Living in virtual communities by Denise Carter. How real do you want your virtual reality?

In this article Carter sets out to make a surprising claim. Most of us would probably expect an article about online friendship to end with statements like "online friendships aren't real", "online friendships have no value" or even "online friendships are damaging". Denise Carter defies expectation by providing qualitative evidence of why an online friendship is in may ways the same as an offline friendship. Even though the context and environment are radically different, that does not mean that the essential building blocks of what constitutes friendship are any different. She even argues that the accelerated forming of bonds and intimacy might even give online friendships an advantage.

I do agree with Carter that online friendships are still very much real. A critic like Clark would claim that trust and commitment aren't necessary online. Only a false sense of intimacy. I stand with Carter in saying that this is not true. We are all social beings and our behaviour won't fundamentally change when the environment does. Sure, in some ways we'll adapt to this new environment, but the underlying desires, personal morals, ethical codes and behavioural patterns will remain intact.

However, something that Carter does not address is the possibility of other forms of bonding and emotional attachment that can exist in online environments being real (or at least perceived as being real). Very recently a friend of mine has voluntarily admitted himself into a 10 week internal treatment in a Belgian psychological institute. The reason for this, is his addiction to a video game. World of Warcraft to be exact.

Right before he would take off I had an elaborate phone call with this old friend, in which we discussed not only the reason behind his decision, but also the events that led up to this. He claimed that 'real life no longer seemed to give him a sense of purpose'. When I asked him where this view came from, he explained to me how important his enrollment in a guild had become to him in his daily life.

A Guild taking a group 'photograph'

Most of you reading this will by now probably be familiar with the premise and workings of World of Warcraft as a role-playing game. A guild within this game is actually much like a stonemasons guild or a writers guild from medieval times. Players join together under the name and logo of a guild, in which they cooperate to achieve shared goals and visions for the group. This involves taking guild missions, fighting or befriending other guilds and improving your rank on the global guild leaderboards.

This friend of mine always seemed to have an endless supply of motivation available to him. Whenever he set a goal for himself, he wouldn't back down until he succeeded. When he joined this guild, this was no different. He wanted to improve his ranking and reputation within the guild, and help the guild itself thrive and improve in the process, no matter what it took. This eventually led him to be so invested in the daily interactions with his fellow guild members that his online life started to take primacy over his offline life. And who can blame him? With 2 failed educations, he was now working as a farmhand for minimum wage with very little prospects of seeing his life improve significantly on short notice. But in this online world he was one of the few with a captain rank, in a guild containing over 200 members. He was respected for his dedication and praised for his achievements. He a major contributor to the guild's high ranking and was always the number one choice for taking along on a mission due to his skill and prowess.

This is not the end

It took a tremendous effort on his part to finally admit to himself that no matter how good this online life seemed, he would never be able to escape reality. I have personally witnessed how real emotions relating to an online existence can be. Many would claim that the problem lies with these emotions being fake. Hollow illusions created by desire and a need for escapism. That is not the case. The problem is that these emotions are very real. The internet, social media, virtual worlds and all the new ways of staying connected can be a tremendous addition to our lives. For some unfortunate people however, these can become a replacement to our lives.

Social Media and Revolution by Julia Skinner. A multi-disciplinary look at the Haren riots.

I'm going to be honest here. This paper is so general that it basically becomes immune to scrutiny. All it really attempts to do is offer three paradigms that could be used to research social media as a communication platform during times of revolution. It never claims any of these three paradigms (physical research, cognitive research and social informatics) to be superior or better in any way, and provides legitimate criticisms to each of them.

Again this is a paper focusing on the importance of taking a multi-disciplinary approach to research. One single field or paradigm is not capable of answering all the questions, so getting 'disciplinary-tunnel-vision' and neglecting any field outside of your own expertise, will make you prone to missing out on valuable information.

Image courtesy goes to dutch news channel 'Hart van Nederland'

I feel that this was a very prominent problem in the public sector analysis of the Haren riots in the Netherlands that took place last year. For those of you who are not familiar with this riot, here's the skinny: A teenage girl living in the town of Haren had a birthday coming up, and invited her friends through a Facebook event. She forgot to manage the privacy settings on this event, making it a public event for the world to see. Within a very short amount of time, hundreds of people decided it would be fun to go, even though they did not know her. Pretty soon the local media caught on to what was happening, and the event page was immediately taken down from Facebook. At this point thousands of people had pledged to be present, so it wasn't long until new events made by others, detailing the party time and location under the name 'Project X Haren', popped up. During the day of the party there were thousands of people Face-booking and tweeting about it, and the government decided to severely limit public transport to Haren in an attempt to prevent chaos. Regardless, a mob of nearly 25.000 people showed up in the small town. The night ended in riots, looting, clashes with riot police and 25 arrests.

Image courtesy goes to dutch news site Nu.nl

Perhaps as expected, for a small country like the Netherlands this was big news. It wasn't long until several politicians had public statements to make about the riots in Haren. Chief of which was ex labor party leader Job Cohen, who pledged to lead an inquiry committee that would research the riots. Those who have seen interviews with Mr  Cohen at the time will probably remember his position on the matter; Facebook played a crucial part in this. A rather surprising comment came from the German minister for consumer protection, Ilse Aigner, who claimed that Facebook should  be partially held accountable for the damage caused in Haren on that night.

Me, and many peers, would openly discuss this view on the matter in days following his announcement. My major argument against Mr. Cohen and Mrs. Aigner remains that Facebook had no major part in the events and can not be held accountable. Their views seem to be grounded in the Physical paradigm, as described by Skinner, because they seem to discount the fact that it was people who responded to the event and went to Haren in the first place. To blame the main communication medium Facebook for these riots is like blaming the telephone for the battle of Beverwijk (a massive football hooligan riot in 1997).

As proposed by skinner, to provide answers to a question, one should not limit themselves to only one view. Yes, Facebook did play a part in these riots, in the sense that it made communications about the event possible. If we'd all be dependent on the mail service for communication these days these riots would arguably never have happened. This does not take away the social and cognitive aspects of the situation. From a cognitive perspective there's a lot to say about how people found out about the event, what drove the massive gain in publicity and what effects the underlying context had. A look from the social informatics could yield an even deeper people-centric understanding of this event. Skinner goes on to say "during the Egyptian revolution, Internet service was stopped in an attempt to hinder protests. As a response, protesters turned to older technologies such as citizen band radios, fax machines, and modems to connect and share information". This further supports my point that a medium can not be the sole blame for any event of this nature. Perhaps it's a bit extreme to compare the revolution in Egypt to a small town riot, but this does show how a tool is not necessarily to blame for its uses.


As a closing statement, here's one last quote from Skinner that Mr. Cohen and Mrs. Aigner should read.
It is hoped that readers will also consider the value in drawing from multiple approaches and will understand the importance of tailoring a method to a question, rather than the other way around.

-Julia Skinner

Addendum to the EU skeptic post [N]

As you may or may not know, this blog is for the time being still a part of a University class I'm following. This does not mean I intend to hold back on any opinion I have, during the next 6 weeks. With that in mind, I would occasionally like to make a post that is not in any way connected to the class matter. For the time being I will mark these posts with the [N] suffix, like this one.

Leaving Castells by the wayside for a moment, I would like to come back on some statements I have made in the previous post. Primarily my claim that the EU parliament is a non democratic institution and that they have far more power over member states than what should be allowed.

You might be familiar with the attempt the EU made at ratifying a constitution of their own in 2005. This constitution was at the time marketed as being a document that would further unite and support the people of Europe, and would make the EU flag and anthem officially recognized by all member states. This constitution also included a promise that all member states would uphold various commonly agreed upon policies, like the equal treatment of sexes, no support for the death penalty and the promotion of peace. The contents however, went much further than this. Various measures were included that would increase the power of the EU over its member states. Chief among which a demand stating that EU law would get primacy over national law, extended by 6 policy areas in which only EU law can exist.

Surprisingly enough, most of the member states demanded that the EU constitution would be ratified through a referendum. This was one of the few occasions on which the EU has ever bothered to include citizens in their policy making. Perhaps not surprisingly, the EU constitution was rejected by referendum in both France and the Netherlands. Since no EU policy can be accepted without agreement of all member states, the EU constitution was cancelled.

2 Years later, a new treaty was proposed. Signed in Lisbon, this treaty is now known to the world as the treaty of Lisbon. Many of the contents were nothing more than rewritten text that was seen 2 years earlier in the suggested EU constitution. This time, only Ireland was allowed to ratify it through a referendum, since their constitution demanded it. After an initial rejection, Ireland went on to ratify the treaty of Lisbon in a second referendum, after some minor alterations had been made. With all the member states now in 'full support' of the treaty, the EU gained its common currency, the European Central Bank became an officially recognized institution and the member states had submitted their legal system to the scrutiny and demands of the EU.

The European Union in it's current form is NOT democratically elected, has gained its power through NON democratic means and is able to intervene in the democratic procedures of all member states. This is why I am a Euro Skeptic.

The new public sphere by Manuel Castells (and why the European Union is playing a dangerous game)

Manuel Castells is considered by many to be an expert on the subject of the information age we currently live in. He is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, a frequent visiting professor of technology and society at MIT, publisher of 25 distinguished books and the owner of 15 honorary doctorates and university medals. It's safe to say that after reading his article there weren't much criticisms I could levy at his work.

In this article Castells sets out to define the concept of a global civil society, the sphere in which global organization and policy making takes place, and the lack of grip that most national governments have on global scale. This global civil society is very similar to the national civil society he describes earlier in his article.

The image proposed by Castells is this. Not only is a government responsible for providing security and governance to it's citizens, but it also has to draw on discourse with these very citizens as a way of validating their choice of policy and process. This happens within the Public Sphere. The Public Sphere consists of all space where discourse can take place between a government and its citizens. The collective expressions within the Public Sphere is what's known as the Civil Society.

In order for a government to be considered a democracy, there must be a free civil society in place. One that is not censored nor controlled in any way. The government should limit itself only to the promotion of proper behavior and mutual respect. To quote Castells: "the relationship between the state and civil society is the cornerstone of democracy".

As you have probably read in the title, this post is probably not going to end up with a very positive view towards the European Union. Before I delve into those ravings I would like to point out one more element from the article, which I probably can't stress enough. Global policy should only be considered with global affairs. It should therefore not be desired, or indeed possible, for international governance to overrule democratically chosen national governments! This means that international and global governance should focus on commonly agreed upon policies, such as the counteracting of global warming and the protection of human rights.

Que the EU. An international body of governance that, as we may know, consists of members from each of its member states. These members, known as MEP's, are elected in whatever way member states decide is appropriate. Sadly in multiple cases MEP's are elected through Party-List PR, like in Belgium and France, or through national election results in Germany, Italy and Poland. My second strife with this system is how the nations are represented by each getting to elect an arbitrary number of MEP's based on some degressive proportionality (similar to the electoral votes system used in the US). The thing is, as a dutchman I never voted for any of the Italian MEP's or German MEP's. To be accepted as a democratically elected body of governance the EU MEP's should be elected by ALL european citizens. Sadly, a skewed process based on the size of nations is implemented, many of which never even get the opportunity to elect their own MEP's.

Now I wouldn't object so strongly to this election system if it weren't for the fact that the European Union has the power to actually govern Europeans. A quote from the EU website blatantly states the following: "EU law - which has equal force with national law - confers rights and obligations on the authorities in each Member State, as well as individuals and businesses. The authorities in each Member State are responsible for implementing EU legislation in national law and enforcing it correctly, and they must guarantee citizens’ rights under these laws."

So not only is this international governing power elected through non-democratic procedure, but it also has the ability to propose laws equal in force to national law, and the power to force its member states into enforcing these laws as if they were their own. And we're not just talking about commonly accepted policies like counteracting global warming either. The EU has created several international laws dealing for instance with local economies such as an enforcement of budget deficit limits. In the words of Simon Hix, the EU is now a quasifederal polity (Hix, Simon. The Political System of the European Union (2nd ed.). p. 123).

As my closing statement I would once more like to turn to the work of Castells, who proposes that public governance, just like national governance, should be based on the knowledge within the global public sphere. A sphere in which discourse can take place between everyone in the public and the government, and from which a governing institution must draw justification and inspiration for their decisions. Not a sphere with skewed representations, and especially not with the absence of this sphere. 


"Because we live in a globalized, interdependent world, the space of political
codecision is necessarily global. And the choice that we face is either to construct
the global political system as an expression of power relationships without cultural
mediation or else to develop a global public sphere around the global networks
of communication, from which the public debate could inform the
emergence of a new form of consensual global governance. If the choice is the
latter, public diplomacy, understood as networked communication and shared
meaning, becomes a decisive tool for the attainment of a sustainable world order."
                                                                                                    - Manuel Castells

Unpacking the social media phenomenon - a review

One question that researchers are intensively dealing with today is 'how do we analyse social media?' The social media of today are undoubtedly large, complex and dynamic. This makes analysis a daunting task for those who want to build a deeper understanding of a certain platform. Jan H. Kietzmann and colleagues provide a basic honey comb shaped framework in their 2012 paper: "unpacking the social media phenomenon: towards a research agenda".

The honeycomb 'lenses' as suggested by Kietzmann et al.

When reading this paper it becomes very clear that even Kietzmann et al. don't have all the answers, but that is not the purpose of this text. What it tries to achieve is nothing more than a basic framework, a guideline if you will, that might help researchers to get started. There's nothing I appreciate more than researchers who are willing to take a multi-disciplinary approach, instead of focussing solely on their own limited field of expertise. Kietzmann et al. have more than succeeded at this, by blending this technology-heavy field with influences from social science, psychology, behavioral science and cognitive science.

But through all this well structured, well referenced and multi disciplinary information I can't help but feel there's something missing. The seven parts of the framework, or 'lenses' as they are called in the paper, can't be this separate from each other right? Though Kietzmann et al. do note that these lenses are not mutually exclusive, it seems to me that there are more interesting relations at play between these lenses. Relations that are worth mentioning and might yield more information for potential researchers.

For instance, when looking through the groups lense, certain group dynamics might influence other lenses. A group in which sharing is a much loved and appreciated practice, the group dynamic itself will strengthen the motivation for individuals to share. Similarly, when the reputation lense yields that the overall perceived reputation of a platform is low, we'll most likely see a decrease in the frequency of conversations, because people might not trust that their conversations are private.

As a whole, I have nothing but praise for the honeycomb model provided by Kietzmann et al. I would however like to suggest that an extended version is made, which takes these lense relations into account. Perhaps a honeycomb with weighted relations depending on influence.

Suggestion for a honeycomb with weighted relations