Digital Dilemmas
Leading Factors that Enhance Engagement in Closed Facebook Groups
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tali Gazit, Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Judit Bar Ilan
Facebook groups are one of the most popular ways to communicate and exchange information on the Internet, as part of e-democracy. One of the problems that online groups encounter is the known fact about the majority of the groups' members being lurkers: they read its content but do not directly contribute. This may result in problems that face online communities such as a low posting rate, lack of valuable content, and the undemocratic atmosphere in the group. Since we believe there is a great importance for a variety of voices sharing ideas from democratic points of view, research about engagement in these groups is essential. Receiving permissions from groups' admins to become part of the Facebook groups, we could study them from within. Interactions in closed Facebook groups were coded over a two-month period. An online survey was answered by 274 group members, containing four sections: demographic, importance, offline activity, and personality questionnaires. In addition, the engagement in the groups was coded for each member. The results show positive relationships between engagement, group importance, and offline activity. Additionally, women and stable older participants tended to engage more in the group discussions. The findings give groups’ managers and members tools to enhance more quality discussions and engagement in Facebook groups, enabling more voices to be heard. Factors that were found as enhancing higher quality engagement may be useful for other groups as well and sustain the online community as a dynamic social group, where all members have equal rights to participate.
A Stranger In His Own (Digital) World: Understanding Heavy Twitter Use Among Digital Natives As Alienation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dave Leland Pahila
This study asks: how do social media sites produce users? Specifically, it looks at user identities and everyday experiences. In a technocapitalist setting that profits off users and imposes ideologies, how does the user think, feel, act, move, and cope? What happens to the user-laborer, and the self as a result? Guided by De Certeau’s phenomenology on everyday life and alienation theory that draws from Neo-Marxist ideas, I expose how users, including myself, are deeply fragmented in continuous use of Twitter. I uncovered how alienation is felt at an existential level, which is inherent to capitalism. Driven by external forces and pressures, results show that ordinary Twitter users are ridden with contradictions, unable to recognize motivations. First, I connect the app’s schemes to prosumption, which showed how users are simultaneously hyper-aware and unaware of their actions, while surrendering agency to the site. The user’s relationship to culture reveals that the site is unconducive to connection—urging commodification and competition. Finally, I investigated the user’s concept of self, which exhibited varying degrees of frustration and loneliness, born out of a gap between the genuine and ‘ideal’ self. This study used alienation theory to reveal how Twitter shapes its ideal users to benefit from their activity extensively, which degrades individuals and experiences. Hopefully, this opens the discussion on the race between new media technologies to capture attention and content for profit. I want to uncover the alien motivations in the role of the prosumer, as a path to resistance in a competitive system.
Going to Town with Privacy: Exploring Voyeurism and the Motivations behind Exposure of Secrecy Online
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Edem Adzovie
Over the years, advances in technology, cultural dynamism, and social attitudes coupled with easy access to recording devices such as mobile phones have transformed the landscape of what is published on the Internet. Pornography and related videos of nudity as well as secretly recorded sexual experiences of people easily find their way to the public space through the Internet. People are in a haste to publish their experiences, including private experiences such as sexual encounters between couples and nude photographs that were hitherto, kept strictly private. In the same vein, access to these contents online is almost limitless. While some people are victims of this sub-culture, others are not, since some of the sexually explicit videos are published by some of these ‘actors’ themselves. The study explores the sub-culture of voyeurism among Ghanaians and analyses what influences people who post their covertly or overtly recorded sex acts online for public consumption. Also, the effects that exposure of the covertly recorded sex acts have on victims will be examined through the phenomenological analysis of interviews of victims. The study is prompted by the current discussion on secret videos and online usage. The study apart from contributing to literature on voyeurism and the use of the online space underscores what motivates people to secretly videotape their own sexual encounters. The study also examines the motivations behind secretly recording other people’s private sex acts and publishing online. The study attempts to discover the existence of any relationship between voyeurism and culture.
