DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca Digital Culture and Sociology Everyday Life and IT

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca Theme: technology meets everyday life Focus: Experiential Stories Lister et.al New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Mackay, Hugh “Consuming Communication Technologies at Home”. In Mackay, Hugh (ed.) Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Sage. Method: Storytelling Studying an object: Furby about today break theme method break

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca complementary bibliography  BAUDRILLARD, Jean Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press  DE CERTEAU, M The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: UCLA Press.  HARAWAY, Donna “A Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980’s, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge.  MACKENZIE, D and WAJCMAN, J. (eds.) The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.  MICHAEL, M Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature: fron society to heterogeneity. London: Routledge.  MILLER, DANIEL & SLATER, DON The Internet: an ethnographic approach. Oxford: Berg.  REEVES, BYRON & NASS, CLIFFORD The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  STERNE, J “Thinking the Internet: cultural studies versus the millenium” in JONES (ed). Doing Internet Research: critical issues and methods for examining the Net. London: Sage. + bibl. In Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca theme: everyday life Definition of everyday life, discuss (220), also how it relates to space (222) Chapter as introduction to a lot of theories Key questions (p. 222) similar to those for this course Chapter structure: –The Domestic Shaping of New Media –New Media, Identity and the Everyday –Gameplay The “cases”: as examples for project topics Lester et.al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca text goals How the intersection of media technologies with the spaces and relationships of the home has been theorised The “newness” of media vs the routines and relationships of households New media as commodities (and not as products of science fiction) How normal people understand them Lester et.al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca some ideas Problematize assumption that introduction of new media won’t change homes (223-26), for example by looking at telecommuting. DISCUSSION: Is it good or bad to have an office at home? Symbolic status crucial for success of new products ( ), i.e. Black Box Difficult to distinguish between qualities of objects: instrumental, play, symbolic (i.e. mobile phones, 233) DISCUSSION: Why have objects become more playful? Lester et.al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca some ideas Objects have to be understood in context, for example: location of computer in the home (237) The problem of edutainment ( ) Draws a lot on cultural studies perspective, Mackay, whose text we have next. Lester et.al.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca theoretical mapping: new media Lester et.al. POPULIST POSTMODERNISM (+/-) - Consumption & leisure define us (not production) - Hyperrealism (Baudrillard), objects are not functional any more, become symbols. CULTURAL + MEDIA STUDIES (+/-) - Opposition old / new media (construct identity through choice / ownership vs. use) i.e. Poster - Power issues (i.e. feminism) - Problems: cultural approach can downplay instrumental nature of new media; if hardware is text, what is software? Hard to separate CYBERCULTURE (+) - Celebration of “newness” NEO MARXISTS (-) - Culture subordinated to capital - New Media even worse -Themes of control and domination. Eco (p )

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca Lester et.al. POSTMODERNIST CYBERCULTURE (+) - Change is good (Turkle) - Identity play in cyberspace POSTMODERNIST politics of identity (+/-) - Media only one factor more (migration, gender...) - Reviews marxism (Hall) POSTMODERNISM AS CRISIS (-) - Hyperreality (Baudrillard) - We canot access world - Subject dazzled (Jameson) POSTMODERN MEDIA SUBJECT (+/-) - Identity shaped through media culture (Jensen) SUBJECT CONSTRUCTED BY DISCOURSE (-) - Althusser, Foucault - Cyborgs (Haraway), next sessions - The posthuman (Hayles) vs. CYBERPUNK (?) - Breaking free - Romanticism (sometimes used by CMC + cyberculture Related “opposed” (p )

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca

What did you note down as you read the text? Interesting? Controversial? Dated? Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca text goals explore communication technologies in the home (how they affect this space and are themselves domesticated, used and made sense of) consumption and production related social shaping of technology is explored, including problematic technological determinism theories technology is not only utilitarian or material, but also symbolic note link to our storytelling exercise in the chapter (i.e. activity 3, p. 279), about personal impact of technology Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca points for discussion Activity 1, p Discussion: progress and democracy vs. Withdrawal from community Technology is social = physical artifact + surrounding human activity + human knowledge behind it (265), example home computer criticism of technological determinism (266 + reading A), but also of social determinism Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca points for discussion Technologies are encoded with preferred meanings, but they can be resisted/transformed ( ) Appropriation and gendering of new technologies (telephone, radio, tv, mobile), where use is not limited to function p , about reading B. How good is the ethnographic approach? Mackay

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca experiential stories Mike Michael “The anecdote acts as a focal point in which a described event adds some flesh to what might otherwise have been the dry bones of an arbitrary example. As a fairly detailed episode, it allows us to glimpse mundane technologies in use, in particular time and place, and to witness how the meanings and functions of these artefacts are ongoingly negotiated.” (14) What is the point of all these cases and method?

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca

storytelling Ann Gray people in control: tell what they want / feel, freer than questions self-comment reveals their social position people are more complex than just gender or class statistics Gray, Ann Research Practice for Cultural Studies. London: Sage.

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca sociology of stories Ann Gray What is the nature and content of the story? Textual question. Structure of the narrative, repertoires, codes, how the teller positions herself. What is the social process of producing and consuming stories? Is it an own story or somebody else’s? Can it be told socially? Censorship? Rules? What social roles do stories play? Are some narratives dominant and others on the margins? Ex.: Mary Ellen Brown on soap operas

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca Furby Personal Story: “I” throughout Beyond opinion by using sales data + media coverage Marc Pesce

DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 – Susana Tosca Furby What kind of interaction is that? (p. 21) Related to the topic of affection and machines: The Media Equation Why all the craze? Marc Pesce