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Katholische Universitt Eichsttt-Ingolstadt

Fakultt fr Soziologie
Vorlesung: Media Sociology
Prof. Dr. Joost van Loon
Wintersemester 2011/2012






Online Sociability, Consumption and New Media
Technologies












Datum der Abgabe: 31/03/2012
Stephannie Melo das Neves
Avenida Sucuri, Santa Genoveva.
74674 300 Goinia Brasil
stephanniemello@gmail.com


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Table of Contents

1. Introduction S. 3


2. New spaces, old frontiers. S. 4

2.1 Online Sociability: Community Model x Consumption Model S. 4
2.2 New Media Technologies: the case of Instagram. S. 5
2.3 Brand: the Apple product S. 6
2.4 Advertising as Myth S. 6
2.5 Electronic Reproduction. S. 7


3. Conclusion S. 7



4. Literature S. 9













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1. Introduction
According to the 2011 Mobile Media Report from the global marketing and
advertising research company Nielsen, nearly half of mobile subscribers in the U.S
own a smartphone device. The most used is the Apple IPhone. In Germany nearly
30% of the mobile users aged 16+ own smartphones, 85% are touchscreen. This
media has taken its place as socially organized processes (Van Loon, 2008).
In April 2011 I got a gadget from the American company Apple. It is an
iTouch, a music player with a touch screen, camera, and loads of other functions.
Soon the device became so much more than a way to actually listen to music. A
few days later I downloaded an application from the iTunes Store. It soon became
one of the most used functions on my gadget, the photo sharing social network
Instagram; only available for mobile gadgets from Apple. Instagram has 15 million
users and is the 4
th
app most downloaded in iTunes Store. Instagram was the first
social network, displacing the 845 million users Facebook.
This very particular invasion of Instagrams world made me think about the
boundaries that exist between the two models of social use of the internet
proposed by Maria Bakardjieva; the community model and the consumption
model. The question I will develop in this essay, using Instagrams example as
background, is in the context of how internet consumption practices mingle with
communitarian practices, making invisible the real purposes of capital behind
production, the sharing of content and users involvement.
According to Van Loon (2008), media enframes the world, and creates the
need to be understood not as instruments or tools but as agents of political,
social and cultural processes. The media order the political, social and cultural
processes in a double sense of providing a structure and commanding specific
actions. According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard the transformation
of all relations and meanings into sign, appropriated and consumed, has become
a defining model of our civilization.
According to the authors above, this essay has as starting point at the idea
that the relation between users and media and consumptions totalizing aspects,
understood as myth (Kellner, 2009), has brought consumption values and needs
into what Bakardjieva called the qualitative distinction between the consumption
model - the presence of users involvement with each other. Through the example
of the rise of mobile devices and more specifically, Instagrams case, this essay
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wants to construct some meaning of social reality, revealing through the practices
around Instagram, other possibilities of social use of internet that mingle inter-
subjectively between users and the social reproduction of the capital.

2. New spaces, old frontiers.

2.1 Online Sociability: Community model x Consumption model
Maria Bakardjieva, in her book Internet Society (2005), points out two
different models emerged in the last decade to understand the social use of
the Internet: the consumption model and the community model. The first one has
its roots in the first professionals and users of the Internet. Their goal at the time
was to make research centers, libraries and other information generation and
storing institutions available for online user. With the growing adoption of the new
medium, especially by the middle class, the internet turned into a place of retrieval
of goods and services. Also the enhancement of computers higher speed and
capacity of transmission, graphical interfaces, speed and visual appeal but also
privacy, anonymity and reliability resources, made industries and individuals
embrace the use of internet as a place of consumption.
The community model has its roots in the later internet builders and users.
Through platforms like Usernet, IRC and mailing lists for instance, these people
exchanged and shared files. When internet achieved a broader audience the
platforms changed but the idea of producing something of value for others stayed
as this models particularity. A discussion around the concept of community is
undertaken in Bakardjievas book, the author say that the debate around the
community model lies especially in the vague normativity of the concept of
community, which defects attention from the fact that a continuum of forms of
being and acting together (Virtual Togetherness) is growing from the technology of
the internet.
From the enthusiastic perspective the internet as a place to generate
ideas, deliberate and act collectively to the skeptical perspective communities
destroying the intellectual tradition of technological criticism, confirming the
triumph of commercial model over community model the concept of community
was appropriated differently by every social actor. Bakardjieva assumes a
relativistic perspective pointing out that every user generates a rich repertoire of
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use genres of the medium, which is approached from a variety of situational
motivations, needs and ideologies. Therefore, the qualitative distinction between
the consumption model and the community model lies in the presence/absence of
users involvement with each other.
Bakardjievas perspective to close the range of possibilities within a
phenomenon in only two models remembers the parsonian structural-
functionalism. Despite of the authors relativistic perspective within the use
genres she still stuck in a kind of normatively-regulated perception of users
agency. In my opinion a further investigation on consumption issues could solve
the problem without decreasing the importance of the conceptualization of
community already developed.
Using Instagrams example this essay intends to bring more information for
the discussion around consumption and to give the conceptual basis for the thesis
proposed here.

2.2 New Media Technologies: the case of Instagram.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary online, the word application in
computer use means a computer program that is designed for a particular
purpose. Instagram is an application designed exclusively for Apple mobile
devices (such as the iPhone) whose prospective users ritual will be to: make
photos or use those that you already have in your iPhone, choose within 20
different vintage filters or none and share it. Its description says:

15 million users love Intagram! Its free, fun, and simple way to make and share gorgeous photos
on your iPhone. Pick from one of several gorgeous filter effects or till-shift blur to breathe a new life
into your mobile photos. Transform everyday moments into works of art youll want to share with
friends and family.

The description shows that the builders have a prospective behaviour of the user
within the Application. Instagrams interface is very simple; its composed by a
main display and a task bar below it. There are four different buttons on its
taskbar: Feed, Popular, Sharing and Profile. Feed and Sharing are the central
windows in comparison to the windows we cycle through (Turkle, 1995) in the
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PCs -, in the first one you see what others shared and in the second one you
produce your own content.

2.3 Brand: the Apple product.
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard extended his understanding of
communication to practice of consumption (Van Loon, 2008) and worked with the
Brand phenomenon. Baudrillard argues that objects do not exist as being isolated,
but instead being in relation to others. Even though many objects have a utilitarian
aspect, what is essential is their capacity to signify a status. Economic needs are
not the basis of social life, like in the Marxist tradition, but rather the values we
hold true make up the basis.
The brand for instance, is nothing but pure connotation; it denotes nothing
and can be attached to anything (Van Loon, 2008). A brand becomes real in so far
as they solidify their status as myth. Still according to Baudrillard, the
transformation of all relations into sign, appropriated and consumed, has become
a defining model of our civilization.

2.4 Advertising as Myth
According to the French anthropologist Jean Lvi-Strauss, the Myth is a
narrative which unites antagonistic poles. The elements of the myth acquire
meaning from the way they are combined rather than from their intrinsic value.
When we associate for instance the technological resources and design within a
mobile phone, with life-style and values of sophistication or beauty, we
associate very distinctive poles, beginning from the dichotomy of
materiality/immateriality.
For Lvi-Strauss, once contradiction is an inassimilable aspect of human
societies, the myth is a constant attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. The mythic
narrative of the contemporary consumption world is advertising (Kellner, 1995) and
it keeps creating and re-creating itself every moment, reproducing the capitals
values and logic. Our world has been commoditized and the replication of its
myths testifies the victory of the simulacrum (Van Loon, 2008).
Advertising appeals to the University of Products Value. The famous
campaigns from the Italian clothing retailer Benetton, showing ethnic, gender and
generation diversity exemplifies advertisings wish to be universal; to transpose all
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cultural boundaries in the name of one practice: consumption. If we take a look on
the current furor around Apple products on their webpage for instance, we will not
see an abundance of visual appeal nor aggressive incursion into other mediums
such as television, but rather a kind of sobriety; patronized products and
decentralized marketing strategies that directly involve the users. The Apple
product is a door to other correlated products, but once you cant afford an
iPhone for instance, youre automatically excluded from all the processes. From
consumption emerges differentiation enhanced by its system of signs rather
than equality (Lechte, 2010)

2.5 Electronic Reproduction.
The content in Instagram is made for sharing. The main purpose of its
existence is to generate content according to their style and then share it.
Everyday life is the main theme around the photos taken and thats why it is only
available for mobile devices. Like the description says, their purpose is to turn a
photo of something ordinary into an artistic work. For Bakardjieva we negotiate
constant levels of anonymity in our virtual agency, taking photos of your ordinary
everyday experience seems intrusive and reveals many aspects of ones life. But if
we take Baudrillards reflection on the simulacra in media and consumer society
we wont find a negotiation of anonymity levels because rather than the subjects
agency on negotiating, the reality there is a loss of contact with the real, in which
everything becomes fragmented and dissolved. Individuals are confronted with an
overwhelming influx of images, codes, and models, in which one becomes a pure
screen a pure absorption and re-absorption surface of the influent networks (cited
in Van Loon, 2008). Still according to Baudrillard, consumption undermines the
distinction between true and false needs and the artificial and real.

5. Conclusion
The fragmentation of pluralism and values in capitalism, seen with the rise
of post-Fordism, shows that capitalism, more than ever, became a flexible
ideology that will adapt to changing conditions. Capitalism is empty of meaning in
a way that it will seek to co-opt many social forms to reproduce the capital. Thats
why I believe Bakardjievas model plays an important role in an understanding of
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present-day internet society. To focus first on the continuous forms of being and
acting together online is, to reveal the structures on which consumption will act.
Bakardjievas book Internet Society was published in 2005. By that time
smartphones were not around and the possibilities of connection between internet
and mobile devices were taking their first steps. Online consumption was at the
time, mostly an extension of shopping in physical stores. Users rituals followed
the same logic, beginning with the infiltration inside the store and the products
available, and finishing with the payment.
I believe the qualitative distinction on consuming online lays on the fact that
consumption became also a continuous process, in which the inter-subjectivity
among users and the production and sharing of content became a central part to
the ritual.
The structures of the so-called social network seems to encourage the
permanent sharing of every action one takes online: the films one sees, the music
one hears and the things one buys. Within Instagram we see the ownership of a
specific media technology as the starting point of the interaction.
We went from consuming on the internet to consuming the internet;
and consuming the internet undertakes itself as a constitutive part users needs
and values.
This essays critic on Bakardjievas reflection lies on her proposal that the
production of meaning from one person to another escapes the consumption logic.
Unlike Baudrillard, who believes that the simulacrum has undertaken all human
social construction, I believe, just like Bakardjieva, that we still have online or
offline forms of resistance, that are successful to escaping that logic. Even
though Bakardjieva didnt build, at the first moment, the user genres perspective
to contemplate also the spaces where consumption ideologies push itself inside
communitarian practices; I believe they are worthwhile for this understanding.







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6. Literature

BAKARDJIEVA, Maria (2005): Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life.
1. publ. London [u.a.]: Sage, 2005.

BAKARDJIEVA, Maria (2003): Virtual Togetherness: An Everyday Life Perspective,
Media, Culture & Society 25(3), retrieved in 10 March 2012,
<http://learningspaces.org/irm/Bakardjieva_Togetherness.pdf> .

KELLNER, Douglas (2009): Lendo Imagens Criticamente: Em Direo A Uma
Moderna. In: SILVA, T.T. (org.) 2009. Aliengenas em sala de aula. 8. Ed. Petrpolis,
RJ: Vozes, 2009 (Coleo Estudos Culturais em Educao) P. 104 131.

LOON, Joost van (2008): Media Technology: Critical Perspectives. Maidenhead, England:
Open University Press, 2008.

LECHTE, John (2010): 50 pensadores contemporneos essenciais: Do estruturalismo
Ps-Modernidade. Traduo: Flvio Fernandes. 5. ed. Rio de Janeiro; DIFEL, 2010.

Nielsen, US, The Media Report: State of Media (Q3 2011), retrieved in 10 March 2012,
<http://nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/reports-downloads/2011-Reports/state-of-mobile-
Q3-2011.pdf>

TURKLE, Sherry (2004): Our Split Screens, in: Feenberg, Andrew/Barney, Darin (Hrsg.),
Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice, Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, S. 101-117.