New paper: "From networked publics to issue publics: Reconsidering the public/private distinction in web science"

I've just come back from the First Nordic STS Conference in Trondheim - no doubt the first out of many - and tomorrow it's off again, to WebScience '13 in Paris.

At WebScience, I'm presenting a full research paper entitled "From networked publics to issue publics: Reconsidering the public/private distinction in web science". Since the proceedings apparently have yet to be released, I've decided to post my own pre-print version here so people might browse my paper before the conference, which starts later this week. I'm presenting in the very last session, at 4 pm on Saturday afternoon.

Download my paper from Academia.edu.

The paper is to a large extent a follow-up on my paper from the NordiCHI '12 conference in Copenhagen last fall, where I presented a case study of how two Facebook groups were used to collectively make sense of a severe snowstorm situation that hit the Danish island of Bornholm during Christmas 2010. In the WebScience paper, I ask the question of how we might think of such groups in relation to the idea of 'publics'. Here's the abstract:

As an increasing part of everyday life becomes connected with the web in many areas of the globe, the question of how the web mediates political processes becomes still more urgent. Several scholars have started to address this question by thinking about the web in terms of a public space. In this paper, we aim to make a twofold contribution towards the development of the concept of publics in web science. First, we propose that although the notion of publics raises a variety of issues, two major concerns continue to be user privacy and democratic citizenship on the web. Well-known arguments hold that the complex connectivity of the web puts user privacy at risk and enables the enclosure of public debate in virtual echo chambers. Our first argument is that these concerns are united by a set assumptions coming from liberal political philosophy that are rarely made explicit. As a second contribution, this paper points towards an alternative way to think about publics by proposing a pragmatist reorientation of the public/private distinction in web science, away from seeing two spheres that needs to be kept separate, towards seeing the public and the private as something that is continuously connected. The theoretical argument is illustrated by reference to a recently published case study of Facebook groups, and future research agendas for the study of web-mediated publics are proposed. 

This is the first expression of an argument that I will continue to develop during my PhD here at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. Comments are very welcome - either through email or if we meet in person in Paris!

New year, new job, new workplace

As of 1st January 2013, I am a PhD Research Fellow in the Techno-Anthropology (TANT) unit at Aalborg University, Copenhagen. This is a very exciting place to be, not least because the TANT unit contributes with teaching in the relatively new BSc and MSc programmes in Techno-Anthropology. The teaching includes a course in Mapping Controversies - the same course, which back in 2010 got me interested in the meeting points between STS, ANT and digital methods. This coming February, I will contribute to introducing new students to controversy mapping.

In general terms, my PhD project is about 'social media and technological democracy'. When I have defined in more precise terms what my project will focus on, I will post an update here. My main question is how digital technologies such as Facebook or Google Maps mediate people's engagements in various publics. To answer this, I plan to do a case study of how digital tools were used during the controversy over road pricing in Copenhagen last year. In following this case, I will no doubt be greatly helped by the fact that a group of student controversy mappers at University of Copenhagen have already built an overview (in Danish).

First publication! (on the use of Facebook groups in a snowstorm)

Last time I updated this blog back in May 2012, I reported that I was going to present my MSc Sociology thesis work at three conferences. This all went well. However, I also went to a fourth conference, namely NordiCHI '12 in Copenhagen. This resulted in a full paper that is also my first peer-reviewed publication, now available from the ACM Digital Library. The paper is based on my earlier thesis work at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2011.

For those of you who do not have access, I have the right to share a copy of the paper for personal use. You can access the paper here through my Academia.edu profile or through SSRN.

The paper is called "Crystallizations in the blizzard: contrasting informal emergency collaboration in Facebook groups". It is aimed at an Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) audience rather than an STS or Sociology audience, so it might be more or less useful depending on who you are. 

Here's the abstract:

This paper presents a comparative case study of improvised social media use in response to an emergency situation. The study focuses on a severe blizzard on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, which left hundreds snowbound for more than a week. Within a period of 10 days, two public Facebook groups showed a burst of intense activity. Combining content analysis of these online interactions and interviews with group members and authorities on Bornholm, the study demonstrates how divergent perspectives on the blizzard were collectively articulated in these two groups. While the members of one group self-organized to support each other in response to feeling overlooked by public authorities, the other group saw the snowstorm as an exciting spectacle. While the widely used notion of altruistic communities explain some of the activity in the groups, the concept does not capture how emergent groups construct emergencies in diverging ways. The analysis demonstrates how an entanglement of social and physical contexts influenced user adaptation of the Facebook platform. These dynamics must be recognized and understood better in order to design information technology that aids emergent groups in future emergencies.  

Lastly, there has been a change of scene: I have finished my MSc in Sociology at the University of Copenhagen and am now a PhD Fellow. More will follow in the near future about my second MSc thesis and my new workplace. Exciting times!

Abstracts accepted at three upcoming conferences

My master's thesis work in progress on the sociology of online publics will be presented at no less than three conferences this year. First comes the DASTS 2012 conference later this month, which is also a rehearsal for the huge 4S/EASST conference in Copenhagen in October. The third conference that I am going to present at is the 26th Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association in Reykjavik, Iceland, this August - for which I received a student scholarship to cover some of the costs (thanks!).

Here follows the short version:

Public-formatting technologies and their displacement

Recent research within STS (e.g. Marres, Latour) has followed Dewey’s argument that the contemporary public is not a stable sphere, but rather ”scattered, mobile, manifold” (Dewey 1927, p. 146). This paper aims to contribute to the research agenda of how publics organize under plural, socio-technical conditions. Based on a case study of a snowstorm on the Danish island of Bornholm that kept hundreds of islanders snowbound for a week, the study traces how media technologies were used to bring together the symbolic and material resources needed to translate the snowstorm from a private nuisance to a public issue. For about a fortnight, public service media as well as so-called social media overflowed with efforts to represent the snowstorm and its consequences. The paper argues that the different socio-technical materialities of these media technologies resulted in diverging ways of perceiving and public-izing the consequences of the snowstorm, and thus formatted the public in different ways. The analysis suggests that public service media, although designed as a home for ’the public’, were less successful in producing sufficiently common understandings of the situation. In their place, Facebook groups emerged as a stabilizing technology for unruly publics, despite – or rather because of – the platform’s original design intentions, which allowed for ongoing negotiation as to what could be deemed private obstacles and public issues. As such, the case is an exemplary displacement of design intentions that contributes to our understanding of how media technologies format the contemporary public.

Minecraft as a Modern fantasy - great fun and deeply problematic?

A specter is haunting the internets - the specter of Minecraft. If you have not yet encountered it, chances are it will be near you soon. Minecraft is a so-called indie game that has made it big, with 4 million purchases so far (and counting), even though the game is still in beta. On YouTube, fan-made Minecraft videos such as this one easily attract hundreds of thousands of viewers.

How come this success? Minecraft certainly does not impress with spectacular graphics nor sophisticated narratives. Basically, Minecraft is about mining. After a tiny Java-program is installed on your desktop, it generates a vast 3D world, complete with oceans, continents, weather above and caves below. As a player you are then free to explore and exploit this world after your liking - typically through mining of various ores and crafting of items (hence the name of the game). The only stress factor is that during nighttime, monsters spawn out of dark spots on the map, which in effect is anywhere that you as a player has not yet lit up with torches. Thus, there is a clear incentive to put a cosy little house together rather quickly, or arm yourself for battle until dawn breaks.

The way I'm currently thinking about explaining the succes of Minecraft - which is also a personal issue, since I'm under its spell - is that the game stages a meeting between the dangerous but resourceful Nature and the vulnerable but rational Man that appeals to the Robinson Crusoe that many of us have somewhere inside. In a sense, Minecraft epitomizes the deeply Modern fantasy of the powerfully rational Human Individual, dropped from the sky (literally, in the game) to manipulate Nature by cutting it up into cubes for easy handling (mining), combining them to achieve higher complexity (crafting) and an increase of power (tools) for further manipulation. No wonder Minecraft is intriguing for anyone enrolled in this Modern narrative of the state of things.

However, in this Modern fantasy lie problems that are rapidly becoming more and more obvious. As humans collectively struggle with grasping the consequences of climate change, we try to locate a particular human actor to blame for the misery, but find only historical contingency and delicate ecosystems. Nature is not simply our endless resource, it turns out, and there is serious backlash to our 'rational' exploitation of it. Furthermore, we might have to design a new politics to divide resources between us, since they are finite. These limitations are absent in Minecraft, which is why it comes across as highly Modern, great fun to play (for people like me, who grew up Modern), and potentially deeply problematic if taken in without a dose of reflexivity.

How might Minecraft approach the Nature-Culture divide differently? One place to start might be to generate maps that have finite resources and a fully destructible world. This would add a whole new tension to the game, as players in multiplayer worlds might have to negotiate how to use the sparse land that has been generated for them. As it is now, multiplayer worlds end with a layer of indestructible 'bedrock' - a game feature that might also be seen as a metaphor for the Modern belief in a bedrock of facts that Man can reach if he is rational enough to cut through chaotic Nature.

Another idea could be to make worlds in which players cannot survive when dropped from the sky, but have to grow as part of a larger ecosystem, dependent on other beings. Obviously none of this would overcome the Nature-Culture divide, as should be the ultimate ambition, but then again - that might diminish the fun of the game for Moderns like us.

STS Walk-Talks

In order to go full social media circle, here is a brief post on what has already been mentioned through other outlets: I'm guest-blogging on the STS at Oxford blog about yesterday's Talk-Walk on the theme of 'Visualising - what is it to visualise?'. Sub-themes include the plural meanings and widespread metaphorical use of terms that relate to the visual, the slippy concept of affordances, and the scientific and narrative powers of visualisations. This is a nice follow-up to my earlier post on the animating of lectures.

But what on earth is an STS Talk-Walk in the first place? I first encountered the concept here in Oxford where it has been initiated and described by Malte Ziewitz. As mentioned by Malte, the idea first came about in Amsterdam where Annemarie Mol took her PhD students out walking. Rumour has it that the Dutch walk considerably longer than we do here in Oxford. On the other hand, we have been able to accommodate an interesting mix of people from different departments and with different academic pursuits at the two hour long Friday afternoon talk-walks here. The phenomenon has apparently been copied at several more STS departments, and I think it is for the better - I certainly found the talk-walk format an inviting and informal way to engage with a new place and an interesting group of people.

As Malte quotes Annemarie Mol for stating, "talking-while-walking can enhance thinking in ways not attainable behind a desk or in a seminar sitting down.”

Official statistics: 51% of 16-74 year old Danes use Facebook

In making a case for why my MSc dissertation here at the Oxford Internet Institute should be concerned with something as hyped and mundane as Facebook, I've been looking for numbers on the Danish social media landscape.

On the English-language web, the commercial SocialBakers Facebook statistics suggest that 49% of the Danish population are on Facebook.

This rather non-transparent number can now be compared with a recent report by Statistics Denmark, suggesting that 51% of 16-74 year old Danes have a Facebook account. The second-largest online social network service in Denmark, LinkedIn, is trailing far behind at 8%. Most surprisingly perhaps, a mere 3% of the surveyed age cohort use Twitter.

As such, there are compelling quantitative reasons for choosing Facebook over e.g. Twitter for a case study of how social media reflect life in Denmark. Another recent survey produced for a Danish daily confirms this: A tiny elite of the 319 most active Twitter users in Denmark write half of all Danish tweets! The total number of Twitter users in Denmark is estimated as 28.000, whereas the number of Facebook users are an impressive 2.6 million.

This latter survey also indicates that the numbers might be hard to estimate in any precise way: It concludes that 70% of Danes have Facebook accounts, while 6% have Twitter accounts, which amounts to a quite strong overestimation of social media penetration in Denmark when compared to the Statistics Denmark report. Here, it is worth noting that according to SocialBakers, 9% of the Danish Facebook users are in the 13-15 years age group, leaving them out of the official statistics.

Apart from giving us an idea about the sheer number of social media users in Denmark, the most interesting finding in the Statistics Denmark report seems to be that one fifth of all online social network users have no idea how to change their privacy settings. This is especially true for older users.