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.

Gatekeeping and Social Networks

In this week's class were are discussing "Gatekeeping and Social Networks." We had several articles to read all of which were quite interesting, but I will focus on one in particular in this post. The article is "Grooming, Gossip, Facebook, and MySpace: What can we learn about these sites from
those who won’t assimilate?" by Zeynep Tufekci. You can view the article by clicking here. I will most likely post more after we have our class discussion, but I found this article interesting first of all because of the attempt to quantify this information. It seems difficult to devise the survey questions for this, but as far as I can tell the method used for data collection seems sounds.

 I am most interested in the notion of "social grooming" that was discussed in the article. This is a new term for me, but it makes sense. The author refers to Robin Dunbar's ideas on the subject which stated that "gossip,people-curiosity and small talk, all of which are seemingly non-functional and are often popularly understood as mere distraction or deviation, are in essence the human version of social grooming in primates: an activity that is essential to forging bonds, affirming relationships, displaying bonds,and asserting and learning about hierarchies and alliances." Based on the conclusions drawn by the author of this article those nonusers of Social Networking Sites (SNS) are not as interested in social grooming even though it is an important piece of the establishing bonds. On the flip side just because the nonusers of SNS are not participating in this behavior it does not mean they are antisocial or have less friends. The survey shows that users and nonusers reported similar numbers of close and somewhat close friends.

In trying to find predictors as to who is more likely to be a SNS user gender was a factor as women are more likely to use SNS. The only other predictive factor related to this social grooming aspect. Those who use the internet for expressive purposes like reading blogs, creating web content, etc. are more likely to be SNS users. These activities have a link to social grooming something that non SNS users do not readily identify with. Instrumental use of the internet, meaning using it for activities such as research or banking, is not a predictive factor for SNS use. Both users and nonusers are likely to engage in this behavior.

So according to the results of this study it is not that these nonusers are uncomfortable with technology or are antisocial. On the contrary the nonusers seek authentic or genuine interaction be it in real life or online. It is the "social browsing" they do not understand which is what they believe is the purpose of SNS. I would compare this to people watching. The nonusers would not understand the act of observation without interaction.

More to come after our discussion in class.