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