Social Media 2023 Yara
Lilie de Leon
Social Media Summary
WEEK 1 LECTURE – INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA.................................................................................. - 4 -
What is a point of critical entry into a field of study? ............................................................................... - 4 -
Domestication (Baym, p. 26-7; p. 52-6) .................................................................................................... - 4 -
What is media? .......................................................................................................................................... - 4 -
What is digital media? ............................................................................................................................... - 5 -
What is social media?................................................................................................................................ - 5 -
Bayms 7 Key Concepts .............................................................................................................................. - 5 -
Interactivity ............................................................................................................................................................. - 5 -
Temporal structure .................................................................................................................................................. - 6 -
Social Cues.............................................................................................................................................................. - 7 -
Storage .................................................................................................................................................................... - 8 -
Replicability ............................................................................................................................................................ - 9 -
Reach....................................................................................................................................................................... - 9 -
Mobility................................................................................................................................................................. - 10 -
Opening up the Digital Divide – Paper ................................................................................................... - 11 -
What is the digital divide? .................................................................................................................................... - 12 -
What is a semi-structured interview (p. 2351)? .................................................................................................... - 13 -
How does a focus group discussion (FGD) work? ............................................................................................... - 14 -
WEEK 2 – SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY ....................................................................................................... - 15 -
Technological determinism (Baym) ......................................................................................................... - 15 -
Can you think of examples of technological determinism that you have heard, involving any technology? ...... - 16 -
Can you think of examples that involve social media?......................................................................................... - 16 -
Baym presents tech determinism as rooted in people’s fears. Do you think this is true? Why, or why not? Can you
think of examples to support your view? .............................................................................................................. - 17 -
If some of these concerns are valid, how can they be addressed? Which, if any, are valid? Can you think of
examples to support your view? ........................................................................................................................... - 18 -
Are mediated interactions as authentic as face to face ones? ............................................................................... - 19 -
the AI language model known as the ChatGPT bot - in what sense, if any, are the responses it generates authentic?
• What are the limitations, if any, of a ‘language model’? • Can technology make you more free to be yourself? To
find new communities? • Can you think of examples? What are the downsides, if any, of interacting primarily with
people in your own community?........................................................................................................................... - 20 -
Is ‘authenticity’, in general, a valid criteria for evaluating interaction and communication? Does it reinforce
determinism? ......................................................................................................................................................... - 21 -
Social construction of technology (Baym) ............................................................................................... - 21 -
Examples Digital games often reflect social roles or status. For example, female online game characters are mostly
designed by men – are they different from what women design? ........................................................................ - 22 -
Does the social situation (eg. social needs and desires; or problems involving deviance) of users of social media
shape the technology? Example: the need for connection with others: is that why social media exists? Could the
world have had digital media without social media? What about unsociability: don’t we use social media to be
unsociable as much as to be sociable? Ie. to manage our sociability? .................................................................. - 23 -
Social shaping of technology (Baym) ...................................................................................................... - 23 -
Authenticity (Baym) ................................................................................................................................. - 24 -
Domestication (Baym) ............................................................................................................................. - 25 -
Domestication vs Social Shaping ............................................................................................................ - 26 -
Platformed sociality (van Dijck) ............................................................................................................. - 27 -
How did communication and social interaction get turned into platforms by companies like Facebook, Twitter,
Youtube, AirBnB, and so on? • Are problems in the platform society such as fake news, violations of privacy, and
security vulnerabilities able to be fixed or will they always be there? Are platforms beneficial for society, or are
they just a way for big business to control and profit from society? .................................................................... - 28 -
WEEK 3 – SOCIAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION......................................................................................... - 29 -
In what forms are our communications mediated? In what forms are they not mediated? .................... - 29 -
Do forms of mediation impoverish communication? How? Why? .......................................................... - 30 -
Is face-to-face communication more authentic than any other form?..................................................... - 31 -
What is the role of communication in social life? ................................................................................... - 31 -
What is communication in general? ........................................................................................................ - 32 -
What is the role of communication in social life? (in everyday life, not just on social media) – examples?
ideas?....................................................................................................................................................... - 33 -
The importance of difference: if there were no difference between what I say, you say, she says, and so on,
would communication in social life exist?............................................................................................... - 34 -
Social Cues .............................................................................................................................................. - 34 -
What are the social cues we use when communicating? • Offline? Online? Why do we not worry about such cues
when we are reading a purely text-based novel or viewing a painting? ............................................................... - 35 -
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,Social Media 2023 Yara
Lilie de Leon
For what purposes do we convey social cues in general? ..................................................................................... - 36 -
For what purposes do we convey social cues on social media? ........................................................................... - 36 -
Does it matter if social cues are performed well or poorly? ................................................................................. - 37 -
Other than communicating clearly, why do we want to perform social cues well? ............................................. - 38 -
Problems with Online Communication ................................................................................................... - 39 -
Flaming ................................................................................................................................................................. - 39 -
Examples of Flaming: ........................................................................................................................................... - 39 -
Trolling ................................................................................................................................................................. - 40 -
Examples of Trolling ............................................................................................................................................ - 41 -
Sociability and unsociability ................................................................................................................... - 41 -
Does social media lead us to be more sociable, or more unsociable, than we used to be?................................... - 41 -
Simultaneity of sociability and unsociability ........................................................................................................ - 42 -
Social media is also used by organizations. How is it used well? How is it used poorly? ..................... - 43 -
Digital Communication and Social Media in Surgery ............................................................................ - 44 -
What are some common uses of social media by surgeons/in surgeries?............................................................. - 45 -
In the health care setting, are texts just as good as phone calls or in person meetings? What are the advantages and
disadvantages of texts? ......................................................................................................................................... - 46 -
Does health system security (eg. DigID) work well for people, or is it problematic?.......................................... - 47 -
Imagine privacy is not a concern. Would you prefer communication about your health care to include the use of
social media more? Less? Not at all? .................................................................................................................... - 48 -
WEEK 4 – COMMUNITIES AND NETWORKS.................................................................................................... - 49 -
Definition of society ................................................................................................................................. - 49 -
Definition of Community ......................................................................................................................... - 49 -
Society vs. Community ............................................................................................................................. - 50 -
Is the University a community or a society? ......................................................................................................... - 51 -
Online Communities ................................................................................................................................ - 52 -
What is an online community? ............................................................................................................................. - 52 -
Is online community the same as offline community? ......................................................................................... - 53 -
Is the geography shared by the members of the online community? .................................................................... - 54 -
Are there practices that are shared by the members of the online community? ................................................... - 54 -
Are resources and support shared by the members of the online community? .................................................... - 54 -
Are identities shared by the members of the online community? ......................................................................... - 54 -
Are friends shared by the members of the online community? ............................................................................ - 54 -
Networks and Social Networks ................................................................................................................ - 55 -
Groups are ‘dead’ (Wellman) – what does he mean? Is he right? ........................................................................ - 55 -
What are ‘weak ties’ versus ‘strong ties’ in a network? In the context of network theory, "weak ties" and "strong
ties" refer to the strength or intensity of connections between individuals or nodes within a network................ - 55 -
In what sense, if any, are weak ties stronger than strong ties in a network? ........................................................ - 56 -
Granovetter – how is a weak tie useful? ............................................................................................................... - 56 -
Social Networking ................................................................................................................................... - 57 -
The social network society (Castells) ................................................................................................................... - 57 -
Networked Individualism (Wellman) ................................................................................................................... - 58 -
Social Network Sites (SNSs) .................................................................................................................... - 59 -
Networked collectivism by Baym ......................................................................................................................... - 60 -
Why is networked collectivism common while there are virtually no networked collectives in the sense of a group
that people identify themselves with? Why is group identity difficult to build in these contexts? ...................... - 61 -
Is social media use compatible with the aim of promoting civic engagement? Does it encourage it? ................. - 61 -
Games are often thought to be antithetical to civic engagement – is this accurate in your opinion? ................... - 63 -
What examples of political engagement can we think of that employ social media? Is such engagement effective? .-
63 -
Does social media detract from political engagement in any way? ...................................................................... - 64 -
Data Colonialism: Rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject .................................... - 65 -
Why does the appropriation of data seem ‘natural’? ............................................................................................ - 66 -
The authors use the term “force” to describe the extraction of data – do you think this is accurate? .................. - 66 -
The authors claim that data colonialism represents corporations taking for themselves “the whole domain of social
life” – do you think this is accurate? ..................................................................................................................... - 67 -
What is “decolonial thinking”? ............................................................................................................................. - 67 -
WEEK 5 – THE SELF AND OUR IDENTITIES ONLINE ........................................................................................ - 67 -
The self versus identity ............................................................................................................................ - 68 -
Are we born with a ‘self’? .................................................................................................................................... - 68 -
Can a self develop in a person who has no interactions? ...................................................................................... - 68 -
What is the role of language?................................................................................................................................ - 68 -
What is the role of significant others? (eg. parents, friends...) ............................................................................. - 68 -
How is the self produced? ..................................................................................................................................... - 69 -
What are identities? Examples? ............................................................................................................................ - 70 -
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,Social Media 2023 Yara
Lilie de Leon
What is the difference between my identities and my self?.................................................................................. - 71 -
How do we “anchor” all of our many identities? .................................................................................................. - 71 -
What would happen if we didn’t have an anchor of our identities? ..................................................................... - 71 -
Why are most selves characterized by unity of the self? ...................................................................................... - 71 -
Why does the performance of the self matter? ........................................................................................ - 72 -
Why do we need to “perform” the self? ............................................................................................................... - 72 -
Giving versus ‘giving off’ expressions (Goffman, Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life) ........................... - 73 -
The way we perform the self matters. Why? ........................................................................................................ - 73 -
Why do audiences usually accept our performances? What happens if our audience does not accept our
performance?......................................................................................................................................................... - 73 -
In what sense is the performance of the self a production of a team (ie. the actor and audience working together)? .-
73 -
How do we accomplish “performing” the self? Offline? Online? ........................................................................ - 73 -
Examples from social media? ............................................................................................................................... - 74 -
The self and Social Media ....................................................................................................................... - 74 -
Given how we have seen there is a major distinction to be made between the self and its identities, is it possible to
express the self on social media, or can only identities and thoughts related to our identities be expressed? ..... - 74 -
What is the difference between “a real person on social media” and the self? .................................................... - 74 -
The Editing Imperative – A Filtered Life: Social Media on a College Campus .................................. - 75 -
How do people create a ‘personal brand’? ............................................................................................................ - 76 -
Why, and how do people edit their posts? ............................................................................................................ - 76 -
Do you know of people who present digital multiples of themselves online? ..................................................... - 76 -
Is there a difference between digital multiples and identities? ............................................................................. - 76 -
What methods do the authors use to illuminate practices of posting on social media sites? Are they the best
methods? Are there other, better ones? ................................................................................................................. - 76 -
Can any self be authentic? Can an edited self be authentic? ................................................................................ - 77 -
WEEK 6 – RELATIONSHIPS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ............................................................................................ - 77 -
Relationship development and maintenance ........................................................................................... - 77 -
What characterizes relationships with ‘strong ties’? ............................................................................................ - 77 -
Online versus offline relationships .......................................................................................................... - 78 -
Who is right? Is there a significant difference between online and offline relationships? ................................... - 78 -
Do you have any online friendships with people that you’ve never met in person? How many? Why? ............. - 79 -
Taking online to offline: did you ever meet up in person with someone with whom your friendship started as
purely online?........................................................................................................................................................ - 79 -
Do you feel like an online relationship can be meaningful? ................................................................................. - 79 -
How many ‘friends’ (ties) do you have?............................................................................................................... - 80 -
How many of those weak ties have developed into strong ties?........................................................................... - 80 -
relationship starting points: .................................................................................................................... - 80 -
Idealization: Did you, or the person you know in your example, ‘idealize’ the other in an online relationship? What
does this mean? ..................................................................................................................................................... - 80 -
Relationships developing ......................................................................................................................... - 81 -
Media diversication - Why ‘together’? What does this mean? ............................................................................. - 81 -
maintaining the relationship: .................................................................................................................. - 82 -
What tactics to maintain strong ties are used: ....................................................................................................... - 82 -
The end .................................................................................................................................................... - 83 -
Is it easier, or harder, to end a relationship that is primarily online than to end one that is primarily offline? .... - 83 -
Conclusions (Baym)................................................................................................................................. - 84 -
Do you agree with Baym?..................................................................................................................................... - 84 -
Is this accurate? ..................................................................................................................................................... - 85 -
Is she right? ........................................................................................................................................................... - 85 -
Reading: Barrie Gunter, “The Study of Online Relationships and Dating”........................................... - 86 -
Do you think this statement by the authors is accurate? Also, what about other, non-binary identities? ............ - 86 -
Is this accurate? What kinds of relationships do people develop that are not meant to be romantic? .................. - 86 -
If ‘online dating’ means that users are always intentionally looking for romance, does that mean that the online
dating site user is missing out on a greater variety of potential romantic contacts? ............................................. - 87 -
EXAM INFO.................................................................................................................................................... - 89 -
Review Questions..................................................................................................................................... - 89 -
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, Social Media 2023 Yara
Lilie de Leon
Social Media
Week 1 Lecture – Introduction to Social Media
What is a point of critical entry into a field of study?
A point of critical entry is a significant stage where you begin studying a field. It could be
enrolling in a formal program or self-directed learning. It involves gaining foundational
knowledge and skills essential for further exploration and advancement in the field.
Domestication (Baym, p. 26-7; p. 52-6)
In the context of Nancy Baym's book "Personal Connections in the Digital Age," the concept
of domestication refers to the process through which new technologies become integrated
into people's everyday lives and practices. Baym draws on the concept of domestication to
understand how individuals adopt and adapt to digital communication technologies, such as
the internet, social media, or mobile devices, in their personal relationships and social
interactions.
According to Baym, domestication involves three key processes:
1. Appropriation: This refers to how individuals make new technologies meaningful
and useful in their lives. People appropriate technologies by incorporating them
into their existing routines, practices, and social contexts. For example,
individuals might adopt social media platforms to connect with friends, share
updates, and maintain relationships.
2. Objectification: Objectification involves giving meaning and significance to the
technology itself. People attribute certain qualities, values, and social norms to the
technology they use. For instance, individuals may view smartphones as devices
that facilitate constant connectivity, instant communication, and personal
expression.
3. Incorporation: Incorporation refers to the integration of technology into everyday
life to the point where it becomes naturalized and taken for granted. As
technologies become more embedded in people's routines and habits, they become
normalized parts of their lives. For example, checking social media notifications
or using messaging apps might become habitual activities for many individuals.
By understanding the process of domestication, Baym explores how digital communication
technologies are adopted, used, and integrated into personal relationships and everyday life.
This perspective allows her to analyze the ways in which technology shapes and is shaped by
social practices and norms, providing insights into the complex dynamics between
individuals and the digital tools they employ.
What is media?
Media refers to the means or channels through which information, ideas, and content are
communicated and shared. It encompasses various forms such as print media (newspapers,
magazines), broadcast media (television, radio), and digital media (online platforms).
• Forms through which valued contents are spread or communicated to others
Forms are more important than contents, eg. The lightbulb(McLuhan)
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