Interesting notes from social media researcher danah boyd (she seems to prefer lower case letters) from her presentation to Microsoft researchers last month. While many businesses in the arts and elsewhere are seeking tactics and strategies for using social media, Ms. Boyd is exploring the intersection of these technologies with the core dynamics of human interaction.
In these comments, she traces the past, present, and future of social media systems (like Facebook, MySpace, and the like), and she highlights three dynamics that are emerging as a result of their use. Says she:
- Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we’re speaking. We adjust what we’re saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences. There are lurkers who are present at the moment but whom we cannot see, but there are also visitors who access our content at a later date or in a different environment than where we first produced them. As a result, we are having to present ourselves and communicate without fully understanding the potential or actual audience. The potential invisible audiences can be stifling. Of course, there’s plenty of room to put your head in the sand and pretend like those people don’t really exist.
- Collapsed Contexts. Connected to this is the collapsing of contexts. In choosing what to say when, we account for both the audience and the context more generally. Some behaviors are appropriate in one context but not another, in front of one audience but not others. Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it’s often difficult to figure out what’s appropriate, let alone what can be understood.
- Blurring of Public and Private. Finally, there’s the blurring of public and private. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context with certain places or conversations being “public” or “private.” These distinctions are much harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment is organized.
Useful stuff, whether you’ve dived into Facebook as an individual or an organization, or you’re noticing that your audience is already in the pool.
The blurring of public and private is especially challenging. What does it mean to “friend” someone? I recently unfriended a newspaper because it seemed bizarrre to be a friend of an entity, rather than an individual. And Twitter is interesting because it can be nice to have followers, but creepy to be followed (stalked?).
I’d argue that some of these have developed as a result of social media’s features, and some as a result of its shortcomings. For example, both contexts and the blurring of public and private are issues that will evolve radically over the next few years.
Currently, most software (and networks) provide very limited options for user customisation and privacy – a couple of binary “private/public” options is the norm. However, networks will move from being walled gardens and centralized sites to being a collection of individual presences linked in a looser way across tools and platforms, and the level of control will correspondingly increase.
This will allow for more interesting applications (it becomes more appropriate for business communication, for example), and with it management of very different, overlapping social contexts – and the ability to control exactly who sees what and when.
Andrew,
Of the three, the blurring of public/private can be the most amusing. I try to keep them separate when I use social media like Facebook, but it’s just too difficult and I can’t isolate the personal and business conversations from each other. I could create separate accounts, but it’s just not worth the effort.
Last week I wrote, “A New Internet and Social Media Strategy for Dancers and Dance Companies.”
Best,
Doug
It’s a fascinating description of the landscape were headed into, but I think it’ll be a deathblow for arts managers who still employ a mid-20th century communications model.
That model consists of packaging a graphic look and a verbal message inside a rectangle and then getting that rectangle in front of as many interested eyes as possible. And the media we’ve been using (print, mail, email, outdoor, etc.) enables us to ‘send’ that message to select recipients through narrow channels within carefully controlled contexts.
But in a landscape with invisible audiences and collapsing contexts, not to mention user-control over how and where the messages are redistributed (if anyone cares to redistribute them), the rectangle is essentially meaningless. You might as well chisel the ad on a stone tablet and strap it to your fastest dinosaur.
Ordinarily I’d think this is a wonderful challenge and that we have an exciting transition period ahead of us, but the economic crisis is thrusting us into these new social networks at a radically accelerated pace.
I guess the question is can we adapt our model quickly enough to survive in this new non-rectangular landscape?
I agree with Trevor’s comment about the necessity of developing new strategies. He brings up the idea that arts administrators and organizations remaining stagnant will create major problems with the art industry. New strategies will have to be created and adapted.
The danger in this is that in order to create these new strategies we will need people who are daring and courageous enough to step out of the box and come up with new ideas. Furthermore, some ideas will fail. As an industry we need to be supportive of other people’s attempts to create new strategies, even when those attempts fail.
Additionally, as we are in the industry of art, we should remember that we are surrounded by many incredibly creative people. Harness that creativity to come up with new strategies.
And although the economy is bad, do not be discouraged about that. The economy will always have its ups and downs. That is a part of business and life. Keep being creative!
Privacy is a very critical thing in social media. You are so right that its very hard now to manage it, and even know what goes public and what stays private.
Ghada
These issues are generally present in ordinary social discourse. Have you ever asked someone to keep a secret? Did they? Context and privacy are constantly being mashed up in conversation, especially when you receive second or third hand information. Have you ever read a news article about something you were involved in? Did it ever seem like the reporter was describing a different event?
Will Rogers said something like “never do or say anything you wouldn’t want to read about yourself in the paper.” Social media are a platform for communication. Control over the content of the message still resides in the hands of the author who is left to exercise his or her judgment.