FullAbstracts Bios IR9

8/14/2019 FullAbstracts Bios IR9

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The Rhetoric of Facebook -- Control, Creativity, and the Charm ofTransgression

"Anders is missing 'is'": The Prescripts of Facebook -- Anders Fagerjord, University ofOslo, NO

Every Facebook user is invited to describe his or her "status", which most users seem to interpretto a description of where or what she or he is doing, alternatively, his or her mood. Until lastyear, the status field always contained an "is": "Anders is ...". The ellipsis mark would then bereplaced by the user ("Anders is writing an abstract for a panel proposal"). The day after the "is"was taken away, the majority of the people on my "Friends list" in Facebook used their statusfields to comment on this fact. "N.N. IS", "N.N is missing is", "N.N. contemplates life without'is'" and so on.

In my experience, this is a typical example of Facebook use. Users respond to suggestions andactions from the Facebook system. The system hails its users, and users respond.

A user's presence in a social network site (SNS) is signified by the user's profile page (Boyd andEllison, 2007). Like other SNSes, Facebook provides tools to create the profile page quickly andeasily. These tools provide what I call the "prescripts" of facebook. "Prescripts" is a term used todescribe template-based easy-to-use authoring systems, like blogs, video editing software, orhomepage editors. Prescripts is what is written before you begin (Fagerjord, 2005).

In Facebook, the prescripts include the status field, fields where users are encouraged to describethemselves in terms of demographic variables and various interests. Additionally, Facebook alsoincludes "apps", additional functionality a user may choose to include in his or her profile page.A large number of the popular apps invite users to describe their tastes in more detail, and eachapp has its own prescripts.

The prescripts forms how users present themselves in a SNS. Consequently, the prescriptsdetermines the users' very existence. As Jenny Sundn has phrased it, users "type themselves intobeing" (2003). In Facebook, a significant share of this typing is provided, and thuspredetermined, by the prescripts.

Facebook users may also post messages on their own profile pages, and on the profile pages ofother users who have accepted them as "friends". A popular kind of message is results fromquizzes and magazine-style "personality tests", and invitations to others to take the same test.Popular web sites who carry such tests and quizzes often provide links that automatically publishtest results on the user's Facebook profile, and invitations to his or her friends.

The history of the Internet is also a history of personal publishing and "self writing" (Foucault,1988). A general trend is that the Web has made it simpler and quicker to write. Homepagesrequired some knowledge of HTML until popular site editors like, e.g., GeoCities appeared.Blogging systems made it even easier. Facebook apps may be viewed as the last development inthis trend: not only is it quicker to write, the system also tells you what to write: you just answera set of questions, and you have written you existence in the system once again, as your postappears in the news lists of all your friends. A cynic might call it a blog for those who don't knowwhat to say.


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I am conducting a content analysis of a sample of Norwegian Facebook users, studying whatthey publish on their Facebook profiles, and then analysing the prescripts of the most popularpublishing tools. The first results will be presented in my panel presentation.

From configurative to writerly networking services -- Christian Ulrik Andersen,University of Aarhus, DK

Social networking sites and web services like Facebook, Second Life, Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc. canbe seen as much more than merely functional spaces (Zuhandenheit). Other spatial aspects canbe highlighted. With our actions we also perform activities we reach for objects in Second Life,we apply applications in Facebook, etc.; we take in space by moving and going to places typically by RSS feeds or linking in LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Facebook, etc.; we judge what wereach for and link to by tagging, rating, social book marking as performed at digg.com e.g.These behaviours change the software space to a place we inhabit (Dasein).

The main question for this presentation is, in which way we inhabit these spaces? What kinds

of actions does the space encourage and what kind of existence is affected? Beyond doubt,dealing with software we are witnessing a particular distribution of a sensual experience (in theterms of French philosopher, Jacques Rancire). In this landscape of creative and participatorysoftware that characterizes the Internet today we thus need a language to further distinguishbetween our spaces of action and the softwares distribution of our sensual experiences.

The paper will suggest that an analysis of the software interface and its discursive andsemantic properties is needed to reveal these political aspects of software. Examining Facebook with references to other web services and networking sites the presentation will suggest thatthe social networking site channels a type of behaviour that is characterized by userconfiguration. This configuration in many ways resembles other software tools but carriesseveral characteristics of the type of software configuration that takes place in games. Gamesforce the user to perceive the space from the cybernetic perspective of the system that the useracts within. Supplementary (and opposed) to this configurative behaviour the presentation willsuggest a writerly approach to software. This type of approach refers to the users reading of thesoftware as a text that can be (re)coded, literally by programming or by interventional acting. Byappropriating a writerly approach to the software, the user allows herself an externalperspective on the system, challenging its underlying rules. By doing this, the user appropriatesanother type of authorship with semantic liberty and a right to express oneself that producesmeaning not otherwise intended by the system (in the terms of Jacques Rancire, one might saythat the user imagines another ethos than designated or a redistribution of her sensualexperience).

Within Facebook, writerly behaviour can be noticed in certain types of user-generated(coded) applications and in users play with fictional identity but is also comparable to the ideaof art platforms as suggested by Olga Guriunova (Media Lab, Helsinki, 2007). Foregroundingthe difference between the configurative and the writerly behaviour, the presentation thussuggests that the technical architecture may allow for cultural creativity at its own premises asopposed to a system architecture that merely promotes participation.


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'Your Friendhas just tackled you. Bite, lick, or tackle them back, or click here to theorizeabout what this all means': a Rhetorical Analysis of the Behavior of Scholars andAcademics in Facebook. -- Kim De Vries, California State University, Stanislaus USA

Though Facebook was initially the province of teenagers, it has become popular with asurprisingly broad range of users, including academics. The inclusion of people beyond theoriginal intended audience has created wider possibilities for transgression of social roles.Academics who use Facebook often clearly see themselves as needing to justify even theirpresence in a community that not only was originally aimed at their students, but that also istypical of many 'web 2.0' sites in taking advantage of free user labor to acquire content and inhaving a Terms of Service agreement that grants them intellectual property rights over user-generated content. The ambivalence of these scholarly users can be seen in their posts toprofessional mailing lists, on their own Facebook pages, and of course in the articles theypublish. Along with what might be considered transgression of a professional role, academics onFacebook also may easily cross social boundaries. Because the idea of an audience is built intothe structure of Facebook, a Burkean rhetorical view that is focused on the issues of audienceand scene and questions the motives for participation is almost inescapable.

At the same time, many scholars in fact use Facebook quite intensely, in spite of understandingthat the privacy policy is terrible, that the Terms of Service agreement is outrageous, and thattheir actions are being channeled by the design of the interface and of the applications availableto enhance each Facebook page. But how are scholars using Facebook, and are we using itexactly as teens do? Probably not, but I suspect there is more overlap than many care to admit.And what keeps us using it in spite of our critical awareness? To explore these questions, anauto- ethnographic approach offers some advantages. It allows observation of not only one's owninteractions with friends, but also observation of those friends' interaction with others. However,size of one's friend network may be small, and may represent a narrow range of user behavior.Further, some people may choose not to have their actions reported in their newsfeeds, so theyare invisible to everyone except the recipient. Therefore, to check the validity of direct, butlimited observation, self-reports are also being solicited from a wider range of users, but thispaper represents a snapshot of what I have observed myself, and a brief discussion of the socialdynamics about which I plan to collect some survey data on the rhetorical perceptions ofscholarly users.

My aim is to determine the extent to which other academics find themselves crossing borders,how they perceive their audience/s, and what effects this border-crossing or "inappropriatebehavior has for them personally and professionally. My own experience suggests that whileperhaps there is some risk, there is also considerable personal and professional benefit toredefining for certain audiences the interpretations of prescribed playful actions. And thiscooperative redefinition enhances Forming connections that are playful and emotionally more

intimate seems to offer both personal and professional advantages. People with whom we havemulti-valent relationships online may also become people with whom we might collaborate onresearch, or organize conference panels, or at least go to for advice when visiting their homecountries/cities. Thus I ultimately argue that along with the playful air pervading Facebook, therecan also be a feeling of risk, and that users sharing experiences that give rise to this tensionactually strengthen their social and professional bonds. In academic circles there aren't manyvenues where play and risk are valued or even possible, which may explain why Facebook hasbeen so attractive to many of us who by rights ought to be the most resistant to its charms.


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Marianne van den Boomen will serve as respondent to the panel and provide a critical responseas well as providing her own perspective.

Brief Biographies:

Anders Fagerjord is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication atthe University of Oslo. His research interests include the rhetoric of multimedia, convergence,and the Web, about which he has published extensively. Outside of academia, he has worked as aradio host and Web designer.

Christian Ulrik Andersen is Assistant Professor of Information and Media Studies at theUniversity of Aarhus, Denmark and a founding member of Digital Aesthetics Research Centre,which hosted the Read_Me festival in 2004. His research addresses a 'writerly' aspect ofcomputing/computer interaction - where users may access the scripted, hidden layer of codebehind the interface. Most of his work has been on gaming but also explores the 'writerly' ofmusical practices, networks and urban life (as part of a wider, research project entitled DigitalUrban Living).

Kim De Vries is Director of Composition and Assistant Professor of English and California StateUniversity, Stanislaus. Her research interests center on borders, boundaries, and transgressionsof both; examples of contexts for exploring this include transnational literacies, comparative (andcontrastive) rhetoric, new/digital media, online communities, and identity studies. For eight yearsshe also has been a staff writer for Sequential Tart, a webzine devoted to comic books and popculture.

Marianne van den Boomen has been working as editor, freelance journalist and web designer.She was involved with the early Dutch Digital City (1994), and published several articles andbooks about Internet culture (Leven op het Net: De sociale betekenis van virtuelegemeenschappen, Amsterdam 2000). Since 2003 she has been employed at the Department ofMedia and Culture Studies (Utrecht University), where she teaches BA- and MA-courses in theprogram New Media and Digital Culture. She is currently working on her Ph.D., a philosophicalinquiry into the role of metaphors in Internet ontology.

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FullAbstracts Bios IR9