Postscript to Gatekeeping, SNS, and Social Grooming

Today I came across a couple of TED talks that I think go along with the two previous posts I made and also our class discussions.

The first is Jeff Hancock: The Future of Lying. Interestingly enough he says that we are more honest online than we are when speak to people in person. That is actually the opposite than I would have thought, but it is because the written record will probably endure where the spoken word is gone in an instant.

The other TED talk is by Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online. In this talk he discusses how he and his group help to verify the authenticity of images using free internet tools. His last statement sums up a very important aspect of computer and human interaction:

"Truth is emotional, it's fluid, and above all, it's human. No matter how quick we get with computers, no matter how much information we have, you'll never be able to remove the human from the truth-seeking exercise.” (Markham Nolan)

Enjoy.

Social Grooming and Power

After our last class I am still mulling over the concept of social grooming. Social grooming was a discussed in "Grooming, Gossip, Facebook, and MySpace: What can we learn about these sites from those who won’t assimilate?" by Zeynep Tufekc and was a new concept to me. In the animal kingdom social grooming is an active behavior where the animals help to maintain each other and it serves to create bonds. The same occurs among humans as well. Humans raise it a step above through our verbal communications, but it is usually in tandem with visual cues. Social networking takes away the visual element. Without it is this social grooming 2.0 still effective? Is social grooming either in person or through SNS valuable? I believe the answer is yes.The creation of bonds is a form of power. Bonds, attachments, and collaborations all help to strengthen relationships.

Blogger Danah Boyd makes some points in her post from 2009 (click here to view) about the dismissal of Twitter.

"I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the fact that humans are social. It’s good for society. And what they’re doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming and maintaining peripheral social awareness."

She takes issue with studies which deem a large portion of tweets a pointless babble. It is true that many tweets when viewed by someone outside of that social group without context appear to be drivel, but that does not mean that it really is without value. It is part of the nuance of communication. Twitter and other SNS are an evolution in social grooming, another facet in the way we communicate. Communication is so much more than what is expressed in words. It is about context, expression, behavior, and interpretation.

Can SNS inhibit authentic interaction? Maybe, it depends on what you define as authentic. Many encounters via SNS are superficial, but then so is gossip or discussing the details of last night's game in the break room at work. That does not make it any less beneficial. Humans are social creatures and this is part of the way in which we make sense of each other. Tufekc's article focuses on those who chose not to participate in SNS. It is not that these people are less social they simply create or reinforce their social bonds in a different way. In fact their lack of participation is a way of forming a bond among those who are like them. So you could say that participation and non-participation are both forms of social grooming.

There is still so much to explore on this topic that I will continue to read on the subject and hopeful have more to post outside of my regular class postings.