Literature Review: A bit of what's out there

As I said in my previous post, it has been challenging to find things that are relevant to my topic so far.

I did find a study of online doctor-patient care which could provide a bit of insight. Though it is only loosely connected, I was getting a bit desperate at this point. Follow me on this. Users of my sites of interest (PostSecret, Found, and Mortified) report a sort of transcendent or healing effect from the very indirect connections they make. Doctors heal people. Some of the points on disclosure and confidence may prove to be relevant. I'm keeping this one in the drawer just in case.

After sifting through dozens of "monitor your kids' online activity" articles, I stumbled upon a Time magazine article called "Intimate Strangers". I was excited to have found something relevant... until I saw that it was written in 1995.

Who knew anything about the internet fourteen years ago?

Surprisingly, there were some prized nuggets of insight in this time capsule of primitive computer-mediated communication. Jill Smolowe, the author, seems to have found either some impressively forward-thinking people or the pulse of what's going on in online communities.
Making an important connection to some of my emerging core ideas, ECHO user Marcia Bowe is quoted saying of the internet, "This is an emotional place, not just a communications device."

Smolowe even quotes psychologist Kenneth Gergen, author of Saturated Self: "[he] more charitably regards it as 'playing out our other selves.'"

(Scroll down to my post from February 16, "Scattered Thoughts on Ambience" for more on how this connects to my topic.)

In more recent publications, fewer and fewer insights like this can be found. I got the feeling that we have lost touch with what is happening online; computer-mediated communication has become such a critical piece of all communication that we overlook what might/used to baffle us.

What a great time to dive back into these questions.

So to further hone in on what my research will look like over the next few weeks, here's the plan. I will continue to search for responses and reactions to connections made in the anonymous/stranger communities I mentioned to see if they line up with this view of "playing out our other selves."
But while that may seem like an old "nobody knows you're a dog" idea, I plan to connect it with how these "other selves" might have emerged, or why it is necessary to connect with strangers in different ways.

I've just had a thought that I should have had weeks ago. It really isn't strangers that PS, Found, and Mortified users are connecting with; it's content. They are connecting to the idea of a person through a picture, a postcard, a story. This might put a double-mediated spin on these communications.

But for now, I'll stick to the "other selves and why" direction.

"Why" seems to come up a lot in these anthro classes.
-Katie

What is already out there on this?

For the assigned literature review, my search seemed so open-ended. I have been focusing on intimacy among strangers, deep connections to unknown people. Not very much has been written on this. I read a few things on social psychology, some editorials, even a Harvard Med. School study on happiness, and found a few things that gave me something to work with.

The first one I want to mention is from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Their study called "Internet Communication and its Relation to Well-Being" comes to the conclusion that adolescents who frequently communicate with strangers online have a lower state of well-being. The study seemed thorough and very complex; there were lots of qualitative equations involved. I don't do well with equations.

They managed to account for several factors of the participants' social connections, both online and off-line, so their findings are logical.

Had I not been exploring the PostSecret community for the past several weeks, this study would not have surprised me at all. Growing up, I was always warned about the potential risk of meeting people online. The negative effects of communication with strangers would have seemed common sense and common knowledge then.

But PostSecret does not fit this result. I could not find any studies that suggested an opposite result. Found Magazine and Mortified (both of which have shown evidence of the deep, meaningful connections with strangers that we've come to call the PostSecret Effect) don't fit either.

So what is going on with these sites? What makes these communities an exception to such painstaking quantitative research?
The Harvard study on happiness might give a bit of a clue. The study's title declares its conclusion: "Happiness is a collective -- not just individual -- phenomenon"
The article explains how one persons happiness can spread up to three degrees throughout their social network, therefore, ones happiness may be the result of anyone close to them being happy.

With that conclusion, I'm going to jump to a conclusion. But here's my thought process to it... (so more of a hop-scotch to a conclusion?)

1. Happiness is a collective phenomenon that dissipates throughout a social network.
2. Online communities provide a medium for more communication among social networks.
3. So you're more likely to know if one of your friends is happy, which should have a positive effect on your happiness (Harvard study).
4. Anonymous online communities reveal the emotions of strangers.
5. But it's revealed in a raw, honest, un-fakeable way that lets you feel a raw, honest, un-fakeable connection.
6. So you're exposed to a very large amount of happiness that you feel connected to and are therefore just a bit happier. Just a bit.

I think I need to continue my search for relevant publications on this topic. Yet it seemed important to comment on the exception that PS is from the research I uncovered.

Any thoughts?
-Katie

On Media Ecology: Meyrowitz and our very own Wesch

On Meyrowitz:

Continuing to think on our discussion during class yesterday, I picked up on Meyrowitz's comment: "Innis argues that different media have different potentialities for control."

Why is it that PostSecret has produced the kinds of interactions it has, while /b/ has produced something so different? Both are 1)online communities, 2)based on anonymity that 3)defy several social norms of speech and behavior.

But the basic medium is different: the postcards, which Warren has described as a unique work of art. These require much effort to make and a bit of effort to respond to, unlike no-screenname-required image boards. While anyone dying to reveal their secret without consequences could hop on /b/ and say, "I would love to drop an anvil on your girlfriend," the result would not even approach the emotional satisfaction of turning that secret into something concrete that in its "artwork" reveals a deeper intention, a deeper secret.

We mentioned in our class discussion that a true contrast to /b/ would be an identical message board that produced positive results like those on PS.

I'm seeing now that this true contrast isn't theoretically possible. The effort required to create a postcard, send it, and see it on the website acts as a filter for thought. It is a different medium than an image board.

Considering this, can we still treat PS as a bright-sided contrast to /b/ over the span of our presentation? Definitely. In the broader context of anonymity and identity, it pulls us away from the emerging mad/smart/bot mobs and back to the "Great American Poets" part where ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors. And for the inceptors and those affected by them, a "sense of place" is recreated.

On Prof. Wesch:

In this yet-to-be-published article, Professor Wesch discusses the effects of self-awareness, very similar to my Monday post on Thompson's Ambient Intimacy.

The comparison to our rapidly multiplying new media to that of an indigenous man seeing the first photo of himself is startling: "We are shocked into new forms of sudden self-awareness."

This was exactly my point in the previous post. Wesch gives a beautiful analysis of this increased self-awareness in terms of YouTube vloggers, which often results in a recognition of connection and similarity to others.

This common "we are all one and the same" conclusion is at the very core of the PS community as well, though in a much more specific context. This is because the nature of PS, the "frame" it creates, you could say, is one of, "Cut the crap. There's no reason to fool anyone here. Say what's at the deepest and most hidden part of who you've realized you are. And be appreciated for it."

So maybe through this continual shock that Wesch has noticed, PS functions as a place to pause and deposit the more difficult things. The community members become pack mules for one anothers burdens, saying "I'm carrying that too." As for the order and moderation that Frank Warren provides, that only increases the security that PS members feel.

Who would want to talk about the guilt of a past transgression if they're worried about getting Rick Rolled?

-Katie

Scattered Thoughts on Ambience

A few notes on online intimacy inspired by Clive Thompson's article, "Web Ushers In Age of Ambient Intimacy":

Throughout this project so far, the invisible cloud of weak-linked relationships has become more and more noticeable to me. The way my peers and I keep track of one another in short bursts of detail (from Facebook status to Twitter) simply makes sense at the current pace of university life. Considering this, I decided to format this update of my research as a bullet list of observations rather than an essay, partly in hopes of keeping your attention, and partly because said pace only gives me so much time to think on coherence.

Thompson's article basically serves as a sociological overview of the changing dynamics of webs of relationships due to online social networking. I've often heard the saying, "Social life, good grades, enough sleep. Welcome to college, you can only pick two!" The mastery of all three apparently defies the laws of physics, but many of us seem to have acheived it. Thomson does well to explain how.

-"The ambient information becomes like 'a type of ESP,' as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life." This is the basis for the "invisible cloud" comment above. And it's very true. Though I'm currently sitting in my kitchen at 3:30 in the afternoon, I'm just as aware that my best friend is in her fiction writing class as I am that my friend in Chicago is listening to the Wicked soundtrack. I feel connected to them in a way I might not otherwise.

And this is a very good thing: with all of the studying I have to do today, I could get restless and lonely very easily. My ambient web of intimacy pulls me out of that so quickly! I'm able to feed off of others' awareness of what I'm doing. Every project is a group project. (A friend just texted me, "Hey, howz ur researching?")

Thompson says that this, "just sort of lets people know you're aware of them" and that "ambient intimacy becomes a way to 'feel less alone,' as more than one Facebook and Twitter user told me." My point exactly!

On the other hand, as Dr. Wesch has mentioned several times, this forces us all to become our own personal publicists.

"She needs to stay on Facebook just to monitor what's being said about her."

If the world is getting smaller and smaller, we're now down to village size. Everyone can know your business if they just use the right tools.

"So we're going back to a more normal place, historically."

This commentary sent my thoughts to my 1950s film class last semester. Though we idolize that time period and being happy and healthy, further investigation in that class revealed quite the opposite. I'm arguing now that the 1950s were the beginning of this hyperindividualization and increased anonymity that we're now pulling out of via online social networking. (On that subject, watch this.)
Moving on to the '60s, we see the increased popularity of having a personal therapist. The ambient intimacy we experience now may have booted the need for one in terms of self-evaluation.

"Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they're trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form. [...] In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself."

And surely by now, you have asked, "Katie, what does any of this have to do with your research? Aren't you looking at PostSecret?"

Here is the connection: as Thompson has outlined the effects of ambient intimacy to conclude that we are more self-aware, I believe I have found an answer to one of my initial questions.

Q: What are people willing to reveal about themselves behind a cloak of anonymity?
A: All of the things they have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network.

In becoming so aware of ourselves, we have found frightening/regretful/shameful/incriminating things that we fear others will be come aware of too. That is where PostSecret has found its niche in these online social networks. The guaranteed anonymity removes all fear of persecution from those we know, while giving us a common ground assurance that someone understands. It relieves the stress of hiding while we remain hidden.

The anonymous side of this invisible cloud of relationships is sort of omnipresent. While sitting alone in our kitchens, we can maintain a feeling or acknowledgement that "someone" or "people" know, care, and understand what we do not want to reveal. And this is all while making sure that those things are intentionally absent from our Facebook profiles.

This complex view of the "self" would make Polonius second-guess his own advice. On the basis of such a deep self-awareness, I'm now wondering if our unwillingess to share our darkest secrests with those closest to us is a result of what Thompson has described. Are we so drowned in self-presentation that we consider our overall reputation more valuable that honesty with a friend?

This is now tying into the microcelebrity bit we have discussed. I think Emily is looking at that.

Consider it as ironic as you'd like that I toggled tabs between Facebook and Thompson's article while writing this. The deep accuracy of his observations of my generation have already been mentioned on my Twitter.

-Katie

Neil Whitehead is slightly crazy.

Perhaps my title is too colloquial for a research blog, but it is in no way insulting to Whitehead and his article "Post-Human Anthropology". What other reaction would be appropriate for someone who formed a Goth band in order to do an ethnographic study of sexuality and violence?

Clearly, he is not what one might consider a typical anthropologist. Yet his argument is exactly for that: that none of us should continue with typical anthropology. Our focus instead should be on a field, "in which the human subject is no longer the exclusive center of attention."

While this may seem counter-intuitive to a field that is by name and nature completely people-focused, our own research can greatly benefit from his ideas. With many of the anonymous communities online, mainly Anonymous itself, we are dealing with ideas devoid of identity, interaction without relationship. Community without humanity?

This is where my focus on PostSecret works as a bright-sided contrast. In a way, it is reinjecting raw humanity into these otherwise post-human interactions. Yet at the same time, it is still more of a mirror than a window. It connects with disconnection; anonymity still plays a huge role. In doing so, it more deeply connects people with themselves or parts of themselves that were previously unknown.

This comes back to the question I posed in my previous post: how can we be sure of authenticity if there are things we don't know about ourselves? In Whitehead's article, he mentions "partible persons (i.e. material beings whose identities are not fixed but dependent on the forms of sociality in which they are engaged)." Though I believe this is in reference to people groups who do not give each individual a fixed name, elements of this are definitely seen in online interaction.

In fact, I would argue that this is one of the reasons that PostSecret has the effect it does. The endless options provided by online communities to re/mis/define oneself allow anyone to not only be anyone, but to be anyones: multiple, distinctive identites depending on the network in use. In the presentation and maintenance of all of these facets of the self, it is no wonder that there are things we might not know about ourselves.

That may be why many people experience emotional distress in recognizing such a thing on PostSecret: that recognition is a violence to the part of the self that does not want that secret to be true, or has been living as if it is not true. Perhaps this is very different from the sort of violence that Whitehead and the members of Blood Jewel have been examining, but there may be a loose connection.

I hate to end this with a cliff-hanger (if you are even so enthralled to consider it one), but I haven't quite developed my idea beyond this.

So more on this later...

-Katie

Readings and Things: On Virtual Ethnography and the PS Effect

Assigned readings for this week include Christine Hine's article "Virtual Ethnography". She discusses the challenges involved with research such as ours, as well as those of ethnographic study in general.

In thinking on how PostSecret fits into the larger discussion of the Anonymity Project, I found Hine's comments on authenticity to be particularly relevant:

"The question remains then whether interactions in electronic space should be considered authentic, since the ethnographer cannot readily confirm details that the informants tell them about their offline selves. Posing the problem in this way, however, assumes a particular idea of what a person is (and what authenticity is). Authenticity, in this formulation, means correspondence between the identity performed in interactions with the ethnographer and that performed elsewhere both online and offline."

Authenticity proves to be a unique issue in the PostSecret community. In the FAQ section of the main site, one of the questions addressed is whether all of the secrets posted are true or not. Warren responds:

"I think this question is more complicated than it might appear on the surface. Of course, no one could claim that all 200,000 secrets are "true" in the strictest sense or the word.

But I think of each postcard as a work of art. And as art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices."

The "layers of truth" to which he refers here apply to the secret-teller and the secret-reader. As these postcards are the only element of an anonymous stranger's identity we see (and thus the only thing upon which to base any assumptions), the relevance of its authenticity may lie only in the secret-reader's perception of, reaction to, or connection with that secret.

Think of Evey's comment in V for Vendetta: "My father used to say that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up."

So the question of authenticity here seems to be more concerned with what Warren calls "the secrets we keep from ourselves." In many instances, members of the PS community have said that they did not recognize one of their own deepest secrets until they saw it in a stranger's handwriting.

How, then, might we determine the authenticity of interactions if there are things we might not know about ourselves?

This definitely ties into Hine's later discussion of the boundaries of ethnographic research. The most difficult thing about this project is that we are so deeply within the boundaries of what we are looking into. It is cause for much reflection. We cannot be removed completely.

More on this later...

-Katie

Trailer and Proposal: Final Edition

*After quite the adventure of learning the basics of Final Cut Pro, the final version of my trailer (which I am much happier with) is finished. Again, YouTube is far superior.*




With an increasing awareness of the internet as a new medium for culture and relationships, many have noted the increasing individualism, and disconnectedness that seem to characterize our lives.

Although the very fact that we have so many "concepts of self" may be considered proof of our newly individualized nature, I would like to argue that online anonymous communities are providing us with a way to seek out deep, meaningful connections to other people--a most basic human need.

These profound and real connections can be seen daily in the PostSecret community. With a foundation of anonymity, perfect strangers no longer fear judgment or embarrassment at sharing their most shameful secrets with one another. In doing so, they seem to have transcended the anomie, disconnection, and insignificance that threaten our increasingly technological existence.

Of course, the nature of these connections is very different from those in a face-to-face community. In a tribal community, for example, the network of relationships might be described as "one inch wide, but one mile deep." There are few people, but they are very intimately connected. Online, by contrast, produces relationships that are "one mile wide, but one inch deep."

Despite the ephemeral nature of these anonymous online relationships, the connections are very real and very significant. Many people even claim that the PostSecret site has saved their lives in making them feel less alone. Others say that it has restored their faith in humanity. In examining the PostSecret community (and others like it that form intimacy among anonymous strangers), I hope to uncover further insight about the transcendent potential of online anonymous communities.

Take 2: Trailer is up!

Have a look at my *new* trailer!

This did affect how much attention I paid to the Super Bowl, but I did catch the good commercials.

For a better look, watch it on YouTube.




-Katie