[Air-L] Social network site nomenclature

[Alex Halavais]

> 'non-social' media, if there is such a thing).

There isn't! :)

I have a feeling that social media aims toward "sociable media," which
Donath defines as:

"""
Sociable media are media that enhance communication and the formation
of social ties among people. Such media are not new – letter writing
can be traced back thousands of years – but the advent of the computer
has brought about an immense number of new forms.

Researchers in this field look at how existing technologies are used,
how they affect the relationships among the people using them, and how
they transform society. They also design new technologies, drawing
from fields such as cognitive science, sociology and urban design to
create systems that better support social interaction. They examine
the ways social cues are communicated in the real and the virtual
world, discover the limits imposed upon on-line communities by their
mediated nature, and explore directions that virtual societies can
take that are impossible for physical ones. The goal is to understand
and improve the social aspects of mediated communication.
"""

I don't see a lot of reference to sociable media, and I suspect that
social media came in on the heals of "social software" which I never
really liked. (What about social hardware? What about sociable uses of
unsociable software?)

I think the issue is that--like Web 2.0--the term "social media" seems
to be expendable to pretty much any novel web-based system of the last
four years or so, plus a fairly broad set of applications going back
before this period to PLATO and the Community Memory project, and a
number of non-web-mediated practices. (Actually, I think it is
reasonable to go back much further than this, and that ignoring
sociable uses of the telephone, especially, would a mistake.) The
quasi-broadcast model of the web that arose with commercialization in
the mid-1990s may be waning, though it continues to predominate. Even
on systems held up to be standard-bearers for "User-Generated Content"
like YouTube, there is an odd intermingling of one-to-many
commercially produced items, fan (and critic) remixes of that content,
and original user-created material.

I think probably that social media is defined as being on a spectrum
in which the number of people speaking approaches the number of people
listening. On one extreme end is Walter Cronkite speaking to a nation,
and on the other extreme are point-to-point networks: most telephones,
chat, etc. Between the two are the some-to-some and many-to-many media
that really don't have good antecedents before widespread adoption of
the web.

- Alex




On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 11:49 PM, Giorgos Cheliotis
<gcheliotis.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi to all,
>
> I have been following the discussion with some interest, and I'm happy to
> find that my understanding of the terms pretty much coincides with that of
> danah. By the way, this is my first time posting to the list, so hello
> everyone. I'm an assistant professor of Communications and New Media at the
> National University of Singapore, currently also a visiting researcher at
> the Berkman Center in Harvard. Since danah added 'social media' to the mix,
> can I please ask the good folks on this list to provide their definitions of
> the term 'social media' as well? (in relation to SNS or in relation to
> 'non-social' media, if there is such a thing).
>
> The reason I ask is not merely academic curiosity. I have agreed to teach a
> class on social media for the first time in my school and I think it will
> help in positioning this class vis-a-vis other related classes if I can
> collect some thoughtful definitions of the term and get some idea for what
> people think it should include. I'll refrain from providing my own version
> here because I'd really love to hear your perspectives first.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Giorgos
>
>
>



-- 
--
//
// This email is
// [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
// [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
//
// Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
// http://alex.halavais.net
//