The web social COMP 6037 Catherine Pope 14 October 2009

2 ‘Web Studies’ (Gauntlet and Horsley 2004) Creativity – self expression, display Identity play – anonymity and manipulation, virtual selves Communities –virtual and real, social networking Commerce Politics and international relations

3 Sociology and ‘the internet’ (diMaggio et al 2001) Inequalities - digital divide Inclusion and social capital – communities, social networks Political engagement - democracy, censorship Work and organisations Culture So how do we differentiate the internet and the web?

4 Sociology… a social science study of societies uses qualitative and quantitative methods includes macro (structure) and micro (agents and interactions)

5 Sociology of the web : some possibilities... Individuals and interaction - Identity: e.g. national, cultural, gender, age, virtual/real - Sexuality and relationships; intimacy/love -Networks, groups, communities -Deviance: e.g. crime; illness Institutions and power –Equality and stratification (class, gender, age, race) –Politics and the State: control, democracy, social movements, terrorism, crowds –Work and organisations

6 Sociological approaches to the web (and to science and technology more broadly) Critique of technological determinism Social construction of technology Critique of social determinism

7 Technological determinism Technological change as inevitable Technology determined by pre or non-social laws Technological innovation = progress Technology as a causal force (‘it’ produces social change)

8 Inevitable? US Patent ‘Emoticon keyboard’ Abstract A keyboard system for generating emoticons and abbreviations, the system includes a keyboard including keys representing emoticons and keys representing abbreviations. Inventors: Miller; Steve (Parkland, FL) Assignee: Westie Intellectual Properties Limited Partnership (Boca Raton, FL) Appl. No.: 10/133,052 Filed: April 26, 2002 Or….

9 Science shaping technology? Discovery? Invention? (note the TBL exercise in week 1) Scientists (‘inventors’) are active participants in the world: they bring conceptual schema, traditions, ‘ways of understanding’ - influenced by society they live in Science shaped by society – politics, funding, paradigms that shape what is pursued and implemented Technology shapes technology. ‘Invention’ typically incremental, existing technology often a precondition (path-dependency e.g. QWERTY) How has the ‘Digital Economy’ shaped the Web Science DTC?

10 Social shaping of technology Economic shaping – markets, profit, capitalism/ consumerism/competition and the drive for new products Political shaping (e.g. role of the military) Cultural shaping (from Galileo to ‘60s counterculture?) Social shaping (affordances/ viability; take up and use)

11 Economic shaping of the web Political shaping of the web a-censors-internet-before-tiananmen-square- anniversary/ a-censors-internet-before-tiananmen-square- anniversary/ Cultural shaping of the web? second life

12 ‘Social’ shaping and the web How society is influenced by but also how it influences the web How the web shapes social action but is also created by it The social consequences (and possibilities) of the web

13 Social construction of technology ( SCOT ) See Bijker 1995; Pinch & Bijker 1984 Human action shapes technology – need to understand relevant social groups that share a meaning of the artifact/technology (technologies only work when accepted by relevant social groups) Interpretative flexibility - technologies have to be brought into use by people, they are contingent on different groups of users and the different meanings they have for the technology Stabilization occurs when technology becomes dominant (black- boxed) i.e. the design stabilised; but this is not final/fixed

14 So Change is not inevitable but is highly contingent, unpredictable Need to understand social, cultural, economic and political processes »BUT

15 Critique of social determinism Tend to over emphasise the social (counter this by viewing social-technical as mutually constitutive) What about structure? –excluded social groups? –power structures? Relationship between artifacts and actors –(actor network theory)

16 Donna Haraway Cyborg Manifesto – hybrid of machine and organism (human). –fragmented identities, blurring of public and private identity (e.g. multiple social roles and identities on the web) Computers cause nothing. Human + non-human hybrids…remake worlds. - Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, ©Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience New York: Routledge, 1997

17 Lucy Suchman Ethnographic studies of technologies in use e.g. information system. Rather than a network of computer-based workstations in which information is stored, we observed an array of partial, heterogeneous devices brought together into coherent assemblages on particular occasions of work. To be made useful, these devices needed to be read in relation to each other and to an unfolding situation. Technologies, in this view, are constituted through and inseparable from the specifically situated practices of their use. - with Blomberg J, Orr J, Trigg R. Reconstructing Technologies as Social Practice. American Behavioral Scientist 1999; 43 (3): Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2nd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

18 References  MacKenzie D, Wajcman J. (2007) (eds) Introductory essay. In The social shaping of technology. Buckinghamshire, Open University Press  Bijker W, Law J. (1992) (eds) Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press Bijker W. (1995) Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: towards a theory of sociotechnical change. Cambridge Mass: MIT press DiMaggio P et al (2001) Social implications of the internet. Annual Review of Sociology 27: Gauntlett, D Horsley, R (eds) (2004) Web Studies. (2 nd ed) London: Arnold. Pinch T, Bijker W. (1984) The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts. Social Studies of Science. 14: