smsociety15

Author: Jeffrey M Keefer

Background

While social media includes the applications that support the creation and exchange of user generated and participatory content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), the focus is commonly on the presentation or actions of users, the networks created on the platforms, and what we can do to promote our various WIIFMs (What’s In It For Me). It is less studied from the perspective of the networks themselves, especially through the influence and role of the non-human elements. Through this inverted perspective much may be learned, especially involving simple assumptions about the role of agency, namely the power to act (Latour, 2013). It is this social aspect of social media where actor-network theory can be most usefully employed, as the agency of things themselves may frequently be overlooked (Adams & Thompson, 2011) when rushing to understand the black box of assumptions present in social media research and practice.

Objective

This theoretical study will explore a seven-part framework (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011) of social media—identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups—through the lens of actor-network theory (ANT). A traditional human-centered study commonly fails to acknowledge the complexity and levels of agency that get black boxed as a frozen network elements (Walsham, 1997, p. 468), resulting in an oversimplification and blurring of networkability.

Methods

This study utilizes actor-network theory, a theory or methodological approach that focuses on continuously generated networks, webs of relations, where power can reside within any actor (or to be simpler, any person, place, or thing) who continuously participates in the connections themselves (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2007; Law, 2008). Using ANT, we will partner with the elements in social media (Thompson & Adams, 2013) to better understand the “impacts of digital engagements on processes of knowledge-making and interacting” (Fenwick, 2014, p. 2) and seek to answer the question, “Just what is social in social media?” Given the cornucopia of networks from which to choose, Twitter, due to its seeming simplicity, will be the material-semiotic focus of this 7-part actor-network inquiry where the “hows” of network formation channel new perspectives of our social interactions.

Results

This work in process is ongoing, with explorations, examples, and network perspective of identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups through Twitter being the focus, via both human and non-human actors.

References

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• Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies), 1–312.
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• Thompson, T. L., & Adams, C. (2013). Speaking with things: encoded researchers, social data, and other posthuman concoctions. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 14(3), 342–361. doi:10.1080/1600910X.2013.838182
• Walsham, G. (1997). Actor-network theory and is research: Current status and future prospects. In A. S. Lee, J. Liebenau, & J. I. DeGross, Information Systems and Qualitative Research (pp. 466–480). Boston, MA: Springer US. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-35309-8_23