CMST-3000 Midterm Study Guide PDF

CMST-3000 Midterm Study Guide The victorian internet Social media are not new media Tom stanage - Victorian internet: commonality between speedy communications and what we use social media for 3 forms of continuity between the victorian internet and social media - Space-time compression -...

CMST-3000 Midterm Study Guide The victorian internet Social media are not new media Tom stanage - Victorian internet: commonality between speedy communications and what we use social media for 3 forms of continuity between the victorian internet and social media - Space-time compression - Deception and manipulation - Accentuation of social intimacy 2 primary concepts in the study of social media - Space - Time Samuel Morse - american electric telegraph inventor First message sent by optical telegraph (took 11 minutes; traveled 20 miles) - By the 1850’s the telegraph was fully integrated in the daily life of urban centers around the world - About 75 % of all messages were business- related (over half were tied to the Stock Exchange) and 10% were family-related space-time compression, made possible through the telegraph - that lead to a lot of social sociological problems, information overload due to speed (mid 1800’s) Deception and crime on the network - The telegraph was instrumental in facilitating and detecting crimes - 1845: the case of John Tawell Love and networks - Marriage - Affairs - New modes of intimate contact Katie Hafner- early pioneers of the internet 1. The past offers us a record of the dreams of new technologies 2. Technologies change according to new social contexts 3. Design matters  4. Pay attention to the actors and institutions that shape technologies Licklider- One of the developers of the early internet He thought the internet would be used for enhancing democracy. The relationship between the military and the computer industry began during World War II, driven by the need for faster calculations. The military funded numerous computing experiments, including key projects like: The Navy’s support of Harvard professor Howard Aiken, who developed the Mark I, a large-scale calculator that could perform arithmetic operations without human intervention. The Army’s support of the ENIAC project at the University of Pennsylvania, a groundbreaking electronic computer. Later, both the Navy and Air Force supported the development of the Whirlwind computer at MIT. These collaborations were foundational to the modern computer industry. “Killer app” that made the internet popular - email Christian Fuchs - What is social media? 1. Technology 2. Social aspects Technological Affordances: Social Media Web 1.0 - Static system of reading/writing information - Taxonomy of information - Users can search and click links but cannot contribute - Limited kinds if information: mostly text-based Web 2.0 - Connectivity: platform that brings together a wide assortment of “connected” devices and software - Participation: users are both authors and consumers - Collective intelligence: users can come together to build communities, create and share information and problem solve - De-centralization: there is no center point in the network  - Feedback: through likes users can give immediate feedback The social in social media - Social sharing of information - Collaboration - Community-building - Participation - Interaction Emile Durkheim - Capitalism makes us richer but also more miserable - Suicide rates heightened once the city became industrialized Social facts that emerged from capitalism 1. Individualism 2. Excessive hope 3. We have too much freedom 4. Atheism 5. Weakening of the nation and of the family Max Weber 1. Why does capitalism exist Weber: Social action and social relation 1. Traditional social action ( wishing someone happy birthday social pressure) 2. Emotional social action (rage baiting, calls to action) 3. Value rational social action (choice to go to university, i post about what i believe in) 4. Instrumental rational social action Karl Marx - Work is alienated 4. Capitalism is very unstable - Society is at heart a network of cooperation; under capitalism, however, this is transformed into exploitative competition - Healthy leabour: see yourself in the good or service: Labour = self - The rise of digital labor (wattpad example) Ferdinand Tonnies - Two different social groups  - Community: kinships, friendships, the family; communities have common goals, intimate relationships and a lot of control over the group - Society: groups that are highly differentiated: modern society is for example compromised a wide variety of social groups that collectively assist each other (food) - Relationships here are superficial and involve distant ties of interdependence - Money is key way in which relationships are forged Thorstei Veblen Conspicuous consumption Nancy Baym- face to face exchange was the standard for interpersonal relations before the media. Tone of voice, gestures, posture. Remedy ambiguity Erving Goffman: the stable self? - He argues that we display a series of masks to others - Setting ourselves in the best light - Playing different parts depending on our situation/social contexts - Fixed character/psychological identity Social media: the end of face to face encounters? What to we lose when we shift to a digital environment: - Authenticity - Easier to misinterpret - More disingenuous online (say happy birthday online but maybe not in person) - More confidence online - You can be anonymous online Baym - multimodal approach to mediated communication - Intimate social cues (textual) - Emojis - Moods of expression: im soooo tried - Informal writing: Show ease and approachability - Content: what user’s share/their posts say a lot about who they are Multi-modal approach to mediated communication - It doesn't help to think about mediated communication through the strict speech/writing dichotomy - Mediated communications falls somewhere in between speech and writing  - Changes in communication (for example the informality of much writing) cannot be simply attributed to the introduction of new tech; they belong to much larger series of changes Media richness theory - Focuses on how each medium carries certain kinds of information 4 criteria - The speed of feedback - Ability to convey emotions - Use natural language vs numerical or statistical information - The ability to communicate multiple cues (video conferencing can communicate tone, appearance, posture, whereas a memo might only express tone) Social presence theory - Tries to determine which social cues serve which function in communication (ie standing up straight=confidence; making eye contact shows interest or care). - Tries to predict how different mediums (chat/video conference/memo) create the most social presence. Research indicated that face to face communication was best, video conferencing was second and audio (telephone call) was the worst. Some criticisms of the impoverishment of communication argument - Some research found the opposite: instead of being antisocial, electronic communication led to social solidarity and intimate bonds - The problem of how flaming is framed (we remember the hostile exchanges and not the friendly ones) Naomi Barron - She uses the term domestications referring to how certain technologies create moral panic but over time we tame them as no longer threats (automobiles) Turning up/down the volume - The ways in which users can control and manipulate the flow of communication - Turning up: control the “affordances” of electronic communications in order to amplify our connections to others. We make ourselves available to others in our social networks - Turning down: Control the “affordances” of electronic communications in order to maintain control over when, where and with whom we communicate Culture of connectivity Actor network theory (the small- microsystems) - Developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law - Flat Ontology (philosophical way of thinking what is the nature of something)  - All things have agency (living and nonliving) - Agents can be defined by their performance (what they do) - Examples: door stop, alarm clock, thermostat (the doorstop has a performance, it stops the door from closing as people are coming in) - Modern life is filled with multiple agents Technologies - Interface - Meta-data - Algorithms - protocols - Defaults Interface - A device or program enabling a user to communicate with a computer - Screen, mouse, keyboard - Point by how we communicate with the system - Other kinds of ways we engage with a technological system: A finger to the screen, listening to audio, microphone, retweet button - Interface holds power because it influences what we can and cannot do - Why did the creator of twitter regret the creation of the retweet button? Unconscious engagement, people sending information without actually having read it, holds power Meta-data - Structured information that helps describe, explain and locate information resources - Cookies (small bits of information saved on a computer: used to call upon user information (login, search history) - Geo-tags: locative data - Photo tags: information about when photo was taken, people in the photo - Using location data to find someone's whereabouts Algorithm - A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer - Following a set of procedures/instructions for a goal - Black box - Shows you specific things, prevents you from seeing the other side Protocols - Rules that govern formats and how they communicate with other computing systems - Twitter: limits the number of characters users can use Defaults - Automatic settings assigned to software or a service, these technical settings often work to guide users social actions Microworld whereby they are important actors in our world. They influence things we do and don't do on social media The News Gap? - Audiences want stories that garnish the most attention: Sports, crime, entertainment and the weather. - Journalists want to supply the public with “serious news”, information about politics, international issues and the economy Montorial consumption - news gap, sometimes periodically people will turn in to serious news like the debate or disaster The Dewey/Lippmann Debate Walter Lippman- argued that people don't have the interest to become well informed. We rather watch silly things. We need a special task force to make decisions for the citizens John Dewey- argued that people have the desire to be well informed but the news agencies are not providing people with reliable information. He blames, at the time, newspapers for covering more pop culture as opposed to news. Suggests that democracy is hard, you would need to take responsibility, you need to know the intricate nuances to exist in a democracy.