I may have got a little carried away with the newness of ‘new’ in my previous post as a context for the kinds of social actions that are taking place across SNS and in the current state of Web X.0, or whatever the version that it is that we are on right now.
So never one to shy away from over-using a metaphor, and with the advent of a new kind of open and connectedness that exists through new digital media interfaces, I’m pondering how the ‘wired up’ individual has become an actor in their own social play.
Take for example, the demand for near instant response and recognition of communication acts that has renunciated the protocol of social etiquette (and are some of the social ‘procedures’ that I have explored in my blog on Facebook Etiquette.
What is striking as I sit ‘here’ and type this, is that there are levels of social justification and ‘pressure’ that individuals feel obliged to acknowledge and an implicit within the play of social interactions. These obligations emerge as unspoken rituals of social behaviour that provide for seemingly necessary communication conventions that are designed to ‘make safe’ and allow the right the communication choices to be made; such as that critical knowing of when to poke and whom to poke.
These caveats of behaviour are made most visible when someone disconnects themselves from possible interaction. The disconnection is immediate, absolute and highly visible. A social act that is intensified by not responding to communication requests, or broadcast as a deliberate signalling to others from a status update to an automated email responder.
Within the new play of sociability the challenge is to mediate between the seemingly boundlessness of possible of points of contact, alongside the levels of connectability that new social media affords.
Ultimately the individual is ‘responsible’ to make sure that they appear as not only socially ‘in the know’ and ‘current’, but that others are fully aware of their social movements and actions. The status updates on Facebook, Jaiku’s and Twitters emerge as ‘informal’ social gestures as well providing some form of social surveillence(s). The principle function of such broadcasting is not the content of the updates, but rather the play within the play. That the individual is seen to be connected and open about the ‘what’ it is they are ‘doing’, and the ways in which they are doing it. Moreover ‘we’ as audience are interested, or at least made to feel that we are as we follow and subsequently find ourselves a part in such disclosures.
So the socially immersed individual deliberately, and routinely, arranges themselves within a new social arena to spur on their own sense of connectedness and underlie the social value that lies at the heart of the what it is that they may be ‘doing’. My own evaluation of this is that these updates create the opportunity for communication display that is about a heightened level of social investment implicit when‘Tweeting’, Facebook ‘is’-ing and the like. Whilst not an overt commencement for dialogue these are pronouncements that occur in the very now-ness of ‘now’. The kind of mediated communication that is given over to the expression and power of ‘is’.
To this end ‘Maz is: ‘on a train, ready to stop typing and hope your enjoyed this blog’’.
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About Dr Mariann Hardey
I hold the position of Lecturer in Social Media Marketing at Durham Business School. I also spend too much time enjoying social technologies, media+ stuff. That'll make me a Geek then. And a gal.
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