SHORTer VERSION - Liminality and Communitas in Social Media - The case of Twitter
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Transcript of SHORTer VERSION - Liminality and Communitas in Social Media - The case of Twitter
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Liminality and Communitas
in Social Media: The Case
of TwitterJana Herwig, M.A.
Dept. of Theatre, Film & Media Studies
University of ViennaEmail: [email protected]
Twitter: @digiom Blog: digiom.wordpress.com
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Hum?
TendovaginitisMicrolearningConferenceInnsbruck
Holiday
My Twittering according to Tweetstats.com
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Rite of Passage (Turner):
1 - Subject is stripped of its social status
2 - Liminality: Subject goes through a transitional phase
marked by chaos, anti-structure and egalitarian
relations between initiands (communitas)
3 - Reintegration with an
elevated status
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0 friends 0 followers 0 updates
Detachment from Social Status
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Chaos and anti-structure
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Levelling of hierarchies
pic by @mimimixer
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InterfacesAnalysis of the symbols
that shape liminoid experience
UsersChronological close
reading of individual timelines
Social Media Services ‘Early adopters’ vs ‘mainstream
users’
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Symbols of inclusion/exclusionLog-in
Sign-up
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Sign-up?(how cynical…)
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Optional anonymity:
No real name check… yet
(Project Verified Accounts)
Creation of liminoid subject
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Why anonymity (rather: lack of notoriety) matters
Communitas is volatile: With real names and ‘meat space’
relationships, social structures and hierarchies are
re-injected into Twitter.
How did it feel when your boss (colleague, high school mate, mother ...) started following you on Twitter?
(email me: [email protected])
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Example 1: With its more than 2 million followers,the account @oprah receives several replies in an hour, but has replied just six times in its first seven months – just once to a non-celebrity.
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Example 2: Although the informal ‘Du’ is
typically used between German-speaking Twitter users, the account of Austrian TV-anchor @ArminWolf is mostly addressed with the formal ‘Sie’.
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Anonymity structures competition between Social Media platforms
Facebook: Oppressed. Accounts with ‘fake’ names are
suspended
4chan Random board /b/: Enforced. Derogatory terms for users w/ names
Twitter: Optional Anonymity;Nuanced negotiation of
Anonymity/notorietyIncentives to give up anonymity
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Sample 1: signed-up Oct’06 - Mar‘07
94% (15 out of 16)went on a hiatus of
≥ 28 days, 75% (12) did so
in first 2 monthsSample 2: signed-up Mar’09 - Jul‘09
9% (1 out of 11) stopped updating
for ≥ 28 days(max. time on
Twitter: 6 months)
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User A
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User B
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User D
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User G
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User K
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User L
The used visualization tool tweetstats.com starts with the first update; User L wrote the first update 600 days after signing-up.
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User O (‘Lead User’)
Video with all activity patterns in sample 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhPdQaZ_Wu4
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What do people write about when they first use or when they return to Twitter?
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View on Twitter as a web technology
“Testing this twitter Flex interface”
“wondering if there’s a way to push Adium / Facebook updates to
Twitter automatically”
“Just twitting from my DOS console”
“Trying to figure out the twitter api”
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View on Twitter as part of a mobile gadget culture
“Loving my Touch. Mobilicious.”
“Got a nokia e61i now... Getting connected to everything mobile”
“Google Latitude... Cool... http://is.gd/ijOV”
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Sample 1: signed-up Oct’06 - Mar‘07
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 12.5% women
(2 of 16 active users, randomly identified)Sample 1: signed-up Oct’06 -
Mar‘07
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 91% women
(10 of 11 active users, randomly identified)
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View on Twitter as a social sphere
“thinking about next season as a Happy Hammer - prompted by a fellow fan now following me.”
“@xxx You are not the only one in the UK that is glad to see AmberMac back on here, Shame
Net@Nite is no longer recorded live though ”
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Twitter as a liminal challenge
“Testing this gadget”“Testing twitter”
“back”“ASDf”
“mic check, 1-2”
“i totally forgot about twitter, i suck”
“trying to remember how to use twitter”
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Early Twitter as asocial medium
In their very first update, 87.5% (14 out of 16) reported what they were
doing. (one reported what he was going to do, another
posted a sequence of arbitrary characters).
Study by Mischaud 2007: 41.5% reported what they were doing(Content analysis of 5767 tweets from 60 users)
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The social dimension
Are users aware of the presence of others?
(User L’s sixth update, posted on day 745 on Twitter, responding to someone
with a similar nickname)
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The @-response as indicator
After having posted their first @-response, 75% of users in the ‘early adopter’ sample did not experience another hiatus.
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The 1st @-responseEarly adopters: within 21 to 745
days (average: 411, median: 404)
It was contained in update no.3 to 302 (average: no. 68, median
34)
Mainstream users achieved this within1 to 25 days (average: 8, median: 4)
It was contained in update no.1 to 64 (average: no. 14, median: 6)
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Types of Social mechanisms
Default social mechanisms:Built into the system, could be triggered automatically, e.g. @-
response.
Emergent social mechanisms:Result of collective experiment
with social-semantic opportunities of a text field,
e.g. retweeting, hashtags (may be turned into default ones)
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Appropriation of # and RT
Hashtags:EA 292 - 957 d (average 697, median 708.5)MS 1 - 143 days (average 45, median 31)
Retweeting:EA 405 - 947 days (average 701, median 705)MS 1 - 94 days (average 39, median 34,5)
(N.B. These mechanisms had presumably not yet emerged when sample 1 signed up)
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Creation of a Liminal Subject < First steps on Twitter
Communitas as anti-structural community >
< Forms of community that become possible (and are also precarious) on
Role of Liminality within society >< Social Media as space for social
innovation
Social Media exist at the interface of technology, individual practice &
society.
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Questions or Feedback?Send an email to jana.herwig@univie.
ac.at or, preferably, post a comment on my blog. You can also download the draft paper (with data, comment
and annotations) from there:http://digiom.wordpress.
com/2009/10/05/coming-to-grips-with-twitter-200607-vs-2009
Short link: http://wp.me/peBnE-u4
Longer version of this presentation (optimized for lack of audio) is on
slideshare, username anaj