#FAILThe submitted abstract evolved into two different papers(and today I will talk about one of them)

SOCIAL INTERMEDIARIES AND THE LOCATION OF AGENCYA Conceptual Reconfiguration of Web 2.0 and Social Network Sites

Who’s talking?

Martin Berg

PhD in Sociology 2008, Lund University, Sweden

Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Halmstad University, Sweden

(Corporate) Senior Researcher at Good Old with financial support from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (3 year post-doc project)

What’s the problem here?

During the last few years, the internet and its various applications and services have undergone dramatic changes in terms of their social functions and positions

A vast array of attempts to interpret the 'social turn' in the (contemporary) history of the internet: a mixture of 'web 2.0 business manifestos' (van Dijck & Nieborg 2009) and academic research

Despite increasing interpretive efforts, there is spectre of conceptual confusion haunting internet studies and an adjusted nomenclature is clearly needed

Contemporary accounts of Web 2.0/SNS simply love interactivityContemporary accounts of Web 2.0 and Social Network Sites (SNS) often depart from descriptions and analyses of front-end characteristics and their assumed functionality

It is often argued that Web 2.0 and SNS allow for an increased level of interactivity while simultaneously facilitating creative processes of various kinds (user-generated content as the motor of Web 2.0)

Web 2.0 can be regarded as ‘dynamic matrices of information through which people observe others, expand the network, make new ”friends”, edit and update content, blog, remix, post, respond, share files, exhibit, tag and so on’ (Beer and Burrows 2007: 2.1)

However, people tend to disagree with each otherRoughly speaking, it is possible to discern two parallell streams of research that provide radically different answers to the question of how Web 2.0 and SNS ought to be understood.

Although contemporary accounts of Web 2.0 and SNS often take their point of departure in the assumed needs, desires and actions of "users", some researchers have switched focus from a micro-level towards a macro-level of analysis where the question of individual utility appears as inferior to issues of power and institutional exploitation.

Crucially, these research streams tend to locate agency at different levels of analysis.

Currently, there are two competing streams of research Stream #1 (here labelled ’Egocentric networks and individual-oriented agency’) leans toward a micro-sociological perspective, focuses on individual experiences and perceived utility-value of front-end functions, thus emphasising an individual-oriented agency

Stream #2 (here termed ’Labour under siege and system-oriented agency’) presents a certain affinity with a macro-sociological perspective and, mainly highlighting back-end functionalities, focuses on how Web 2.0/SNS act towards the individual user in an exploitive manner, thus assuming a system-oriented agency

Egocentric networks and individual-oriented agencyWeb 2.0 and SNS provide a shift in social organisation: from communities of interest to ‘egocentric‘ networks (and, to some extent, back again through FB Pages, hashtags and so forth), thus assuming processes of online individualisation

SNS: ’web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.’ (boyd and Ellison 2007)

Similarly, questions of privacy, connectivity and so forth are frequently discussed from the viewpoint of the user.

Labour under siege and system-oriented agency’[Web 2.0 is] the new media capitalist technique of relying upon users to supply and rank online media content /.../ [Users] are expected to process digital objects by sharing content, making connections, ranking cultural artifacts, and producing digital content’ (Gehl 2011: 2)

’[T]he architecture of participation sometimes turns into an architecture of exploitation’ (Petersen 2008)

Web 2.0/SNS place ’users under an almost invisible gaze, resulting in a kind of anticipatory conformity, whereby the divulgence of personal information become both routinized and internalized’ (Zimmer 2008)

What’s the problem with conceptual asymmetries?These perspectives and their obvious asymmetry point at a number of problems attached to the conceptual apparatus commonly used to describe Web 2.0 phenomena in general and SNS in particular

Besides of frequently neglecting fundamental insights in their respective arguments, these research streams tend to:

1. Conceptualise Web 2.0/SNS at different levels of analysis, thus rendering the interrelationship between user and system unclear

2. Avoid a thorough exploration of the position that Web 2.0/SNS take in the social realm from which they intervene by mediating, regulating and structuring social/symbolic content

In search for a new nomenclature: ‘social intermediaries’Having institutional characteristics as well as allowing individuals to use them as a means for achieving certain tasks, Web 2.0 and SNS are always more than mere applications

There is a need for a different conceptual apparatus that accounts for both the technology as an actor as well as its relative position in the social realm and within the context of social interaction

This paper suggests that web applications such as Facebook and Twitter should be understood in terms of ’social intermediaries’ since they are mechanisms that intervene in the social realm by offering a means for exchange of social/symbolic content between social actors while simultaneously acting upon that content

But what does the term ‘social intermediaries’ stand for. Really?Social intermediaries are positioned between actors, tying them together while also providing an infrastructural condition for social interaction and the sustainment of social relationships. They act as structuring links between actors by delivering as well as structuring (and exploiting) social/symbolic content

Web applications such as Facebook and Twitter need to be ascribed some sort of agency since they, in mediating conversations or other forms of content, enter the social realm as actors on own behalf

The concept ‘social intermediaries’ takes its point of departure in individual utility as well as the institutional arrangements in which these applications are embedded

Isn’t the term ‘social intermediaries’ just a tautology?The term intermediary could be read both as a noun and adjective. It is a question of ’the nature of action between two persons’ or something that is ’[s]ituated or occurring between two things’. At the same time, the term designates ’[o]ne who acts between others; an intermediate agent’ (OED 2011)

Being situated ‘between others’ while at the same time acting on one’s own behalf as well as in relation to the involved ‘others’, an intermediary is by definition 'social' to some extent.

In this paper, a social intermediary is one that enters the social realm as such and thereby actively intervenes in social flows and exchanges

Reaching to a conclusion

This paper suggests that social intermediaries facilitate the establishment and sustainment of social ties between social actors

At the same time, social intermediaries enter the social realm as agential mechanisms positioned between others wherefrom an exchange of social and symbolic content is facilitated

Furthermore, these mechanism partake, to various degrees, in such exchanges by means of regulatory standards, network-based suggestions and other forms of actions possible to undertake through the processing of harvested personal data

Continuing to reach to a conclusionSocial intermediaries are always acting from a position between individuals while at the same time rendering themselves and their interventions more or less invisible - social flows should be as smooth as possible!

Social intermediaries thus always consist of both front- and back-end characteristics that, acting in concert with and towards the user, gains momentum by taking up a position in the field of communication and social interaction

Such a conceptualisation facilitates a sociological understanding of basic social processes involved from a micro- as well as macro-sociological perspective

Thank you!

martin@goodold.se

twitter.com/martinberg

+46 735 46 50 10