Lit Review

The news last week was saturated with a new study from Sonoma State University regarding facebook and self-image. The MSNBC.com article, “What your Facebook photo says about you” outlines the process researchers at Sonoma State underwent to analyze people’s perception of strangers facebook photos and guidelines on how to shoot the perfect “candid” photo to project your personality; be it religious, aggressive, shy or gregarious. An article published earlier this year by The New York Times, “At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool.” Further piqued my interest in the relationship between people and the internet; especially in regards to how certain websites were evolving as people use them in different ways than originally intended. The article describes how nine-year-old Tyler Kennedy uses the popular video sharing website, YouTube.com as a reference tool when he needs to research a topic for school or for fun. Tyler seems to find this to be second nature, but when the Times interviewed his father, the attitude was one of confusion. From a business standpoint this article is interesting in that it highlights the progression of an entertainment website from frivolous fun to a viable research tool. It also makes an interesting point that children are now seeing video as not just an entertainment media, as there parents did, but as something that can teach, train and inform in new ways not always possible in traditional printed educational material.

With these recent stories in the headlines it made me interested in what kind of research had been done in the field of user-generated content. I wasn’t sure where to begin my research but eventually turned to Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations and found chapter 6, “Publish, Then Filter” to be an incredibly informative overview of the genre. Shirky at times plays the devils advocate while debating the pros and cons of user generated content, at one point using a metaphor I found to be to be particularly apt of a shopping center food court. In the food court, as is also the case on social networking sites such as Myspace, facebook and Twitter, you have unlimited access to the comments and conversations of those around you. While it is entirely possible for you to sit at the next table and eavesdrop, there is a question as to why you would want to. Shirky touches on the difference between broadcast media (radio, TV, movies) and communications media (telegrams, telephones and faxes) and how the distinctions between these forms of communications are blurring. “Publish, Then Filter” argues that as we become more and more active in the creation of content for the web, we develop a greater sense of ownership in our media and believe ourselves to be not only consumers but active participants. Shirky is quick to point out that this will lead to a restructuring of the media business as we know it, not a complete end of the media industry as some pundits are quick to deduce.

While user-generated content and the effects of web communities on the human psyche was a new topic to me, I was sure there was an extensive breadth of literature on the topic and was not sure how to advance with my research. In the end I decided the most logical thing to do when researching any foreign topic was to start at the beginning.

History:

The oldest available work I could find on the topic of the relationship between man and the (modern-day) internet was Internet Culture, by David Porter, published in 1997. While this book is only 12 years old it was very interesting to read Porter’s interpretation of the internet and its effects on society and perhaps even more intriguing to review the un-answerable questions Porter poses to the reader. In his chapter, “An Archaeology of Cyberspaces, Virtual, Community, Identity” Porter examines the roots of the word “virtual” and the correlation between the religious term virtuous; implying that both terms represent concepts of the un-seen; likening Christians in their belief of Christ being present through belief and virtue to the idea of community being present through web chat room users belief in the creation of a virtual community. While most modern-day studies of media terminology would find this to be a bit far-fetched, I found it to be an interesting study in the fear of the unknown that the internet was provoking in the mid-to-late 1990s. Porter goes on to describe the internet as a venue of escape while at the same time pointing out that, at the time, the internet was still generating a frontier mentality which would surely affect the types of community conditions one would find within. The most interesting thing I took away from Internet Culture was the questions Porter left unanswered as room for further research. He touches on the ideas of changing communication and community as well as the potential for the internet to affect our perceptions of identity, race, gender and class. Porter also voices his concerns in the conclusion of Internet Culture regarding the creation of the “Information superhighway” and how it will further exaggerate the digital divide and morph the internet from a platform for the free-exchange of ideas into a marketing tool for major corporations.

Seemingly picking up directly where Porter had left off is the 1999 publication, The Control Revolution, by Andrew L Shapiro. Shapiro’s work is solely interested in the potential of the internet to inspire and aid individuals to re-gain control of the research, writing and distribution of news as well as other media. Shapiro addresses several of the less-glamorous aspects of the internet such as the politics and ownership of computer code. Ownership of code is still an issue today and many, Shapiro included, are concerned that corporations are shaping code in order to maintain control and “authority” over their users. In the chapter, “Masters of our Own Domains- Personalization of Experience”, Shapiro lists the benefits of living within a digital community. He lists global business practices, political activism and education as benefits but then moves on to discuss the potential of the internet to re-create yourself into how/whomever you desire. Experimenting with identity, according to Shapiro, in 1999 was “generally believed to be a safe and productive way for people to explore alternative viewpoints and experiences” (Shapiro, pg 51) by psychologist. Shapiro touches on the use of online avatars as a means of masking the physical self. This relationship between sense of self and the internet caused me to look deeper into the psychology behind the relationship between man and the internet.

Cyber Psychology:

The 2001 publication, Towards CyberPsychology, edited by Giuseppe Riva and Carlo Galimberti, seemed to be a good starting point for my studies on the more technical end of the study of man’s relationship with computers and the internet. While many publications focusing on the issues surrounding cyberpsychology are approached from a purely therapeutic viewpoint (the internet as a therapy tool, virtual reality as a means for guided mediation and visualization, etc) Towards Cyberpsychology provides an in-depth history of the field, including theory and methods, studies of the impact of the internet and the psychological effects of virtual reality on internet consumers. While Towards CyberPsychology agrees with Shapiro in the potential of the internet as a tool to re-create oneself, it further investigates the pit-falls related to how people present themselves online and their lack of ability to judge how others view them in online environments. This book also features an interesting study, written up by Steven Stanley, on the issues of loneliness at play in online conversations and is a sort of pre-curser to the idea of using the internet as a platform for online dating.
Loneliness & Problematic Internet Use:

Stanley’s loneliness concept led me to the 2004 publication, Shades of Loneliness, by Richard Stivers. While Stivers focuses primarily on the potential for internet usage to create a social disconnect in avid users, I found his chapter on narcissism and internet usage to be particularly interesting. Narcissism, as well as depression, is described by Stivers as “pathologies of the will, not the mind” (Stivers, pg 105) which are both greatly exaggerated when lived out via second life, or social networking on the internet. He goes on to correlated modern technology as a device which simultaneously creates an illusion of power while actually stripping the consumer of power. Stivers claims that the “myth of technological utopianism” (Strivers pg 108) is created and enforced by advertising; leading the average consumer into a spiral of consumption as a measure of self-worth. Stivers leaves us with the argument that due to the internets abstract and impersonal format it can, in fact, aggravate the average persons narcissistic or depressed tendencies; tendencies which they generally believe to be using the internet to correct.

The average person will at times use social networking to cure temporary loneliness or boredom. The 2008 CyberPsychology and Behavior Journal article “Loneliness, Depression, and Computer Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Problematic Internet Use” by A. Aykut Ceyhan, Ph.D. and Esra Ceyhan, Ph.D. focuses on a study of University students attending Anadolu University in Turkey and how their levels of loneliness and depression predicted their use of the internet. While the study resulted in the seemingly obvious conclusion that students who were lonely ended up developing a greater addiction to social networking or, as this study refers to it, problematic internet use; I found the process to be quite interesting. Before reading this study I was unaware of the industry standards and scales in place to measure internet use as it relates to mental illness. Some of the instruments used were, PIUS- Problematic Internet Use Scale (developed at Anadolu University), UCLA Loneliness Scale, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Computer Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES). These modes of research and analysis led me back to the original study in the news last week about Facebook photo selection and how people present themselves on the internet. While the study released on November 9th may have been the first widely publicized report on the topic, I was certainly not at a loss when researching how people choose to represent themselves online.

Self-Presentation:

The Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace’s 2008 article, “User Descriptions and Interpretations of Self-Presentation through Facebook Profile Images” by Michele M. Strano focuses on how “impression management” changes with age and gender. Strano focuses solely on the selection of facebook user’s main profile image for this study, and for good reason. While facebook users can “lock” or block-access to other photos they may post, the main profile picture is viewable to anyone who comes across not only the user’s facebook page but also sees comments they may have posted on another user or group’s page. It is the main, and at times, only visual representation a facebook user has for the outside world. Strano’s findings are not particularly remarkable, young girls were more likely to emphasize and include friends and family in their photos, whereas older users were less-likely to change their photos on a regular basis; but it is interesting as an example of how, despite the fact that we are all using the same networking sites, we use them differently depending on our age, gender and sub-culture. I believe this highlights my belief that we use online communities as a reflection of who we are in our actual lives instead of a tool for the re-creation of ourselves into something new and different from our actual selves.

Another method of social networking and conveying ourselves and our ideas on the internet is blogging. The Journal of Cyberpsychology & Behavior’s 2008 article, “Blogging as a Social Tool: A Psychosocial Examination of the Effects of Blogging” by James R. Baker and Susan M. Moore, Ph.D. examines the effects of blogging on the writer’s sense of well-being. Baker and Moore surveyed new members of the social networking site Myspace over the course of two months to “examine the psychosocial differences between bloggers and nonbloggers over time.”(Baker & Moore, pg 1) The obvious result was that the subjects who steadily blogged about their daily activities and problems experienced the same cathartic effect that one would receive from keeping a written journal. The aspect that I found interesting was the addition of feelings of social support, alliance and community that the Myspace bloggers felt from within the Myspace community. I am unsure whether to compare this to Stivers’ study of narcissistic tendencies played out on the internet or to optimistically hope that future generations will utilize online blogs and chat rooms for more than gossip and cyber-bullying and will perhaps create mutually beneficial communities of social support and friendship. This led to my final stage of research which was to review modern usage and interpretation of the internet, particularly of user generated content.

The Cult of the Amateur:

The June 29, 2007 books section of the New York Times featured an interview with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen. Keen had just come out with The Cult of the Amateur and was touting the dark side of web 2.0 and the concept of user generated content. While I’m sure Keen makes several valid and interesting points in his book, the venomous language used in this Times interview was fascinating to me. Keen harps on his lack of faith in “the wisdom of the crowd” (Kakutani, pg 1) citing slavery, infanticide, the War in Iraq and vapid popular culture as examples of how amateur content being allowed on the internet will lead to “ignorance meeting egoism meeting bad taste meeting mob rule” (Kakutani, pg 1) and also voices his concerns regarding intellectual property law and the very concept of ownership and authorship. While I agree that there are very real concerns and legal issues involved in the creation and distribution of user-generated content I believe that to dismiss the entire genre as frivolous and damaging does a great disservice to the field of media studies. Like it or not, this is how people are operating on the internet and these practices are not likely to change any time soon.

A more optimistic article on the effects of internet usage on human behavior comes from the Washington Post. “On the Internet, everybody’s a sit-down comic: commentators and bloggers hone their humor one line at a time”, by Monica Hesse, focuses on the art of the blurb as it relates to facebook status updates, tweets, and blog comments. Hesse interviews a popular Jezebel contributor, Erin Ryan. Ryan has over 1,000 followers on Jezebel despite the fact that she does not write for them, she is a commenter. The article examines the learning-curve Ryan, as well as other funny amateurs of the internet, face when beginning their web-careers. Hesse then begins to examine whether or not the internet has made all of us a little bit funnier (at least in our writing). After speaking with FMlife.com creator and Editor Alan Holding, Hesse is torn between wanting to believe that the average blogger and contributor has evolved into a funnier person through practice and critique or, the more likely scenario, that through the rigid format of websites like texts from last night and fmlife contributors have simply learned how to mimic a style which has been proven to work. To me this is similar to the studies on facebook photo selection in that people are not simply choosing the photos/comments/shared content solely based on the fact that they like them, but are considering how the content they supply will be interpreted by others. I like to think that even if the internet is not causing us all to become “sit-down comedians” as the Washington Post implies it is in some small way encouraging us to appreciate the humor found in our daily lives and providing outlets for us to laugh at ourselves.

This was one angle to the study of user-generated content that I could not find much research on. While it is fairly abstract, I believe that studying how we select which content to share with the web would be an interesting course of study which would benefit not only the fields of psychology but could be used in a media literacy aspect as well. With greater understanding of not only how we use the internet, but how we interpret ourselves and our daily lives in relation to the internet, I believe we can be more knowledgeable consumers of everything the internet has to offer.

References:
Clay Shirky (2008) Here Comes Everybody, the Power of Organizing Without Organizations, the Penguin Press

Jeanna Bryner (2009) What your Facebook photo says about you, beyond pure science, a new study has practical implications, too, MSNBC.com

Miguel Helft (2009) At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool, the New York Times

David Porter (1997) Internet Culture, Routledge Press

Andrew L. Shapiro (1999) The Control Revolution, Perseus Books Group

G. Riva and C. Galimberti (2001) Towards Cyberpsychology, IOS Press

Richard Stivers (2004) Shades of Loneliness, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Aykut Ceyhan, Ph.D. & Esra Ceyhan, Ph.D. (2008) Loneliness, Depression, and Computer Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Problematic Internet Use, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, Volume 11, Number 6

Michele M. Strano (2008) User Descriptions and Interpretations of Self-Presentation through Facebook Profile Images, Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace

James R. Baker & Susan M. Moore, Ph.D. (2008) Blogging as a Social Tool: A Psychosocial Examination of the Effects of Blogging, CyberPsychology & Behavior, Volume 11, Number 6

Michiko Kakutani (2007) The Cult of the Amateur, the New York Times

Monica Hesse (2009) On the Internet, everybody’s a sit-down comic: Commentators and bloggers hone their humor one line at a time, The Washington Post