Indeed, the sad example you spoke about is one of the evidences that the net is more about connected people rather then connected machines. This directly links to the non-utopian model of the e-societies.
You said: ""who", is sending the "message" to "whom" and for "what purpose"?"
As to social relations, similarly to keeping in touch through SMS messages transmitted on the TV screen, many couples maintain their relationships through the technology network facilities - especially in societies where cohabitation is not a widespread trend, and that partners could be living in different countries for work or economic purposes. For instance, the Lebanese people meet in cafés and night-clubs where the youth seek any possible type of relationship that would be maintained by networking, which helps to create relationships in the first place. Many Lebanese couples have met on the Internet. As such, the network operates as a place for 'e-face-to-face' relations leading the relationship through the network mechanism such as the temporality of the network in question, the non-real-time emails, the delayed chatting and voice chats, and the avatar emoticon rules. Although distance does not have a significant effect on the chatting
mechanism, people prefer to chat with people located in their same geographical region, because the main aim for chatting is to meet face to face and get married. It is also noteworthy that men who work abroad are connected to their wives in Lebanon through the media.
Regards,
Ricardo Mbarkho
________________________________
From: Veroniki Korakidou <vkorakidou@yahoo.gr>
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 10:39:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] NEW MEDIA: USER'S BEHAVIOUR, SOCIAL SYSTEMS, AND THE BODY POLITIC
Dear Ricardo et al.,
I wish to refer to one incident that happened last week here in Athens, which I find related to this discussion.
A 19-year old boy, suffering from some kind of social rejection from his peers and love-life dissappointment, wrote a suicide letter and uploaded on "myspace" photos of himself, aiming at the camera with a gun, and three hours later he took with him two more shotguns and a knife, went off to his class where he shot one of his colleagues and two more people before committing suicide himself.
Criminologists who sketched his profile, claimed that after-death reputation was a motivation for this young isolated boy, who had no friends in real life, for commiting such an unthinkable crime. There are more "media" implications to that, as the traditional media, TV, newspapers etc. covered the story which actually made him" (in)famous", after his death. However, I think that this incident is indicative of an (anti)social behavior that already exists on the net, also, along with other behavioural trends.
Virtual communities are consisted from "real" people. In order to put some of this problematic in the context of Vitor's question, with regards to new media literacies, I am sceptical, as to whether we are still talking about a new medium, for instance, is the internet a mass medium?
If so, "who", is sending the "message" to "whom" and for "what purpose"?
Although I am currently an avid follower of all these "trendy" social networking websites, from "myspace" to "hi5", "facebook" and now further on to "twitter", I have to say, these traditional and old-fashioned questions come to my mind each time a new one pops-up, making me all the more skeptical about the social dynamics of these "new" media social user's behaviour, social systems and the body politics.
Social "networking" to me looks like an iinteractive "vast wasteland" (I am sure this characterization certainly rings a bell to social thinkers among this list about the critical analysis of media content during the 90s), where you can meet some interesting people, your firiends, fight for good causes, buy barbie dolls and, of course, occasionally be tracked by the secret services.
Now you can also meet young boys who wish to become mass killers before comitting suicide themselves.
Sounds like good old-fashioned capitalism, only now, you can "virtually" "interact" with it, because literaly, you cannot even touch it.
This is the medium, and it's message.
Best,
Veroniki
--- Στις Δευτ., 13/04/09, ο/η Ricardo Mbarkho <ricardombarkho@yahoo.com> έγραψε:
Από: Ricardo Mbarkho <ricardombarkho@yahoo.com>
Θέμα: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] NEW MEDIA: USER'S BEHAVIOUR, SOCIAL SYSTEMS, AND THE BODY POLITIC
Προς: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Ημερομηνία: Δευτέρα, 13 Απρίλιος 2009, 19:06
Hi Tereza, Jordan, Vitor, and all,
When interacting with the network, the active citizen is not often active in
content filtering. Some people tend to be very receptive to mass media and the
huge amount of information, which is often contradictory. Consequently, their
identities and roots are blurred and they can fall into the trap of being
fragmented into pieces of identities. Some might even be ready to defend their
new but fake identity, whose real owners might have thrown away and whose new
owners might have found somewhere on the information sphere.
After reading Jordan's post about assemblage, and Tereza's saying
"human beings may be considered, after Jordan's explanation, as an
assemblage of consciousness", and Vitor post about Media literacy
what would be the positioning toward the above statement? Can we enhance the
way we critic media content (media literacy), and thus be protected from
identity scrambling? Or on the opposite, we can simply consider that there is no
identity crisis at all here, because it's all a matter of assemblage? In this
last case, what would be the assemblage's crisis?
Best,
Ricardo
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