[Air-L] physical/digital worlds

Sun Feb 10 00:16:09 PST 2013

Mark C. Lashley
Doctoral Candidate,
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
Graduate Assistant,
George Foster Peabody Awards
The University of Georgia
Room 320, Journalism Building

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On Feb 9, 2013, at 11:32 PM, Charles Ess <charles.ess at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Andrea and colleagues,
> Two sorts of quick suggestions -
> 
> 1. In the direction of the history of the broader conceptualizations of the
> relationships/interactions you describe:
> A) partly by way of invoking both Barry Wellman's taxonomy of "the three
> ages of Internet Studies" and Heidi Campbell's similar taxonomy of three
> waves of research on religion online (both in Consalvo and Ess, The Handbook
> of Internet Studies, Blackwell, 2011), I developed an overview chapter on
> the history of the virtual/online //
> actual-real-material-"meatspace"/offline distinctions-relationships for our
> 2011 anthology: 
> Self, Community, and Ethics in Digital Mediatized Worlds.  In C. Ess and M.
> Thorseth, eds., Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives, 3-30. 
> Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011.
> B) For a variety of reasons, AoIRists will likely want to also be aware
> generally of the now publicized results of the Onlife Initiative, a European
> Commission "Digital Futures" project -
> <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-initiative>.
> Broadly, the project sought to move us conceptually further down the road
> regarding the basic assumptions that have undergirded most of our thinking,
> research, and policy-making in conjunction with, e.g., "the information
> society" over past several decades.  As the phrase "onlife" is meant to
> suggest, the once hard (with the usual caveats) distinctions asserted
> between "the online" and "offline life" have been (largely) shifted towards
> strong interrelationality (a point that is now made in many, many ways, of
> course, but is also one of the characterizations of the third Age / Wave in
> Campbell and Wellman's taxonomies).
> In addition to what the Onlife Manifesto articulates in terms of developing
> new conceptual approaches towards what is characterized as a hyperconnected
> era, AoIRists may find some of the background papers that contributed to the
> development of the manifesto helpful as well:
> <https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/onlife-web-output>
> 
> 2.  In terms of more specific analyses, I find especially helpful
> A) Lomborg, Stine. Negotiating Privacy Through Phatic Communication: A Case
> Study of the Blogging Self. Philosophy and Technology 25 (2012):415434. DOI
> 10.1007/s13347-011-0018-7.
> Stine draws on Simmel's understanding of the sociable self - i.e., as first
> used to theorize and describe "offline" sociabilities - to analyze
> interactions and negotiations online between a prominent blogger and her
> readers/respondents.  This analysis I found to be particularly useful in a
> number of ways, beginning with the details Stine careful documents of the
> negotiations between those engaged with the blog, as these negotiations
> involve perspective-taking and phatic communication that work to both
> preserve individual privacy while simultaneously constructing and
> maintaining the shared personal space (in Danish and other Germanic
> language, the _intimsfære_ - the "intimate sphere" of close(r/est)
> relationships) online.  These details, among other things, show how such
> online processes are extremely similar to their offline counterparts -
> again, challenging especially 1990s' tendencies towards hard dualisms
> between the online and the offline.
> More broadly - though this may take you beyond your primary focus - Stine's
> work thereby provides an empirically-grounded analysis that fits with both
> other similar work in Internet Studies as well as in contemporary philosophy
> on identity and, most basically, conceptions/assumptions regarding selfhood
> - hence the article's inclusion in this special issue of the journal
> Philosophy and Technology, as dedicated to these matters.
> For the introduction:
> ³At the Intersections Between Internet Studies and Philosophy: ³Who Am I
> Online?² (Introduction to special issue), Philosophy & Technology: Volume
> 25, Issue 3: (September, 2012): 275-284. DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0085-4.
> 
> (In these directions - of course, "the networked self" from Wellman and
> Haythornthwaite has worked prominently over the past decade, e.g., most
> recently in Julie Cohen's 2012 _Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code,
> and the Play of Everyday Practice_. New Haven: Yale University Press.
> <http://www.juliecohen.com/page5.php>.  At the same time, however, still
> more strongly relational notions of selfhood have been emerging in
> neurobiology (e.g., enactivism, the embodied mind, and other umbrella terms)
> and ethics (beginning with ecological ethics and feminist ethics / ethics of
> care - now with feminist concepts of "relational autonomy" and parallel
> notions of distributed epistemic and ethical responsibility).  Such strongly
> relational emphases, most broadly, appear to have been characteristic of
> notions of selfhood in the pre-modern "West" and still typically function
> strongly in societies shaped by Confucian and Buddhist traditions, for
> example.  
> What's of interest here regarding ethics is how such relational selves draw
> on virtue ethics: hence the importance of Shannon Vallor's work on virtue
> ethics vis-a-vis social networking - most recently, Social Networking and
> Ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition),
> Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL =
> <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ethics-social-networking
> />. 
> As well, the relational emphases in several Confucian and Buddhist societies
> appear to be shift towards more individual emphases, e.g.,
> Hansen, Mette Halskov and Rune Svarverud (eds.). 2010. The Rise of the
> Individual in Modern Chinese Society, Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian
> Studies.)
> 
> For my part, I find the "flow" you refer to helpfully analyzed especially
> from phenomenologically-informed frameworks (where such flow experiences are
> initially described in offline contexts) as well as, classically, in
> Csíkszentmihályi et al.  I know there's some work along these lines in Game
> Studies, for example, and, when I get a few more minutes, can cobble
> together a list of those references. In the meantime, someone(s) else on
> this list may have such a bibliography ready to hand?
> 
> In any event, hope some of this is of some use - and hope to hear more about
> your work at AoIR in Denver!
> 
> Best,
> - charles
> Associate Professor in Media Studies
> Department of Media and Communication
> 
> Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations
> <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>
> 
> University of Oslo 
> P.O. Box 1093 Blindern
> NO-0317 
> Oslo Norway
> email: charles.ess at media.uio.no
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 10.02.13 00:54, "Baker, Andrea" <bakera at ohio.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Hi, everyone,
>> 
>> Thanks so much for all your help, from those of you commenting both here in
>> the list and off of it.
>> 
>> Yes, Barry, it was Nathan Jurgenson's work that first inspired me to carry on
>> with my current project, sorry I didn't mention knowing about it.  I also
>> consulted with him initially, well before posting my inquiry.   Nathan and PJ
>> Rey are running their third Theorizing the Web conference, this year in NYC.
>> 
>> Of course, much work has dealt with the issue some, including mine on
>> relationships, identities and communities, and thanks for your own important
>> list of contributions, your references.  Thankfully there is now such a wealth
>> of writing and research available.  However, some of us think we still have a
>> way to go in, to use your words, "flesh"-ing out dimensions of the processes.
>> There's really still much more to say about it at this time, imo.  Most these
>> days seem to not only accept that online/mobile/cmc interaction is real but
>> that it is less discrete from other activities than many of us early internet
>> researchers and private citizens had originally conceived, and experienced
>> back then.
>> 
>> Anyone else who has specific references, please feel free to continue sending
>> them to me and/or posting them.
>> 
>> Here are my original questions previously posted to the aoirlist.  I'm hoping
>> the formatting is better this time:
>> "For a piece I'm preparing on interaction back and forth between online and
>> offline or from digital to physical worlds and back, I'm looking for
>> references about how that works for people, especially those who are members
>> of online communities.
>> 
>> More than particular data to show this communication in process, although that
>> is good too, I want to conceptualize themovement, the "flow" from one realm to
>> another, to describe what is happening.  Also, how does the online
>> communication, including that through mobile phones, affect the offline
>> interaction, and how do the offline encounters affect what goes on inside the
>> online communities and in other social media containing some of the same
>> people interacting offline. This project is part of my music fan research on
>> fan communities, identities, and relationships.
>> I'm already aware of the articles in the first issue of Mobile Media and
>> Communication (January, 2013), and of Lauren Sessions-Goulet's excellent paper
>> of a few years back on offline meetings and online communities, and have a few
>> other helpful sources.  I've done a body of work on romantic online
>> relationships so I understand many of the dynamics there.
>> 
>> Please feel free to write off list or on.  Thanks so much in advance!
>> cheers,
>> andee (andrea baker)"
>> 
>> thanks!  --a
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
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> 
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