Haben Sie etwas län­ger Zeit, als die übli­chen 0,22 Millisekunden, in denen man die Inhalte einer Website gemein­hin im Super-Kurzzeit-Gedächtnis abspei­chert und quasi in Echtzeit wie­der ver­gisst? Der fol­gende Beitrag von Kim de Vries befasst sich wis­sen­schaft­lich mit einem Phänomen, das wir alle ein­ge­hend aus der täg­li­chen Surfpraxis ken­nen: der sym­bo­li­schen Kommunikation auf Facebook. Wer noch nie ge-super-poked hat, der schwinge das erste Bein Ich freue mich jeden­falls außer­or­dent­lich über die­sen Gastbeitrag von Autorin Dr. Kim de Vries, die an der California State University Stanislaus arbei­tet. Wir lie­fen uns auf Facebook über den Weg, wo sich sozu­sa­gen unsere Poke-Radien über­schnit­ten. Kim wie­derum kennt so unzwie­lich­tige Gestalten wie meine Studienkollegen Bernhard Rieder und Mirko Tobias Schäfer: die Welt ist also online und off­line klein. Aber genug der ein­lei­ten­den Worte — allen Kommunikationswissenschaftlern und inter­es­sier­ten Beobachtern aktu­el­ler Geschehnisse wün­sche ich viel Vergnügen mit der fol­gen­den Lektüre.

Kim de Vries: Your Friend has just tack­led you

Bite, lick, or tackle them back, or click here to theo­rize about what this all means.

Introduction

Though Facebook was initi­ally the pro­vince of col­lege stu­dents, it has become popu­lar with a broad range of users since opening its door to anyone with an email address in September 2006. However, until very recently, most rese­arch on Facebook has focu­sed on the stu­dent demo­gra­phic rather than explo­ring how Facebook is gro­wing into a mas­sive online society that is inha­bi­ted by many dif­fe­rent groups using Facebook in a variety of ways for a variety of rea­sons. The aca­de­mics stu­dy­ing Facebook gene­rally join it and use it in order to observe stu­dents; now that more faculty are using Facebook outs­ide the class­room, to orga­nize events and to socia­lize, turning the focus to our own use of Facebook reve­als that our own com­mu­nities are being affec­ted as well.

As of August 2008, Facebook is one of the most rapidly gro­wing social net­works, boas­ting 100 mil­lion active users, trans­la­ted into twelve European and a gro­wing num­ber of Asian and African lan­gua­ges. The extent to which groups of people con­nec­ted on Facebook can be defined as com­mu­nities is highly debata­ble and a use­ful alter­na­tive has been sug­gested by Rieder and Schäfer: “forms of inter­ac­tion and col­la­bo­ra­tion cha­rac­te­ri­zed by flee­ting encoun­ters, tran­si­ent team­work and weak ties – social spaces that may or may not evolve into more sta­ble forms of socia­bi­lity (2007).” They go on to pro­pose con­side­ring these social spaces as “hybrid foam,” with foam’s ephe­me­ral qua­li­ties. But when Facebook con­nec­tions occur bet­ween people alre­ady con­nec­ted in other ways, such as pro­fes­sio­nally, it may act as a sta­bi­li­zing agent, encou­ra­ging those con­nec­tions to become stron­ger and more permanent.

Analyzing the kinds of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that dif­fer from the text­ual exch­an­ges com­mon via email, blog­ging and com­men­ting, online forums and so forth shed light on what may occur when we begin to Connect with our col­lea­gues through Facebook. Facebook pro­vi­des novel and amu­sing ways for people to con­nect. More import­antly, the con­nec­tions feel more embo­died, so that users may believe they are get­ting to know people in a more per­so­nal way than through an email list or chat room. Participants may also be more inclined to dis­play ludic beha­vior because by vir­tue of mee­ting on Facebook, which is a rather un-serious place, a cer­tain level of play­ful­ness is assu­med. However, the fact remains that while we may par­ti­ci­pate in a variety of com­mu­nities via Facebook, inclu­ding fan, artistic, social, fami­lial, and pro­fes­sio­nal, these tra­ces of this com­mu­ni­ca­tion may be visi­ble to all of our com­mu­nities, though the com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons may only be appro­priate to one. Thus, our par­ti­ci­pa­tion in various sphe­res actually does not hap­pen in sepa­rate ‘bub­bles’ but may in an addi­tio­nal way be con­siders as a sort of foam in which there may be shared bor­ders or inter­pe­ne­tra­ting cells.

Because various social sphe­res may inter­pe­ne­trate on Facebook, aca­de­mics who par­ti­ci­pate there risk cros­sing social boun­da­ries. Just as we warn our stu­dents, we have to con­sider who we add as fri­ends and what they can see us doing. A num­ber of arti­cles have recently focu­sed on the risk of losing stu­dents’ respect by using Facebook, yet this does not seem to stop most faculty from using Facebook. And what about what our col­lea­gues may see? What do we gain from taking these com­mu­ni­ca­tive risks online, and how is our use of Facebook to com­mu­ni­cate and form social con­nec­tions affec­ting off­line scho­larly communities?

These are vast ques­ti­ons and pro­vi­ding a com­pre­hen­sive ans­wer is beyond the scope of this paper, but con­side­ring an exem­plary case will sug­gest what pos­si­bi­li­ties might be pro­fi­ta­bly investigated.

Approach

Kenneth Burke’s pen­tad pro­vi­des a hel­pful frame­work with which to under­stand com­mu­ni­ca­tion (Burke 1945). According to Burke, any human inter­ac­tion (or text) may be ana­ly­zed in terms of five ele­ments framed as these five questions:

• Act: What pur­po­se­ful act has taken place?
• Agent: Who took this action?
• Agency: How or with what did they do it?
• Scene: Where, when and in what con­text did the act take place?
• Purpose: Why did they do it? What was their intent?

Rhetorical ana­ly­sis is then per­for­med by exami­ning the how pairs of the ele­ments func­tion wit­hin the inter­ac­tion or text, and by demons­tra­ting how one mem­ber of the pair deter­mi­nes the other member’s nature. The results of such an ana­ly­sis may reveal con­tra­dic­tions bet­ween what is sta­ted by a rhe­tor (wri­ter, actor, or speaker) and what is sup­por­ted with the rhe­to­ri­cal evi­dence he or she pres­ents. In this case howe­ver, the issue is not that people on Facebook are try­ing to will­fully mis­lead each other (though some may be try­ing to), but rather that the inten­ti­ons of users in car­ry­ing out actions are not the same as the inten­ti­ons of desi­gners in pro­mo­ting the same actions, nor are the inter­pre­ta­ti­ons of reci­pi­ents neces­sa­rily accurate.

Though com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always media­ted, in the case of Facebook, the phy­si­cal dis­tance and the inter­face my both intro­duce dis­tor­ti­ons into our under­stan­dings of each other, even while crea­ting the impres­sion that we are get­ting to know each other very well indeed. Performing a rhe­to­ri­cal ana­ly­sis will help shed some light on how scho­lars are con­nec­ting on Facebook, and on how these con­nec­tions are affec­ting our com­mu­nities. Ultimately we may see that our pro­fes­sio­nal net­works are actually being chan­ged by an online inter­face.

Further, Facebook may be more gene­rally con­tri­bu­ting to the deve­lop­ment of hybrid agency, shared bet­ween user and sys­tem. For aca­de­mics to be come con­di­tio­ned to this hybrid agency may have quite import­ant imp­li­ca­ti­ons as well. To explore these issues, and exem­plary ana­ly­sis of some mem­bers’ use of the Superpoke app­li­ca­tion was conducted.

The Five Elements to be Analyzed:

Act

The acts being con­side­red are com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons through Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons, and an exch­ange of Superpoke gestu­res is the exem­plary case. The spe­ci­fic gestu­res vary, and this varia­tion makes clear that the defi­ni­tion of an “act” is com­pli­ca­ted when it is vir­tual, not actual. Wishing someone “happy birth­day” can be expres­sed through a variety of media wit­hout the mes­sage vary­ing much, but slap­ping someone with a trout would be very dif­fe­rent if car­ried out in per­son; it’s vir­tual mea­ning depends on the fact that it is virtual.

Agent

The most obvious agents are Facebook users, but argu­ably the sys­tem its­elf and the deve­l­o­pers become agents in the way they chan­nel user actions. Each user choo­ses how and when to com­mu­ni­cate, but the sys­tem encou­ra­ges cer­tain actions by fre­quently remin­ding users to respond to com­mu­ni­ca­tion of ano­ther user; by sug­gesting cer­tain actions — like exp­li­citly choo­sing to have a gesture fea­tured in the news­feed; and by rewar­ding a hig­her volume of com­mu­ni­ca­tion generally.

Agency

In one sense, mem­bers use their own agency – they decide how to com­mu­ni­cate. But on Facebook, mem­bers use the Facebook plat­form to com­mu­ni­cate, in par­ti­cu­lar choo­sing from an array of app­li­ca­ti­ons which offer limited choices and in that way chan­nel user beha­vior. In this case the Superpoke app­li­ca­tion allows users to make a variety of gestu­res, lar­gely physical/audible toward one ano­ther. A gesture may be sent eit­her to one fri­end from the user’s fri­end list, or broad­cast to many. Depending on how both sen­der and recei­ver have set their pri­vacy opti­ons, the gesture may be repor­ted in the Newsfeed (on the mem­ber pro­file page) and on the Minifeeds of each mem­bers’ fri­ends. Arguably we see and emer­gent hybrid agency deve­lo­ping in all of these app­li­ca­ti­ons, that com­bi­nes user agency with that of the sys­tem and the developers.

Scene

The scene is the Facebook plat­form, spe­ci­fi­cally the pro­file and home pages of the mem­bers enga­ged in the exch­ange. However, thanks to app­li­ca­ti­ons like Plaxo and Friendfeed, which collect social net­work news across plat­forms, the gestu­res maybe re-posted outs­ide of Facebook. Further, the news of the gestu­res maybe dis­cus­sed in other venues – in blogs, email, in per­son – so that the bor­ders of the scene are fluid. The per­ma­nence of the gestu­res, fore­ver recor­ded, marks a sharp dis­tinc­tion to the real-life actions they mimic.

Purpose

Possible expla­na­ti­ons for par­ti­ci­pants’ devo­tion to Facebook and wil­ling­ness to play are sug­gested by recent rese­arch on the pro­blem of esta­blis­hing co-presence online (Zhang 2007), how embo­di­ment and pre­sence are expe­ri­en­ced in online com­mu­nities (Marshall 2004), and through con­side­ra­tion of the hybrid foam meta­phor recently sug­gested as a repla­ce­ment for net­work (Schäfer 2007). Application deve­l­o­pers also have their own pur­po­ses, the pri­mary being to encou­rage more and ongo­ing use of the application.

Analysis

Purpose is a key ele­ment in this ana­ly­sis because par­ti­ci­pant inter­pre­ta­tion of each other’s pur­po­ses shapes the idea each forms of the other’s per­so­na­lity and iden­tity. Further, because online socia­lity func­tions in some ways dif­fer­ently from socia­lity enac­ted in per­son, under­stan­ding par­ti­ci­pant moti­ves depends on under­stan­ding those dif­fe­ren­ces. Finally, par­ti­ci­pant pur­pose is always chan­nel­led by the design, and so it always echoes the deve­l­o­pers’ pur­pose to some degree. The ana­ly­sis begins with the par­ti­ci­pants’ pur­pose, because this pur­pose under­lies not just use of Superpoke, but of Facebook more generally.

Jonathan Marshall has argued that par­ti­ci­pants in online com­mu­nities often expe­ri­ence “asence” or onto­lo­gi­cal uncer­tainty expe­ri­en­ced online because “there is no mar­ker of exis­tence beyond the act of com­mu­ni­ca­tion its­elf (Marshall 2004).” Facebook dif­fers not only in com­bi­ning the per­ma­nence of the homepage/profile with email– and bul­le­tin board– like func­tions, but espe­cially in offe­ring games and other app­li­ca­ti­ons that mimic phy­si­cal expe­ri­en­ces and leave highly visi­ble tra­ces. Thus on Facebook even if par­ti­ci­pants are not in steady com­mu­ni­ca­tion, asence is reduced.

A striking aspect of this shift is the trans­gres­sive beha­vior often exhi­bi­ted as a mat­ter of course inside Facebook toward those who are col­lea­gues and may become fri­ends. Marshall has sug­gested that mem­bers of online com­mu­nities may use sexual beha­vior to esta­blish inti­macy and main­tain con­tact, much more so than in face-to-face rela­ti­onships. Many email lists exp­li­citly warn par­ti­ci­pants away from overly per­so­nal chat­ter, but this stric­ture would seem at best counter-productive and at worst stodgy in an environ­ment like Facebook. The flir­ta­tious tone of many Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons may attract users because it per­fectly addres­ses this alre­ady esta­blis­hed mode of online com­mu­ni­ca­tion. the appearance of this dyna­mic in a space that is at least par­ti­ally pro­fes­sio­nal howe­ver, is a shift, and may seem far-fetched to those who have not expe­ri­en­ced it. This flir­ta­tious dyna­mic can be seen cle­arly with some of the most popu­lar applications.

The Superpoke app­li­ca­tion allows users to send gestu­res and actions to fri­ends who have also added Superpoke. The pos­si­bi­li­ties range from sea­so­nal or holi­day gree­tings, to roman­tic or sexual acts, to mean or even vio­lent gestu­res. Wishing someone Happy Chinese New Year is fairly unequi­vo­cal, but the actual mea­ning expres­sed when one user licks, tack­les, whips or throws a sheep at ano­ther is open to a wide range of inter­pre­ta­tion and sexual innu­endo can easily be con­veyed. In addi­tion to strengt­he­ning a fee­ling of inti­macy through flir­ta­tious beha­vior, ambi­guity may also con­tri­bute to making Superpoke seem enter­tai­ning to scho­larly types; every mes­sage or a series of them can be trea­ted as a puz­zle to be sol­ved or a cypher to be decoded.

But wha­te­ver else is accom­plis­hed when these mes­sage are exch­an­ged, the goals of the deve­l­o­pers are always ful­fil­led, so long as com­mu­ni­ca­tion continues.

Examples of Superpoke Exchanges

Ambiguous com­mu­ni­ca­tive moti­ves may be obser­ved in the Superpoke feed of Hans Bernhard, a mem­ber of the artist group Übermorgen.

If each of the five ele­ments are con­side­red in this exch­ange, on the sur­face, agent varies accor­ding to who sent the poke, and motive may vary as implied by the dif­fe­rent actions cho­sen. In choo­sing to use Superpoke instead of text, the par­ti­ci­pants in the exch­ange have alre­ady opted for a poten­ti­ally more ambi­guous mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and also one that “feels” more embo­died. In the above history of gestu­res, we see some that are socia­ble and fri­endly, such as dancing, giving coo­kies, hit­ting the beach, or fin­ding enligh­ten­ment. But we also see some that are ambi­guous, like thro­wing Yuri Gagarin or hyp­no­ti­zing, and some that are down­right naughty, like span­king, taking sexy pic­tures, and going wild. Complicating the inter­pre­tive task for par­ti­ci­pants is the accu­mu­la­tion of gestu­res, how the gestu­res direc­ted at one fri­end com­pare to those direc­ted at ano­ther, and each member’s cul­tu­ral awa­ren­ess of what gestu­res mean. In spite of ample room for misun­der­stan­ding, exch­an­ging gestu­res often lea­ves the people invol­ved fee­ling they are get­ting to know each other much bet­ter than if they were sim­ply exch­an­ging text mes­sa­ges. Further, because the gestu­res occur in what is alre­ady defined as a fri­endship (because par­ti­ci­pants must be on each other’s fri­ends list) appa­rent hos­ti­lity must be assu­med as humor, while flir­ta­tion may be meant as a joke, or meant seriously. However when we say “seriously about vir­tual actions, what doers this mean? Were we mee­ting in per­son, I would not in fact be able to hyp­no­tize Hans, nor would R. Pettauer be able to toss a long dead astro­naut at him. So along with always being alre­ady defined as fri­endly, these actions are also always part of a game the par­ti­ci­pants play together.

This kind of play­ful activity seems espe­cially con­cen­tra­ted during times when in a rela­ti­onship car­ried out in per­son, par­ti­ci­pants might nor­mally meet, whe­ther because of a spe­ci­fic event, like a birth­day, or because the rela­ti­onship is advan­cing. For example, the fol­lo­wing brief but con­cen­tra­ted exch­ange took place bet­ween mys­elf and a fel­low inter­net scho­lar two days after mee­ting at a con­fe­rence at which we’d spent a few hours after the ban­quet drin­king and tal­king shop, but hadn’t had any fur­ther chance to meet for more than a few minutes.

It does not appear to be a very fri­endly exch­ange, but in fact car­ries on the humo­rous tone alre­ady esta­blis­hed when we met face to face, and though brief, this exch­ange ser­ved to con­firm our initial impres­si­ons of each other. Trout-slapping evo­kes a sort of slap-stick humor, while a res­trai­ning order is a melo­dra­ma­tic over-reaction, and so also humo­rous. A hadou­ken refe­ren­ces an aspect of Asian cul­ture that would be known to fans of video­ga­mes, Japanese Anime, or Hong Kong action movies, so the gesture invi­tes ack­now­led­ge­ment of a shared interest.

This may sound quite cozy and alto­ge­ther posi­tive; two col­lea­gues main­tain a con­nec­tion rather than not. And in fact, it may in some ways be posi­tive since, to con­ti­nue this example, David and I are slowly moving toward working on some Facebook rese­arch toge­ther. However,we are also fol­lo­wing a path laid out by the Superpoke deve­l­o­pers and as we fol­low that path, we are beco­m­ing more and more con­di­tio­ned to con­duc­ting parts of our pro­fes­sio­nal exch­an­ges in the game world, accor­ding to it’s rules. Of course, users are not thin­king of this when they choose what to do; they are thin­king of how much they enjoy fee­ling more con­nec­ted and as explai­ned below, this has been an ongo­ing issue in online sociality.

The Importance of Being Together, or at Least Feeling Like You Are

When fri­endships form online, they often reach a moment when the new fri­ends would meet face-to-face and the rela­ti­onship would be car­ried out off­line as well, but when this is preven­ted by dis­tance or any other fac­tor, the online chan­nels must carry quite a load of infor­ma­tion and fee­ling, which may serve to inten­sify the vir­tual exch­an­ges (Marshall). Participants in this kind of rela­ti­onship often become extre­mely inti­mate on an emo­tio­nal level because phy­si­cal inti­macy is impos­si­ble. Note though that this does not only apply to roman­tic or sexual rela­ti­ons, but to all con­nec­tions. With those who are phy­si­cally pro­xi­mal, we can easily exch­ange hugs or hand­shakes, share meals, go to muse­ums or engage in hund­reds of other phy­si­cal activi­ties which because they are public and com­mon may not seem ter­ri­bly signi­fi­cant or inti­mate. But shared phy­si­cal expe­ri­en­ces of any kind cement bonds bet­ween people, and also reveal a great deal about the par­ti­ci­pants to each other. We have an ongo­ing fee­ling of being toge­ther, or ‘co-presence” (Zhang 2007). In many ways the exch­an­ges on Facebook seem to stand in for phy­si­cal encoun­ters – going to lunch or for drinks, atten­ding cul­tu­ral events, etc.

Superpoke pro­vi­des a selec­tion of actions that users choose from in order to express inte­rests, poli­ti­cal views, fla­vors of humor, and so on. But any action can be inten­ded seriously, or iro­ni­cally (or both). Understanding each other’s moti­ves beco­mes para­mount because com­pres­sing all con­tact into an online chan­nel inten­si­fies the exch­ange, and the more effort users expend in inter­pre­ta­tion, the more com­mit­ted they are to the exch­ange. So by offe­ring some actions that may be cryp­tic to some users and require them to make an inter­pre­tive effort, deve­l­o­pers increase the odds that users will con­ti­nue the exchange.

Of course not ever­yone uses Superpoke, but simi­lar exch­an­ges can be obser­ved in Boozemail, Free Gifts, Hug Me, and nume­rous other app­li­ca­ti­ons. Further, as has been poin­ted out, play­ing a game con­di­ti­ons us to the game-world or sys­tem. In this case Facebook con­di­ti­ons us to a world in which we inter­act play­fully with ever­yone, whe­ther they are fri­ends or col­lea­gues, shif­ting the tone of all these rela­ti­onships in a more play­ful and some­ti­mes trans­gres­sive direc­tion. Playing with others we feel we get to know them bet­ter. In addi­tion to asence being redu­ced and co-presence main­tai­ned bet­ween indi­vi­du­als, this occurs also in groups and communities.

It seems the play­ful or ambi­guous tone promp­ted by Superpoke and other app­li­ca­ti­ons has influ­enced pro­fes­sio­nal com­mu­nities on Facebook, such as the intri­guin­gly tit­led ‘Critical Theory and Theorists are Hot.’ In fact, many serious scho­larly groups now have a pre­sence on Facebook, such as the Institute for Distributed Creativity; Theory.Org; the Electronic Literature Organization; the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts; and of course the Association for Internet Researchers, to name just a few. On the last for example, mem­bers can iden­tify who else is atten­ding the con­fe­rence and find any fri­ends shared in com­mon, which may create a stron­ger fee­ling of belon­ging in the group. In these groups, mem­bers inter­act through wall posts or forum dis­cus­sions in a man­ner that may feel more embo­died and ‘authen­tic,’ and espe­cially in con­junc­tion with the other inter­ac­tions faci­li­ta­ted and even pre­scri­bed by Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons that we see a real shift in the way we are mee­ting and esta­blis­hing hybrid social/professional rela­ti­onships. But do we really get to know people in the same way as we would inter­ac­ting in per­son, or if not, what impact does the dif­fe­rence have on our personal/professional connections?

Implications

Several app­li­ca­ti­ons offer to illus­trate a user’s social con­nec­tions, often with the imp­li­ca­tion that by collec­ting all kinds of data, some reve­la­tion will be found in the sub­se­quently gene­ra­ted map. In fact exami­ning the Facebook app­li­ca­tion “Nexus” reve­als that though net­work visua­liza­tion app­li­ca­ti­ons are sup­po­sed to reflect par­ti­ci­pants’ social con­nec­tions, they often offer a dis­tor­ted view, sug­gesting that Facebook its­elf may offer a dis­tor­ted view. Facebook seems to allow cer­tain kind of expan­sion of user’s social net­work. For example, the Nexus screen­shot below appears to show a dense net­work among some of my friends/colleagues, with some con­nec­tions lea­ding out of the frame from Monty Cantsin and Karen Elliot.

Were we to expand the pic­ture, we would find that Monty Cantsin and Karen Elliot con­nect this clus­ter to two other dense clus­ter of my fri­ends. However, both of those “people” are fic­tio­nal. Any user can of course see where these kinds of rep­re­sen­ta­ti­ons are dis­tor­ted in their own rela­ti­ons, but from the outs­ide, there is no way to know how accu­rate they are, unless one has the off­line know­ledge to draw on. In this case, not ever­yone would know that “Monty Cantsin” is in fact not a real per­son. Further, unless they are well known in per­son, even people in one’s own net­work may inter­pret noti­ces from Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons that they share movie taste, life goals or other pre­fe­ren­ces as accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­ti­ons, but are they? In many ways dis­tor­ti­ons may be intro­du­ced that are not dis­co­vered until a rela­ti­onship moves beyond the pre­scri­bed inter­ac­tions of Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons to actual con­ver­sa­tion or mee­ting in per­son. But see­ing beha­vior that in its play­ful­ness or appa­rent inti­macy is occa­sio­nally inap­pro­priate may lead people to per­ceive it as more authen­tic and the per­son obser­ved as more can­did and “real.”

(In)conclusions

This preli­mi­nary ana­ly­sis sug­gests that Facebook is affec­ting our com­mu­ni­ca­tion prac­tices and our com­mu­nities in several ways. First of all, the rhe­to­ri­cal ana­ly­sis reve­als that while Facebook app­li­ca­ti­ons appear to sim­plify the rhe­to­ri­cal situa­tion by redu­cing the num­ber of varia­ble ele­ments, in fact the remai­ning ele­ments become har­der to inter­pret, and agency is divi­ded bet­ween users, the sys­tem, and deve­l­o­pers. Second, because the app­li­ca­ti­ons chan­nel user actions in a more play­ful direc­tion, they con­di­tion users into com­ing to expect this kind of play­ful exch­ange and to engage in it them­sel­ves across social sphe­res, rather than dis­tin­gu­is­hing bet­ween them. Third, though these exch­an­ges reduce asence, strengt­hen fee­lings of co-presence and make par­ti­ci­pants feel they know each other bet­ter, when not com­bi­ned with face to face inter­ac­tion, the oppor­tu­nity for mis­per­cep­ti­ons is great.

These con­clu­si­ons need to be veri­fied and ela­bo­ra­ted trough study of a much lar­ger sample, but a chal­lenge in con­duc­ting this rese­arch is data collec­tion. Because most Facebook users restrict their pro­files to fri­ends, obser­ving a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample beco­mes quite dif­fi­cult. While sur­veys are being attemp­ted, rely­ing on self-reported beha­vior has some pro­blems. The best approach now seems to design a Facebook app­li­ca­tion and that rep­res­ents the next step pro­po­sed in order to deter­mine the wider impact on scho­larly com­mu­nities and connections.

In spite of the risks of trans­gres­sion and dis­tor­tion, for­ming con­nec­tions that are play­ful and emo­tio­nally more inti­mate can be posi­tive in per­so­nal and pro­fes­sio­nal terms. People with whom we have for­med multi-valent rela­ti­onships online may also become people with whom we might col­la­bo­rate on rese­arch, or orga­nize con­fe­rence panels, or at least go to for advice when visit­ing their home countries/cities. If the kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion fos­te­red by Facebook does indeed pro­mote these kinds of con­nec­tions, that will have a pro­found impact on scho­larly com­mu­nities. Until now, in spite of the ease of com­mu­ni­ca­tion offe­red by the Internet, when it comes to col­la­bo­ra­tive work, “space still mat­ters (Borner 2007).” Thus I ulti­mately argue that we are making a deal with the devil: users sharing play­ful and even trans­gres­sive exch­an­ges strengt­hen their social and pro­fes­sio­nal bonds. In cir­cles where com­mu­ni­ca­tion is often ephe­me­ral, limited to a brief chat at a con­fe­rence recep­tion or an exch­ange on a mai­ling list, Facebook may be espe­cially attrac­tive. But as we use this amu­sing and use­ful plat­form, we are first and always ful­fil­ling the pur­pose of deve­l­o­pers who don’t care what we say, as long as we keep talking.

Bibliography

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