‘Virtual Communities’/ Social ‘Webs’ - Hacking Social Life On-Line

Prospectus for a research seminar for seniors (ANTH 451 / MDIA 499)

(Fall 2009 W 4:10-6:40)

Dr. Jon W. Anderson

Anthropology Department

(inquiries to: anderson@cua.edu)

This is a research seminar on ‘hacking’ social life on-line or what have been variously called “social media,” “social software,” or Web 2.0 such as recently in Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, in projects from Wikipedia to the Open Source Software movement, new iterations of on-line gaming and the rise of blogging. As these attract interest in business, politics and NGOs at least for leveraging interaction and maybe solidarity in an increasingly de-territorialized world, what do we know about and how can we systematically study the forms that social life takes on-line?

What are relations between information-seeking and community-building? Do seemingly open possibilities for interaction through the Internet make new democracy, or something else? What kinds of communities arise or find expression in cyberspace? What about e-commerce? E-Activism? Is there anything to notions such as the ‘death of distance’, de-territorialisation and network organization and, if so, what features do they convey to virtual communities or electronic webs? What does social software do? What exactly do social media activate?

This seminar will look at findings and new thinking from social scientists and media specialists who focus on the internal dynamics of on-line communities, networks, social webs and forms of expressions they sustain. Students can develop case studies and comparisons of forms in which they participate or consider participating. The goal of this seminar is to develop the next generation of analysts to follow the visionaries and critics with skills in bottom-up analysis.

We will start with some recent studies that address such questions from the bottom up, such as:
• Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirkey (Penguin, 2008)
• The Network Inside Out, by Annelise Riles (University of Minnesota Press, 2001)
• My First Recession: Critical Internet Culture in Transition, by Geert Lovink (NAi Publishers, 2003)
• Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society, edited by Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson & Geert Lovink (Routledge, 2006)
• BlogTalks Reloaded: Social Software Research & Cases edited by Thomas N. Burg & Jan Schmidt. (Norderstedt. 2007).
• “Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community into being on Social Network Sites,” by danah boyd. (First Monday, December 2006).
Plus other works by Marc Granovetter, Barry Wellman and, probably, revisiting Howard Rheingold’s seminal The Virtual Community (1993). The seminar has a BlackBoard with a selection of readings, useful links and online discussion space.