What the Internet is Doing Part 3 of 3: Our Communities
I’m haunted by the mis-information that’s out there about what the internet is “doing” to us. I’ve made it my career as a social psychologist to look closely at the claims made in public and behind the walls of the ivory tower, examining research about what drives and influences us and how today’s drivers and influencers might be different from those pre-web.
I’ve been doing this for 15 years. Last year, I published a book about it, and next week, the fifth series of The Digital Human, the BBC Radio 4 programme about who we are as human beings at the beginning of the 21st century.It starts next Monday 7 April.
But there are still so many questions! So I’m publishing a primer on the good and the bad of what the internet is doing to us.
This is the third in a series of blogposts answering those questions. Read the first two, about our selves and our sex lives.
Today’s topic - what the internet is “doing” to us.
In 1959, sociologist Erving Goffman published a seminal book that ushered in a new definition of community.The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life described a new, post-modern concept of togetherness, one that wasn’t limited to groups of people who spent time in the same physical space. He explained that community can exist only in the minds of its members, and that the important thing was that it was a headspace where people felt they belonged.
Fast forward half a decade and the conceptual community is writ large online, and it’s more real than Goffman could have anticipated. In fact, we can actually see it in the connections and digital traces we leave behind. For the first time ever, we can see community behaviour in its natural state on a massive scale. People from around the globe may not be in the same room, but they still manage to create very real - to them - consensual hallucinations (to borrow a phrase from science fiction author William Gibson), and these play out in virtual proximity, where the address doesn’t have a post code, but a dot com. It was this kind of community that the optimistic forefathers of the world wide web believed would eventually eradicate conflict and usher in a global group hug; the reality is something a little different.
The Bad
We have a natural tendency to gather into groups, and when we belong to something, we feel we can be ourselves. It’s a nice, comfortable place to hang out with folks who think like we do, and to find out what people like us are doing that we might also like to do. Naturally, that’s led to clusters of people with particular political persuasions, religious outlooks, personal philosophies and other things that shouldn’t be discussed with an outsider over dinner, just in case he doesn’t think like we do and we end up with indigestion.
This is why some people read The Guardian and some people read the Daily Mail, and why they’re often they’re not the same person, nor even in the same social group. Offline, we’re geographically bumped up against people of different views (unless you live in Brighton or Deep South, USA), which makes for some potential compassion, because it’s easy to see that a person who reads The Guardian might have features a Daily Mail reader might not find offensive, and vice versa.
One of the most unique things about the web is that people are able make connections between the bits of information that make sense to them, and then they’re able to share these hyperlinked stories with anyone, including people who think in the same way. That means ordinary folks like you and me - not The Powerful or other gatekeepers - generate knowledge. It also means that the stories might have a particular agenda, and that we should read between the links to figure out why the connections were made, and by whom.
Online, says author Eli Pariser in his book The Filter Bubble, we are naturally able to filter out people who don’t think like we do, and the vast amount of information that is contrary to our beliefs is simply invisible. There are even computer processes behind the scenes in our favourite online search engines and social networks that automatically promotes information that we want to see, and demotes information that we don’t, which means our information landscape is increasingly skewed. Harvard Law’s Cass Sunstein called this an echo chamber. And the more our beliefs are confirmed, the more we think we’re right, and anyone who doesn’t hold our beliefs is wrong.
We’ve imported our natural inclination to gather into communities into the online world, but rather than encouraging a global group hug, we might be cyber-balkanising, drawing virtual lines in the sand.
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There are clever technologists trying to create digital solutions for each of these areas of our social and psychological selves. Unfortunately, we’re encouraging them. The virtual equivalent of popping a pill when something goes wrong in our bodies is clicking a button when something goes wrong in our lives. We have become techno-fundamentalists, to use a phrase coined by Siva Vaidhyanathan. We have too much faith in the magic machine.
The good news is that this is a natural phase of our evolution with a new technology. It has, like other inventions before it, been seized upon as a panacea and dismissed as a destroyer. It is neither. It is a sin eater. Ultimately, it is a mirror of us all.
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If you like this, you’ll like the third section of Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You, Untangling Us.
The book’s on sale at the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
"Aleks Krotoski is a rare combination of academic (she has a PhD in psychology), geek, reporter and fluent essayist." - The Guardian
"Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate" - Financial Times
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The people behind the screens are the revolutionaries, the changemakers, I argue in this week's Untangling the Web audio advent calendar treat. But not in the way you might think.
People generally don't think of the paper on which the daily news is printed, or the printing press that puts it there as anything but neutral. They identify the publishers as the ideologues and the medium as the conduit. You'd think the same, broadly speaking, would apply where the web is concerned: Julian Assange didn't invent the wiki platform where the confidential wires were leaked, he was the editor and Wikileaks was the  medium. But in Consent of the networked, former CNN China Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon offers a reality check: "We have a problem," she writes. "We understand how power works in the physical world, but we do not yet have a clear understanding of how it works in the digital realm." in fact, we probably don't even think about power when we update our statuses on Twitter, connect with old school friends via Facebook, but a book based on recommendations from Amazon, or use Mail, Docs, Plus, Maps or Search on Google.
The truth is that software, from computer games to web services from Amazon to Match.com, is suffused with the principles decreed by the context in which it is produced.
If you leave this wanting more, check out the chapters on Friendship and Identity.
"Aleks Krotoski is a rare combination of academic (she has a PhD in psychology), geek, reporter and fluent essayist." - The Guardian
"Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate" - Financial Times
Until Wednesday 18 December (last order date for Christmas), people using code UNTANGLING at theguardian.com/bookshop can get copies of Untangling the Web for £6.50, saving 50% off RRP.
The book’s also on sale at the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
Last week, I posted the audio version of the Untangling the Web chapter about identity. This week, I look at a far more social side of our personalities: Friendship.
In 1998, Robert Kraut from Carnegie Mellon University and his colleagues published their research about a group of people they had introduced to the web. From 1994 to 1996, they'd asked this group to rate their levels of well-being, their feelings of social isolation and the number of friends they had. And in this period, while going online the new web users reported that they had fewer social bonds and felt more depressed, and struggled to establish trust in other people in virtuality. How could they be friends with someone? They couldn’t even be sure who the other person was.Â
Newspapers splashed with the article’s subheading, “A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?” Fanning the flames of fear with this new, untested technology, this research paper is still one of the most frequently cited papers when journalists write about the quality of life online. But according to what we know now, after fifteen years of research that has consistently and almost universally contradicted the findings of the Internet Paradox, the web is one the best places to make new friends and have a rich and rewarding social life in the modern world.
Have a hear and tell me what you think!
"Aleks Krotoski is a rare combination of academic (she has a PhD in psychology), geek, reporter and fluent essayist." - The Guardian
"Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate" - Financial Times
Until Wednesday 18 December (last order date for Christmas), people using code UNTANGLING at theguardian.com/bookshop can get copies of Untangling the Web for £6.50, saving 50% off RRP.
The book’s also on sale at the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
Neil Denny from London's Resonance FM got me into a studio last week to record a gloriously extended conversation for the Little Atoms podcast about several of the topics covered in Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You. But, you know, with a whole lot more. Including updates on sex, anonymity and what Edward Snowdon has done for you.
Have a listen, and please subscribe to their excellent pod. I am positively honoured to be included in their amazing lineup of interviewees.
"Aleks Krotoski is a rare combination of academic (she has a PhD in psychology), geek, reporter and fluent essayist." - The Guardian
"Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate" - Financial Times
Until Wednesday 18 December (last order date for Christmas), people using code UNTANGLING at theguardian.com/bookshop can get copies of Untangling the Web for £6.50, saving 50% off RRP.
The book’s also on sale at the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
Hey audiobook fans! Over the next few weeks, you can download exclusive tracks of selections from Untangling the Web, read by yours truly. First up, the chapter about identity:
Sixteen years after Jennifer Ringley turned her camera on and became the iconic Jennicam, we now tell our Facebook friends when we're single or engaged or hung over and hate our jobs at a rate of 30bn updates a month. We tell people when we're out of the house and what we've bought, practically begging people to steal our stuff. We post private phone numbers in public places, tell anyone what we had for breakfast and share secrets about our friends with the rest of the world. Is the online population stuck in an infantile culture of attention seeking? Does the web give us an entirely new opportunity to steal, stalk and seduce, as we lay bare our whereabouts, feelings and interests for public consumption? Or are we now in the ultimate identity laboratory: a place where we can redefine who we are, who we were, and who we might become?
"Aleks Krotoski is a rare combination of academic (she has a PhD in psychology), geek, reporter and fluent essayist." - The Guardian
"Her combination of cautious academic rigour and geek-like enthusiasm makes a very valuable contribution to the debate" - Financial Times
From Thursday 5th December until Wednesday 18 December (last order date for Christmas), people using code UNTANGLING at theguardian.com/bookshop can get copies of Untangling the Web for ÂŁ6.50, saving 50% off RRP.
The book's also on sale at the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
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while Renren and Facebook are two technically similar platforms, the Renren culture is perceived as more collectivistic than the Facebook culture. Furthermore.... users... perform more benevolent in-group sharing when they participate in the Renren community and less so when they participate in the Facebook community.
Qui, L. Lin, H., and Leung, A. K. (2012). Cultural differences and switching of in-group sharing behavior between an American (Facebook) and a Chinese (Renren) social networking site. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, XX(X): 1-16.
An interesting analysis of the expression of culture in the use (and design?) of social networking systems that are similar technologically, but were developed in culturally different contexts.
Via Ilka.
A few quotes:
Genevieve Bell (2001): cyberspace is “a product of and a producer of culture simultaneously”. (p. 2)
Also Genevieve: research on MUDs "showed that different branches of MUD may have different cultures, with some focusing on developing and facilitating social interactions and some focusing on exploring and pursuing adventurous experiences" (p. 2)
Cho (2010) showed that users of Korean-based SNSs (e.g., Cyworld) have fewer but more intimate friends, tend to keep their public profile anonymous, exhibit lesser but more personal self-disclosure, and use more non-verbal communication means (e.g., graphics or icons), whereas users of American-based SNSs (e.g., Facebook) have more friends, exhibit more frequent self-disclosure, and rely more on direct text-based communication. Another recent study also showed that interestingly users of Japanese SNSs tend to use animal pictures of cartoons as their profile pictures, whereas users of American SNSs tend to display their real pictures (Marcus & Krishnamurthi, 2009). Relatedly, Chapman and Lahav (2008) found that users of American SNSs like to broadcast information about themselves by writing blogs and sharing personal pictures; users of French SNS like to carry out discussions that are not personal; users of Korean SNSs like to share pictures with only their closed friends; and users of Chinese SNSs like to play games and share resources with other users. (p. 3)
Asian-based SNSs tend to have tighter social relationships, with their practices reflecting an indirect communication style and less open self-disclosure; American-based SNSs tend to have wider social networks, with their practices reflecting a more direct communication style and bolder self-disclosure.
The web allows us to see ourselves writ large...and that causes discomfort if it exposes things we're not happy to see.
In this interview with me for The Frankfurt Book Fair Blog, I go off piste from Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You and talk about the future of publishing. There's a healthy emphasis on the sentiment of the quote above. Here's an extract:Â
Has the web with its open publishing tools enabled us to return to the original form of human storytelling with stories being changed as they are passed on instead of being transfixed for all times in print?
The superfan community is an engaging and exciting feature of our existing communities that have been exposed by the web. There were already fan clubs and writing groups who continued storytelling from an author’s starting point, but now there’s a global group of like minds who come together to continue the tale. The online space is a continuation of the collaborative storytelling experience, but with a networked edge that both connects people from elsewhere, quickly, and then produces artefacts for the next generation of people to continue to engage with, long after the original article’s author(s) have moved on. The story has always been a social construct, released by an author (or authors) to the community. This is just making it visible.
Buy Untangling the Web at the Guardian bookshop, on the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
You have until tomorrow, 2 September, to get 50% off Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You at The Guardian bookshop if you use code UTW07FG at checkout..
Quick! Christmas is coming, baby!
Buy Untangling the Web at the Guardian bookshop (get 50% off with code UTW07FG), on the Faber & Faber website, on UK Amazon or on US Amazon. Other territories are available too!
