each day.
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Comments
I am really curious about this! can you post this part of your discussion too?
I am now going to say that I am thiniking of these as iconic categories, not real people. Nonetheless, there will probably be three posts here talking about how girlfriends can be violent and boyfriends can be nice. I get it, I really do, but go ahead and say it if you need to.
I'd really love to hear more about this aspect of your presentation. Does this hold true for people who are using the service for "networked reflective solidarity?"
The basic idea is that whenever two or more people are connected into a social network, there is always an "object." (At least one.) For example, the object may be: "We are family." The object may be "We are coworkers." The object may be "We are social software developers." But unless that object is there, there's no relationship.
So the successful social networking sites are ones that focus on object of relationship, rather than on the geometries of who-knows-who. Perhaps a site that focuses on shared music interest, perhaps a site that focuses on business, whatever. Focusing on some object of the relationship.
We (http://communitywiki.org/) have a page (http://communitywiki.org/en/SocialNetwork) that describes the idea on our wiki, and it cites a blog post called Why Some Social Network Services Work and Others Don't. (http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why_some_social.html) This kind of thinking is similar to something that was called Activity Theory. (http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/act_dff.html) You might be interested in checking it out.