ir-conference in September

I'm attending the Internet Research 7.0 conference in Brisbane in September. Exciting! I'm considering whether I should stay in Australia for an extra month or two, but I'm so fond of home...

Short abstract of the paper I'm presenting:

Converging forms of communication
The implementation of digital network technologies has destabilized the traditional differentiation between mass communication and interpersonal communication, as individuals have become potential mass communicators. This article critically addresses the question of whether previously different forms of communication are converging. Examples of conversations from personal weblogs, Flickr, Underskog, Metafilter and audience-discussions related to online mass media articles are analysed to pinpoint central differences such as symmetrical/asymmetrical relations between participants, and the character of conversations and networks. While initially useful, the concept and meaning of convergence easily disguises significant differences.

You'll get a better sense of the paper by reading the long abstract.

common sense

A follow-up on yesterday's post: Teenagers themselves of course have very different opinions about sites such as deiligst.no. Aftenposten's Si ;D daily publishes e-mails and text-messages from youth between 13 and 18. In the beginning of February Lisa wrote an answer to another girl who had been criticising deiligst-users (translation follows):

Bruk fornuften
Deiligst.no er ikke livet til folk, det er et sted man møter nye mennesker, får seg venner eller noe sånt!! Jeg ligger selv på den siden, og ja, innimellom kan det jo komme en som er 23-30 år og si: "Oi oi oi!! Du var driitfin da;D. Kan gi deg kontantkort hvis du viser på cæm!!" Men det er jo bare å si: "nei tror ikke det gamlefar;)"
Nuss Lisa;*

Which translates into:

Use common sense
Deiligst.no isn' your life, it's just a place where you meet new people, get new friends and stuff!! I use it myself, and yes sometimes some 23-30 year old guy comes and says things like "wow, you're really hot ;D. I could give you a prepaid SIM-card if you show off on cam!!" But it's just to say "don't think so old-boy;)"
Kiss Lisa;*

media panics

As a researcher of youth and social technologies I find it difficult to cope with cases where young people reveal too much (both in terms of semi-pornographic photos and personal information). Danah Boyd had an interesting post about how the disappearance of two girls was allegedly connected to their use of MySpace. Which, it turned out, was not the case after all. I wholeheartedly agree with Danah - MySpace is safer than going to the mall. I'm very enthusiastic about the real social value of online interaction, and I don't believe mediated interaction supplants face-to-face interaction. I furthermore agree that it's problematic that there seems to be an exaggerated panic about the danger of online interaction. The panic is visible in a series of articles in Aftenposten lately, though the reported case is serious and concerns a 15-year old girl who was raped by a 19-year old boy she met online. They met on deiligst.no, later had a private IM-conversation (including the use of webcam), exchanged phone-numbers, and agreed to meet face-to-face. I understand that these rare cases are reported and discussed as a problem, even if they are the exceptions rather than the rule. The whole panic-situation proves that research is important. Mediated interaction is a natural and intergrated part in the everyday life of young people. Sharing photos online does not have to be dangerous. Chatting with strangers is usually quite undramatic. Teenagers don't regularly have private explicit web-cam shows. Yet, cases of abuse need to be taken seriously.

I guess the only sound advice we can give to worried parents is the same as ever. Be interested in what your kids are doing and don't ban use of IM, MySpace, blogs and photo-sharing services (bans will certainly not help, though I'm not a big fan of hotornot-sites - the Norwegian deiligst.no is a particularly ugly example). Oh, and respect their privacy: youth usually like to have a parent-free zone.

What happened to common sense.

Edit: re-reading my post confused me. Like, what am I trying to say? These troubling aspects of personal media use are not directly part of my research, though I am interested in how changing representations of subjectivitiy are visible through personally mediated expressions (e.g. text, photos). That is, 15-year olds do not post semi-nude and semi-pornographic photos of themselves only because they have the technological affordances to do so, but because what appears as legitimate representations of self seem to have changed in Western societies (or at least in Norway).

Nancy Berg counts sheep

"She emerges in a lavishly decorated bedroom clad in a peignoir, or negligee, minces around the room stretches, yawns, jumps into bed, and the wriggles out again for a final romp with her French poodle [Phaedeaux, pronounced Fido]. Then she crawls under the covers, cuddles up for the night, and composes herself for sleep."

Another webcam-girl sharing her bedtime routines for everyone to see? Not quite. The quote is taken from Donald Horton and Richard Wohl's eminent article from 1956 "Mass communication and para-social interaction: observation on intimacy at a distance (re-printed in Inter/Media. Interpersonal communication in a media world). Horton and Wohl here describe the plot of a five-minute television spot called Count Sheep, which was aired at 1. a.m. each weekday in 1955. Wonderful concept for a late night show, isn't it? The concept 'para-social interaction' (what John B. Thompson calls mediated quasi-interaction) describes the relations between media personas and their audiences. It's a classic read.

I'd love to see just one episode of Count Sheep.

the man in black

I saw (and heard) Walk the Line yesterday, and I loved it. I'm so happy they didn't make it into an epic "the whole life of Johnny Cash and June Carter"-movie. I rarely find scenes where thirty-somethings are transformed into old people very convincing. This is partly what bugs me with Brokeback Mountain (though it's a decent movie), and I'm especialy referring to Jake Gyllenhaal.

I came home just in time for an edited version of Oscar on NRK. I don't mind Reese Witherspoon winning the best actress-prize, she was pretty good. Joaquin Phoenix was great though.

By the way: Johnny Cash, June Carter, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis is a pretty good line-up for a concert. I didn't know they used to tour together.

who am I - tests

What is it about personality-tests? Why are they intriguing? Do we not already know whether we are introvert, extrovert, intellectual, practical, creative, artistic, healthy or whatever? Of course, I remember personality-tests from my teen-age magazines, but the Internet has clearly made a difference: tests are more elaborate, take ages to answer and you don't have to count your own score. According to the PersonalDNA-test ("you're true self revealed"), I'm an animated director, though I think the test presents me as much more extrovert than I actually am. Of course I have also taken tests at Tickle ("#1 Destination for Self-Discovery"), and every now and then I quite enjoy reading about the I as presented in these tests. Their popularity can evidently be understood in the context of the individualized society: people are expected to shape and construct their own lives (and personalities?).

protection of privacy and research

"Huh, I need to report my research project to the ombudsperson for the protection of privacy at the Norwegian Social Science Data Services?" Or rather, already should have two years ago? I've spent the last couple of hours filling out this form and writing letters of consent that I'll have to send out to my informants. No problem, my wonderful informants deserve to know that I'm not fooling around with the material from the interviews. Actually they already do: I did inform them rather well on these matters, but only via e-mail. I just don't particularly love filling out forms.