{"id":130,"date":"2011-08-09T13:53:02","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T13:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/?p=130"},"modified":"2011-08-09T13:59:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T13:59:16","slug":"sociomaterialism-and-emergent-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/08\/09\/sociomaterialism-and-emergent-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Sociomaterialism and Emergent Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past week, danah boyd<\/a> has written a couple of very interesting posts <\/a>about Google + and their policy<\/a> of not allowing people to post using pseudonyms. \u00a0In my research, it’s rare to find people who want to be anonymous in their ongoing online interactions. \u00a0But many people do want to to be pseudononymous–they have an identity that is ongoing and important, but it is not linked to their “real” identity. \u00a0I think that is reasonable, especially when people have a profession that could be harmed by their online identity.<\/p>\n

Danah presents her arguments well and I don’t want to rehash them. \u00a0What I find interesting is the sociomateriality (as Orlikowski <\/a>calls it) or the sociomaterialism (as I’ve been calling it) that is inherent in the differences between twitter, Facebook and now Google+. \u00a0The sociomaterialism argument, as I understand and apply it, for understanding how these three social media are being used involves not only the technological differences between them–character limits on updates (or not), the possibility to “like” or retweet or +1 a status update (and what those differences semantically mean), and reciprocal viewing of updates like when you friend someone on FB (or not like twitter or G+). But also the cultural, normative, and individual use differences between these three systems which makes it impossible to say FACEBOOK IS LIKE THIS. \u00a0TWITTER IS LIKE THAT. \u00a0and GOOGLE + WILL BE LIKE THIS OTHER THING.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are differences in use and culture between the three—FB started on a college campus with younger users. \u00a0For me, it is a personal social medium to keep in touch with friends and friendly colleagues. \u00a0I hide the posts of people who only post their business info and all the game updates\/requests\/annoyances that my friends post. \u00a0Obviously, though, other people use it for business purposes and for gaming purposes or I wouldn’t have to hide them. \u00a0That’s the individual use part that fits into an acceptable normative use for those people. \u00a0And the technological options make a difference (liking a business, liking an update or status, writing a note vs. a status update) but the use in practice (who you friend, what business you like, who you hide or not, how often you read, how often you post, what you want out of your use of FB) is emergent with the technology and the social (and personal) expectations. \u00a0It is NOT an interaction in the classic sense (more technology and more social desires lead to more satisfaction). \u00a0It *is* an emergent process of use that can be understood by watching and inquiring about individual developmental processes, preferred technologies and group influences. \u00a0I do believe we can understand FB in a generalizable way for particular interests and uses; but I don’t think we can ever say FACEBOOK IS LIKE THIS.<\/p>\n

I think understanding twitter takes the same sort of efforts and conceptual approach. \u00a0I first approached twitter as if it was a new social media in which I could follow the blog authors and FB friends. \u00a0I did not find it interesting that way at all. \u00a0After about a year, I came back to twitter and began to use it as more of a professional networking tool, but even then, it took a while and a few role models<\/a> to figure out<\/a> what I wanted to use twitter for. \u00a0My use of twitter is mostly professional and keeping in touch with professionals in my research community. But that is certainly not<\/a> how other<\/a> people use<\/a> it. (Thank goodness) \u00a0And indeed the best uses I’ve ever had with Twitter have involved real time conversations on time delimited events with groups of others using a # whom I may not have known beforehand. \u00a0I can’t even think of how to explain that without an emergent process. And sociomaterialism seems like an apt theoretical lens to use.<\/p>\n

At this point, Google + is understood as developing after Facebook and Twitter. \u00a0It’s norms are set (or trying to be set) not from the ground up, but apparently as a reaction to what has already gone on with FB and Twitter. \u00a0No one is naive on this technology–neither the users nor the developers. \u00a0It’s certainly more professional than personal for me, even though I have circles for both. \u00a0But it is \u00a0best understood in context and in comparison with FB and twitter, at least now. \u00a0It may develop in ways we cannot anticipate as its culture and norms further develop (the whole point here!), but right now, at the beginning, I don’t think it’s possible to understand it outside of FB or twitter.<\/p>\n

In any case, I hope this essay helps explain why I think sociomaterialism is such and interesting and useful theoretical approach to understanding the use and development of these social media. \u00a0Orlikowski actually argues that we should use it to understand not only uses of other technologies but also behavior in organizations–paying much more attention to the physical environment of the place of work like we do the technological features of the media on which we interact. \u00a0I completely agree with her. \u00a0But I’m starting on something a bit more manageable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past week, danah boyd has written a couple of very interesting posts about Google + and their policy of not allowing people to post using pseudonyms. \u00a0In my research, it’s rare to find people who want to be anonymous in their ongoing online interactions. \u00a0But many people do want to to be pseudononymous–they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,10],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-research","tag-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67nDP-26","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":153,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/01\/13\/public-vs-private\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":0},"title":"Public vs. Private","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"January 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the outcomes of my recent research has been my belief that online groups can tell us a lot about face-to-face (FtF) groups that we either have not noticed or have interpreted through different lenses--theoretical lenses that can change once we see the behavior in online groups and interpret\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":61,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2003\/07\/01\/sense-of-virtual-community-in-listservs-and-newsgroups\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":1},"title":"Sense of Virtual Community in Listservs and Newsgroups","author":"clas-web","date":"July 1, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr. Anita Blanchard UNC Charlotte Department of Psychology July 1, 2003 Introduction The term \u201cvirtual community\u201d can be used to describe any group of people who interact through computer communication (e.g., email, Usenet newsgroups).\u00a0 However, are they truly \u201ccommunities\u201d in the traditional meaning?\u00a0 One way to determine if virtual communities\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Research Reports"","block_context":{"text":"Research Reports","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/research-reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":157,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/01\/23\/dooce-and-divorce\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":2},"title":"Dooce and Divorce","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"January 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, I was pretty shocked to hear that Dooce (aka Heather Armstrong) and her husband, Jon, have decided to to separate. \u00a0No, I'm not accidentally posting on my professional blog a topic that belongs on my personal blog (or maybe I am, but I'm choosing to do it anyway).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/06\/17\/welcome-to-my-professional-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":3},"title":"Welcome to My Professional Blog","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"June 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome to the blog. You might note that the \"blog\" entries before are from a bazillion years ago when this was just a regular web site. Now that we've moved up to a much better web system for our faculty, I'm hoping to more regularly update this blog with thoughts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":172,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/02\/14\/dooce-sensemaking-and-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":4},"title":"Dooce, Sensemaking, and Community","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, that has been an interesting ride since my last post. \u00a0 First, who knew how many people would be searching the web to try to find out why Dooce is getting divorced? According to my site stats, about 700 have stopped by this site after conducting a web search\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":434,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2020\/10\/23\/podcasts-during-zoom\/","url_meta":{"origin":130,"position":5},"title":"Podcasts During Zoom","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"October 23, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"My mentor, Dr. Lynne Markus, wrote a very important article (Culnan & Markus, 1987 and while that is not the direct link to it b\/c it's a handbook article, the article I do link to is a follow-up that is similar). ANYHOOOOO, the gist of Culnan & Markus is stop\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/VICE-Lab-2020.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/VICE-Lab-2020.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/VICE-Lab-2020.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/VICE-Lab-2020.png?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/VICE-Lab-2020.png?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}