DIGITAL CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY session 3 Susana Tosca

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Digital Culture and Sociology

• Everyday Life and IT

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about today

• Theme technology meets everyday life
• Focus Experiential Stories
• Lister et.al. 2003. New Media A Critical
  Introduction. London Routledge.
• Mackay, Hugh. 1997. Consuming Communication
  Technologies at Home. In Mackay, Hugh (ed.)
  Consumption and Everyday Life. London Sage.
• Method Storytelling
• Studying an object Furby

break
theme
break
method
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complementary bibliography

• BAUDRILLARD, Jean. 1997. Simulacra and
  Simulation. Ann Arbor University of Michigan
  Press
• DE CERTEAU, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday
  Life. Berkeley UCLA Press.
• HARAWAY, Donna. 1991. A Manifesto for cyborgs
  science, technology, and socialist feminism in
  the 1980s, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women The
  Reinvention of Nature. New York Routledge.
• MACKENZIE, D and WAJCMAN, J. (eds.). 1985. The
  Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes Open
  University Press.
• MICHAEL, M. 2000. Reconnecting Culture,
  Technology and Nature fron society to
  heterogeneity. London Routledge.
• MILLER, DANIEL SLATER, DON. 2000. The Internet
  an ethnographic approach. Oxford Berg.
• REEVES, BYRON NASS, CLIFFORD. 1996. The Media
  Equation How People Treat Computers, Television,
  and New Media Like Real People and Places.
  Chicago University of Chicago Press.
• STERNE, J. 1999. 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
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theme everyday life
Lester et.al.

• 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

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text goals
Lester et.al.

• 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

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some ideas
Lester et.al.

• Problematize assumption that introduction of new
  media wont 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 (226-228), 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?

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some ideas
Lester et.al.

• Objects have to be understood in context, for
  example location of computer in the home (237)
• The problem of edutainment (239-244)
• Draws a lot on cultural studies perspective,
  Mackay, whose text we have next.

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theoretical mapping new media
(p.228-231)
Lester et.al.

• NEO MARXISTS (-) - Culture subordinated to
  capital
• - New Media even worse
• Themes of control and domination.

Eco
CYBERCULTURE () - Celebration of newness
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?
POPULIST POSTMODERNISM (/-) - Consumption
leisure define us (not production)- Hyperrealism
(Baudrillard), objects are not functional any
more, become symbols.
Hard toseparate
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theoretical mapping identity
Lester et.al.
(p.247-260)
POSTMODERNIST CYBERCULTURE () - Change is good
(Turkle)- Identity play in cyberspace
POSTMODERN MEDIA SUBJECT (/-) - Identity shaped
through media culture (Jensen)
opposed
SUBJECT CONSTRUCTED BY DISCOURSE (-) -
Althusser, Foucault- Cyborgs (Haraway), next
sessions- The posthuman (Hayles) vs.
CYBERPUNK (?)- Breaking free- Romanticism
(sometimes used by CMC cyberculture
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)
Related
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What did you note down as you read the text?
Mackay

• Interesting?
• Controversial?
• Dated?

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text goals
Mackay

• 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

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points for discussion
Mackay

• Activity 1, p. 264. 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

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points for discussion
Mackay

• Technologies are encoded with preferred meanings,
  but they can be resisted/transformed (269-271)
• Appropriation and gendering of new technologies
  (telephone, radio, tv, mobile), where use is not
  limited to function
• p. 285-287, about reading B. How good is the
  ethnographic approach?

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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?
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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. 2003. Research Practice for Cultural
Studies. London Sage.
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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
  elses? 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
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Furby
Marc Pesce

• Personal Story I throughout
• Beyond opinion by using sales data media
  coverage

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Furby
Marc Pesce

• What kind of interaction is that? (p. 21)
• Related to the topic of affection and machines
  The Media Equation
• Why all the craze?