1. The web social COMP 6037 Catherine Pope 14 October 2010

2. 2 Web Studies Creativity – self expression, display Identity play – anonymity and manipulation, virtual selves Communities –virtual and real, social networking Commerce Politics and international relations see: Gauntlett, D & Horsley, R (eds) (2004) Web Studies. (2 nd ed) London: Arnold.

3. 3 Sociology and ‘the internet’ Inequalities - digital divide Inclusion and social capital – communities, social networks Political engagement - democracy, censorship Work and organisations Culture See: DiMaggio P et al (2001) Social implications of the internet. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 307-36 and Oxford internet institute (Oii) www.oii.ox.ac.ukwww.oii.ox.ac.uk

4. 4 Sociology a social science (possibly the queen of sciences * ) study of societies (i.e. social structure and composition – groups/categories) includes macro (structure) and micro (agents and interactions) uses qualitative and quantitative methods * According to Auguste Comte (1795-1857)

5. 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. 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. 7 Technological determinism Technological change as inevitable Technology determined by pre or non-social laws (therefore predictable) Technological innovation = progress Technology as a causal force (produces social change)

8. 8 Inevitable? US Patent for an ‘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

9. 9 Causal power? Example: Susan Greenfield’s thesis about ‘facebook harm’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new s/article-1153583/Social- websites-harm-childrens-brains- Chilling-warning-parents- neuroscientist.html

10. 10 Science shaping technology? ‘Discovery’ (TBL’s TED lecture?) 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)

11. 11 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 (e.g. religious opposition to Galileo’s heliocentrism, 1960s counterculture?) Social shaping (affordances/ viability; take up and use) Banti (1857) Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition

12. 12 Economic shaping of the web http://www.google.com/ads/

13. 13 Political shaping of the web

14. 14 Cultural shaping of the web?

15. 15 Social shaping of technology (SST) Technological development is not predetermined/inevitable; it is about choices (conscious or not) See: MacKenzie D, Wajcman J. (2007) (eds) The social shaping of technology. Buckinghamshire, Open University Press –Society is influenced by, but also influences the web –The web shapes social action but is also created by it –Explore the social consequences (and possibilities) of the web

16. 16 Social construction of technology ( SCOT ) 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 See: Pinch T, Bijker W. (1984) The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts. Social Studies of Science. 14: 399-441 Bijker W. (1995) Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: towards a theory of sociotechnical change. Cambridge Mass: MIT press

17. 17 Actor Network Theory (ANT) More on this in Susan Halford’s lecture… See: Bruno Latour (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18. 18 Problematise technological change - not inevitable but is highly contingent, unpredictable etc Alerts us to the need to understand social, cultural, economic and political processes BUT

19. 19 Critique of social determinism In critiquing technological determinism, move to the other extreme and tend to over emphasise the social (but can counter this by viewing social-technical as mutually constitutive) Constructionist focus on interpretation and social interactions misses material and structural e.g. excluded social groups; power ? (c.f. Marxist analyses of labour process) Outside the network /interaction of actors and artifacts (technology) – (some) technologies change the parameters for action (e.g. guns)

20. 20 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, 1991 - Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan ©Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience New York: Routledge, 1997

21. 21 Lucy Suchman Anthropological/ethnographic studies of technologies in use – informs Human Computer Interaction (HCI) 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): 392- 408 - Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2nd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.