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Social Structuring and the web

Social Structuring and the web. COMP6037: Foundations in Web Science. Catherine Pope 27 October 2010. Cyber-optimism. Post-industrial society

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Social Structuring and the web

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  1. Social Structuring and the web COMP6037: Foundations in Web Science Catherine Pope 27 October 2010

  2. Cyber-optimism • Post-industrial society e.g. Daniel Bell. The information age as offering freedom from manual labour, a chance to move beyond subsistence, creating new possibilities for leisure, consumption etc. • The Network society e.g. Manuel Castells. Increased connectivity, flows of information, enabling e-democracy, electronic communities, liberation from the ties of place etc.

  3. Cyber-optimism • Globalization ‘The digital planet will look and feel like the head of a pin’ (Negroponte 1995) • Liberation ‘A faith that this time around new technology will finally and truly deliver us from the limitations and frustrations of this imperfect world’ (Kevin Robins 2007)

  4. Identity • freedom from old oppressions of race, class, gender: ‘Cyberspace has come to be understood as a practical deconstruction of essentialism. Out there, bodies and identities alike may lose their connection to terrestial limits, extending through a new range of possibilities, and in the process may reflect back upon the supposed naturalness, giveness, reification or terrotorialisation of real life bodies and identities’ (Don Slater, in Bell 2001: 113) • We can ask: ‘Who am me? (Sherry Turkle 1995)

  5. Communities • Choice ‘Words on a screen are quite capable of … creating a community from a collection of strangers’(Howard Rheingold 1987) • Transnational (Ong 2003)

  6. New technologies –will emancipate or at least de-centre human experience from the established inequalities of older social and economic formations (Golding 2000) but • Increase in social and economic inequalities in UK since 1980s • Inequality of access to the internet/web – 17m UK citizens have no access; majority of the world’s population still has no access. • The Digital Divide as a form of social exclusion – reproducing and exacerbating the inequalities that produce exclusion

  7. Understanding differences in access alone is not enough. • Digital Inequality = differences in returns from access to technology ‘A refined approach to digital inequality recognises that people’s socio-economic status influences the ways in which they have access to and use the internet… (Hargittai 2008:939)

  8. What are the processes through which … uses of ICT may privilege some users over others (Hargittai 2008:939) • ability to navigate the quality and quantity of information available to find useful information and contacts; • confidence and/or access to social networks to seek effective help and support where necessary; • skill to make enterprising use of information available; • ability to protect oneself from fraud and other potential harms; • ability to use technical knowledge and information accessed via the internet as a marker of social status.

  9. In turn these processes are connected to wider social processes e.g. inequalities in education, race, place, gender, social contexts of use… …So ‘The overall policy challenge is not to overcome a digital divide but rather to expand access to and use of ICTfor promoting social inclusion’ (Lawson-Mack 2001:212)

  10. Sociology on structure(s)… • Class: a system of social stratification (structured inequalities). A class shares common economic resources which influence their lives • dependent on economic difference (possession /control of resources) • fluid (not fixed at birth, partially achieved) • Race: recognise genetic continuum, racial groups based on physical variations singled out by members of a community or society as ethnically significant • Gender: psychological, social and cultural differences between males and females • Age: recognise social, cultural, historical and legal differentiation (as well as chronological/biological); view of lifecourse as mediated by these structures and focus on transitions through which people pass

  11. Exercise Resource: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/oct/25/internet-uk-martha-lane-fox). Working in groups discuss • why this person and others like him/her is not using the web think about… experience, access, skills, place – both location and in social networks, socio-economic position • How would you tackle the digital divide to help this person use the web?

  12. Gilbert, M. et al (2008) Theorising the digital divide: information and communication technology use frameworks among poor women using a telemedicine system. Geoforum 39:912-925 • Information delivery • Use context • Social networks • Policy and institutional mechanisms

  13. We find that the geographic nature of [these women’s] experience lies in the highly localized context of ICT resources and the use of place-based social networks by most of the women to provide information and resources related to ICTs. The localised context of ICT resources, the nature and extent of social networks, and the kinds of information and resources embedded in social networks are shaped by the extreme geographic and racial segregation experienced by all of the women in the study. (Gilbert et al 2008:920)

  14. …our reconceptualisation of the digital divide from the perspective of some of the most marginalised people in our society shifts the policy thrust from simply overcoming delivery barriers to understanding what strategies may work to help empower poor people through the use of ICT in daily life. (Gilbert et al 2008:923) • The web as pro human? http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/09/web.sirtim • Digital Britain ? http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx • Social Justice and Web Science?http://journal.webscience.org/406/

  15. References Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: a venture in social forecasting. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bell, D. (2001)Cybercultures. London: Routledge. Castells, M. (1996/2000) The Rise of Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol 1 Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M (1997)The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol 2 Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M (1998) End of the Millennium: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol 3Oxford: Blackwell. Hargittai, E. (2008) ‘The digital reproduction of inequality’ in Grusky, D. (Ed) Social Stratification. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Robins, K. (2001) ‘Cyberspace and the world we live in’ in Bell, D and Kennedy,B. (Eds) The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge. Ong, A. (2003) Cyberpublics and diaspora politics among transnational Chinese. Interventions 5 :82-100. Rheingold, H. ‘Virtual communities - exchanging ideas through computer bulletin boards’ Journal of Virtual Worlds Research http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/293/247 Turkle, S. (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Simon and Schuster.

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