Today the Boston Globe has an article about a rise in narcissism among America's youth. It seems that the researchers were careful to construct a broad study (it lasted from 1982 through 2006), but they could not resist referencing (I don't want to go so far, nor do I think that the researchers would, as to say "blaming") the rise of online social networks when interviewed:

"'Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism,' Twenge said. 'By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.'"

Before digging into this, I have to again stress that the focus of this research was far broader than narcissism as applied to online social networks, if it included such study at all. Perhaps it was merely the reporter who pressed Twenge to make a remark on these media, which have been such a hot topic lately, but, on very basic terms, she's right. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, even blogs, wikis, and collaborative filtering technologies are intimately entwined with narcissism. This goes beyond the linguistic conntection Twenge points out with "You" and "My". One of the central attractions of these media is the ability to construct, project, and promote yourself, or a self that you envision within the context.

Yet what such cursory analyses of online social networks - especially in relation to matters of subjectivity and identity - often overlook is that this narcissism is taking place in a network of other entities also trying to assert themselves in a self-serving way. Logically, this should not make sense, any sort of system where actors are entirely self-interested and unconcerned with others would quickly fail (and, perhaps, this is a reason for the short lives of many online social networks). This networked narcissism, however, requires more than simply a mirror. Narcissims takes place in a social context in these media. Narcissus wasted away alone, staring at his image in the river until one day he found himself to be a flower, yet our contemporary networked Narcissuses thrive as much as looking at others as they do at themselves.

This is not exactly exhibitionism, because that too often implies a unidirectional gaze and these new media thrive on a reciprocated objectifying gaze. Users act out roles on both sides of this relationship, but one might see the seed that keeps this cycle going as narcissim. One has to believe that he is worthy of a generalized cultural gaze in order to participate, but at the same time one also has to acknowledge the generalized worthiness of others to sustain participation.

Posted by Nathan at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I somehow wasn't able to find time to post last week, so for that I apologize. However, in that time I did come across a few items on the web that I wanted to remark on. When going back over them, I realized that a common explicit theme in each one is control within social/media networks. It, then, seems appropriate that I go over each one and look at how the concept of control:

Fred at Unit Structures: "Facebook Gifts: Pushing the limits of rationality"
In this entry, Fred - who closely and thoughtfully follows developments within and around the Facebook network - writes about the recent addition of Facebook "gifts," little icons that users can give to eachother for a $1 price. He touches on the issue of control beginning here:

"In Cyworld and SL, virtual commodities are persistent and explicitly tied to identity. In SL, if you buy a cool shirt, you get to wear it. In Cyworld, if you buy neat wallpaper for your minihome, it stays there and makes your house look better. In Facebook, the value tied to the transaction is less identity-centric. First, you are explicitly buying the gift for another person, and this gift simply shows up in their profile as a received gift."

Fred is spot-on in pointing out how these icons relate to the expression of identity, people are paying not to alter their own web-manifestation, but rather to mark another's. Yet, while I agree with his point that $1 is probably more than most college students will be willing to pay, we have to be careful not to underestimate the significance of social-classification within these media. For many users on Facebook and other similar services, one of the main purposes is not just to develop an identity within the network, but almost equally to alter the identities of others. If I were to give a gift to a friend on the service his/her expression of identity would be affected in a very real manner. It is the same basic process that happens through leaving messages on "the wall" or posting pictures of friends tagged with their name.

These media thrive not just on a unidirectional surveillance, but a distributed surveillance in which our actions, explicit and implicit, serve as a means of social control. So while this is not exactly the Panopticon, it is neither exactly the Society of Control, which equally relies on a more centralized construction of modulation and socialization.

The second item I was hoping to comment on was FreeYourID, a site which uses OpenID to provide identity management services, including e-mail, homepage, etc. I've often been wary of such services in the past. My thoughts are no different on FreeYourID. While I respect and agree with the goal of the service - to create a tool to better manage the connection between meat-space and networked selves - the rhetoric of centralization and control seem to go against the grain of the potential for the medium in which they are working. Services like this really do point to a Deleuzian-control future, where subjects each carry ID cards that let them through some doors but not others based on predetermined data. The most interesting thing going on in the space of identity and subjectivity is not individual control, but network control over subjectivity. In these networks the individual is composed of many, not one. My Facebook gift to you becomes a part of your subjective reality; to try to develop a system which denies this reality is one that makes me uncomfortable.

The next web-tidbit I'm going to talk about takes a different approach to control than FreeYourID. The entry "Control vs. Communication" on the 37Signals blog, tackles the dilemma of control head-on. The writer, Jason, advocates an approach to control that rests on the strength of the network surrounding a project rather than a set of built-in permissions:

"It is our belief that when you collaborate with trusted parties it’s important for people to be able to communicate any way they see fit. Preventing someone from saying or doing something often breaks these free flowing communication channels and introduces miscommunication or silence—two cancers of collaboration."

It is up to the constituent elements of the network to determine its interactive protocol. This is exactly what occurs in less-regulated networked environments anyway, but Jason is wrong to think that this approach is the antithesis to control. In fact, it is merely a different expression of it - one more appropriate for the environment.

I had a few more items I'd wanted to write about (including the amazing Botanicalls, check it out), but these three seem to get my point across. We are increasingly participating a in a networked, multiple subjectivity through our archived, web-based interactions. Our approaches to control and identity are going to have to take this into account whether that means repricing a toilet-paper icon on Facebook, rethinking our relationship to our online-selves, or collaborating in a distributed environment.

Posted by Nathan at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the final portion of the essay written for Audience 2.0. The first four can be found here (1, 2, 3, 4).

A New Audience?

And so we come to audience 2.0. 2.0 is generally a tag attached to differentiate software versions, like 'Firefox 1.5.0.6'—except there is no 1.0 as reference nor a 3.0 as destination. The pairing of {word} and 2.0 derives from Web 2.0—to state what must be obvious to anyone reading this. It's a formula that has become all-too-popular in recent months. We can guess at what audience 2.0 means through the immediate association. Where Web 2.0 implies everything from an aesthetic, to a business model, to a philosophy, audience 2.0 implies the other half of that equation. It is the people who use, experience, and interact with one another through whatever it is we may call “Web 2.0.” Audience 2.0 is an internet neologism, and as such its lifespan as a functional term is less important than its cause for existence.

What we're calling “audience 2.0” could perhaps represent a new power relationship, different from those of audience and the audience. Where within the audience, the person on the hearing end of the exchange becomes a subject to the control of the hyper-individual, defined purely in relation to him; and where within audience, the one giving audience holds the privileged position; I propose that we read audience 2.0 as a hybrid exchange within a wider emergent system, holding often contradictory aspects from both earlier readings of (the) audience. If audience implies active consumption on the part of a singular entity privileged with subjectivity, and the audience implies passive consumption on the part of a mass, devoid of identity or autonomy, then audience 2.0 implies a multiplicity that is at once singular and multiple, autonomous and fluid, solid and shattered, local and global, outward-facing and inward-looking: audience 2.0 is a networked subjectivity, it is a swarm.

Imagine hovering in a helicopter, hundreds of feet above a swarm of locusts devouring a field of crops. The locusts seem to move singularly, shifting from one section of the field to another, systematically and efficiently destroying livelihoods. They appear to be a monolithic entity from above. There is a purpose; there is a will. Nothing is anarchic about the locusts from this vantage.

Now imagine the farmer whose crops are being devastated. Naturally, he runs out of his house and tries to kill all the locusts he could manage. Soon he finds himself in the midst of the swarm – locusts going every which way, left, right, up, down, under, over, colliding with and eating everything in sight. How could this be the same phenomenon as was seen from the helicopter? Interior madness, exterior grace; global effect contrasts local action. The swarm is able to both hold anarchy and exude singular purpose—it is an edgeless, centerless multiplicity.

The concept of the swarm does not simply apply to the many users collecting around a system like del.icio.us, it extends to these users’ interiorities. Our interactions through these media have made us swarm-like as a population and as individuals. Audience 2.0, as I propose we conceive it, harbors contradictions and networks of subjectivity on both the level of multiplicity and that of the individual-as-multiple. The distinction has collapsed, the audience has learned to give audience, the tension between hyper- and hypo-individuality has given way to distributed control, and we project ourselves onto the larger cultural archive in ever more nuanced ways.

Audience 2.0: while the term may be short-lived and derivative, the cultural roots from which it has sprung represent a fundamental shift in they way we must think about interaction and subjectivity.

Posted by Nathan at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been wanting to write on the issue of death in social network sites for sometime now, but I've always held off because it is such a daunting topic that it would require far more space than any blog could tolerate. Death, memory, nostalgia: each changes within these new media. How does forgetting function in an archival network? How that which has passed affect that which will occur now as opposed to times before the advent of these network cultures? This is stuff more suited to a lengthy, exhaustive study than to a weekly, often extemporaneous, entry. Yet, the entry "Mourning and Digital Culture" from We Make Money Not Art popped up on my del.icio.us after one or two clicks today.

This entry links to some of the critical pieces that address these issues like Elliott Malkin's Cemetery 2.0 and MyDeathSpace and several others. The first of these two examples explores what happens when death is brought into a networked environment in which it had previously not existed, by an ancestor of the decesased. On the one hand this raises questions of identity and subjectivity - the data entered is that of a real person, this data interacts as though it were this subject, and yet it has been done by someone else. On the other hand it only makes clearer the networked aspects of traditional expressions of mourning and posthumous network culture in genealogical practice, an inherenly nostalgic act. Just as my grandfather explored the memories and legacies of his biological predecessors, recording them through the collection of text, dates, and narrative, Malkin records his ancestor through means that have recently become known as the interactive means of youth. This brings a new perspective on services like Geni, which allow people to create personal genealogical histories: essesntially allowing people to enter their ancestors into a type of socially interactive network, albeit one focused on the on the dead.

The second, MyDeathSpace, in a somewhat opposite manner, operates by highlighting the death that arises within social network sites. The MySpace pages (and pages of any other social network site for that matter) of those that die also references genealogy, but more in the archival, archeological, or perhaps social sense. By preserving the recorded interactions of the deceased we engage in genealogy, but by preserving ephemeral interactions in socially archived networks we are at once foregrounding the future recording of death as well as the the guarantee of continued subjectivity, though perhaps in the form of forced collective memory or nostalgia. This archived network speaks death at the same time as it records life.

This is best continued another time.

The final section of (The) Audience (2.0) will be posted in two or three days.

Posted by Nathan at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)