Philosophy and Social Media 1: I Tweet, Therefore I Am

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is booming!

Facebook Statistics 2012

• Facebook has one billion monthly active users

• There are over one billion Facebook posts per day

• There are 3.2 billion likes/comments per day

• There are 250 million photos uploaded each day

Twitter Statistics 2012

• There are over 470 million Twitter accounts

• Twitter is growing at a rate of 11 accounts per second

• 32 percent of all Internet users are using Twitter

Course description

Social media is driving a ‘gift shift’ through our societies that is impacting on

business, politics, personal and social identity in important ways.

Three phases to the shift:

• Gift shift 1.0: the 80s-90s hacker/open source movement

• Gift shift 2.0: the rise of social media

• Gift shift 3.0: the collaborative consumption/sharing movement

Course materials

Online reading materials will be circulated on Twitter using #philsocial

About Tim Rayner

About Tim Rayner

http://facebook.com/lifechangingP4C

What is social media?

Kaplan and Haenlein define social media as: Web 2-based user-generated content.

They identify six types of social media:

1. Collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia)

2. Blogs and microblogs (e.g. Tumblr, Twitter)

3. Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook)

4. Content communities (e.g. Youtube, TripAdvisor)

5. Virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft)

6. Virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life)

What is a prosumer?

• Term ‘prosumer’ was coined by futurologist Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave (1980).

Toffler predicted that consumers would become active to help personally improve or

design the goods and services of the marketplace

• Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams (Wikinomics (2006)) use the term ‘prosumer’ to

encompass product hackers, bedroom DJs and remix artists, SecondLife content

creators, and user-generated media

• Prosumers: producer/consumers of user-generated online content

What is a prosumer?

For hundreds of millions of people, sharing content on social media is a familiar

part of life. Yet little is known about how social media is impacting on us on a

psychological level. We are still learning about how social media impacts on our

sense of personal identity.

The prosumer experience

Peggy Orenstein, ‘I Tweet, Therefore I Am’ (New York Times Online)

1. ‘Each Twitter post seemed a tacit referendum on

who I am, or at least who I believe myself to be’

2. ’I learned to be “on” all the time, whether

standing behind that woman at the supermarket

who sneaked three extra items into the express

check-out lane (you know who you are) or

despairing over human rights abuses against

women in Guatemala’.

Introducing: Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Philosopher of power and ‘subjectivation’ (processes of self-formation)

Panopticon as ‘machine’ of control

‘[The Panopticon] induce[s] in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic

functioning of power’ (Foucault, DP, 201).

The sense of an implicit tribunal: we shape our behaviour in response.

Social media: a virtual Panopticon




who I am, or at least who I believe myself to be.’

• ’[T]he Panopticon induce[s] in the inmate a state of

conscious and permanent visibility…’


• Explains why people tend to be larger than life on social media. The humourist

becomes a prankster; the controversialist an iconoclast; the salesperson a guru;

the activist a revolutionary...



The prosumer experience



who I am, or at least who I believe myself to be’

2. ’I learned to be “on” all the time, whether

standing behind that woman at the supermarket

who sneaked three extra items into the express

check-out lane (you know who you are) or

despairing over human rights abuses against

women in Guatemala’.

Call of the crowd

• Prosumers feel obliged to share content. They hear the call of the crowd.

Call of the crowd

• Prosumers feel obliged to produce product/entertainment for others to

consume. They hear the call of the crowd.

Call of the crowd

• Tribal values: a sense of belonging to an online tribe - a community of people

united by common values and interests

Call of the crowd

• Different social media sites attract different crowds: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter…

The prismatic self

The prismatic self

• Social media creates a prismatic self, where segments

of identity are cultivated in distinction from one another

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together (2011)

• Audrey: experiments in self-expression

‘Each day Audrey expresses herself through a group

of virtual personae. There are Facebook and Italian

MySpace profiles; there are avatars in virtual worlds,

some chat rooms, and a handful of online games.

Identity involves negotiating between all of these and

the physical Audrey’ .

Turkle, Alone Together, 194.

The prismatic selfNomadism: exploration of different identities and experiences

• Sites support aspects of self: Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter…

The pleasure of sharing in public

In sum: the prosumer experience

1. On social media, we post and share in public

• Affirm your authentic potential. Give the best of what you can be. Never forget that

you are engaging in a performance, but take it seriously - it reflects on you.

In sum: the prosumer experience

2. Different sites have different crowds with different expectations of value

• Find the crowd that enables you to be who you are, with whom you can be at your

best. Creatively affirm your authentic person and give it to your tribe.


Education

Philosophy and Social Media 1: I Tweet, Therefore I Am