Soft Machines: Ana and the Internet

This paper represents the culmination of this blog’s previous entries (and a great deal more).

Abstract:
“The shape of the internet is changing and calls into question traditional research and regulatory methods. This project develops a new geography for the self in the age of web 2.0. Specifically looking at the ‘Pro-Anorexia’ phenomena (social networking, forums, etc) this research presents an empirically and theoretically grounded proposal for internet research that is applicable to much wider tracts of the ‘web’. A combination of ten months ethnographic fieldwork and semiological techniques exploring the ‘Pro-Ana’ movement was performed. The results of which make up a rich account of how the ‘self’ is realised, for many young girls. By working through the ethnographic data the shape of the web and how we may research this using multi-sited ethnographic techniques becomes clear. Given the results of this research, it is crucial that we explore how the vulnerable and the young live out their lives on-line in a new light, where intimacy does not necessarily equate to proximity and where the most private of places, the bedroom, has become the most public of arenas.”

Due to a conflict of interests I can no longer present this paper here. For a copy please email pjgstokes@gmail.com

© 2009 Pearse Stokes

The Internet Way of Dying

Authors Note: As always, this is a work in progress and I would love to hear any feed back, comments and especially discussion or criticism of the points raised here, if you loved it or hated it.

The pdf of this article is available here.

P.J.G. Stokes 28 November 2008

The Internet way of Dying

Originally this paper was to be called, To Living and Dying on the internets, using a grammar common among my site of research. However, “living” online is too large a subject for me at the moment. Dying online, massive as it is, can be shrunk to a number of examples for fruitful discussion. What can we safely say about dying online if we haven’t figured out how we live online. Well, it is my intention that through looking at the process and finality of death online will reveal much about how we live online. That is to say, precisely because death has no “finality”, that it is a process, a rite of passage even, that we can explore how one lives online – with out the corresponding “real” or “flesh” life – it becomes apparent how the online dimension “lives” – it reveals the Zeitgeist.

To clarify; this paper looks at the process of dying, being dead and how morning creates a social presence online (just like in the off-line dimensions). As we work through this we will find a precise site of research, we isolate the created, generated, ubiquitously interconnected (aetheral?¹) self that we are interested in right now. Albeit a “dead” one. With this in mind we can look at “life” online with more clarity.

Sets and Overdose – Suicide and the techno/media/self scape

This article begins to focus on the online pathologies that my research over the last year has focused on. That said, this article is also a current affair. Suicide and eating disorders are the primary concern of my dissertation and over the next month more articles relating to those will surface. So check back soon.

In the meantime, this article is current so please engage the event, engage the techno/media/self scape, broaden it and report back to me anything interesting you find! As always, this is a work in progress and I would love to hear any feedback, comments or criticisms you may have. pearsestokes@gmail.com

The pdf of this article is available here. If you find it useful please let me know.

– PJG

Last night CandieJunkie committed suicide. Earlier in the day he announced his intention to overdose live on web cam. Many people replied, were involved, contacted officials and myspace friends in an effort to save him. Still we all watched his justin.tv channel for almost 8 hours before we saw police enter his room, quickly check him, then cover the web cam. I hope this article in no way trivializes what it discusses; the apparent suicide of a young man or the cry for help and attention that it may be. When we know more about the topic we can more accurately address the sadness and seriousness of the event. For the moment this article just discusses the mechanisms that worked, how they worked and illustrates how important it is for social researchers, anthropologists, sociologist, culturologists, etc, to get to grips with what is happening out there.

Consumo-Production

This article is available as a pdf here. I would love to hear feedback, comments and especially criticisms!

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University produced this video;

Wesch makes many points in this famous video, the one I am concerned with right now is that the Machine is Us/ing Us. And he’s quite right. The world wide web, in its so called second generation “2.0”, uses our navigation of the internet to organise, rank and filter web pages, connections, links, networks, etc. The Machine is Us. And it works very well. This means that as we consume the web we are also producing it. The Machine is Using us.

Given the perspective I decided to take for my current research (outlined here) I am going to explore how consumption and production have changed in the “digital age”, and argue that there is a false dichotomy at work, all be it a useful convenience.

For this research it has been necessary to conceive “The Web” as a techno/media/self scape. That is to say, the symbolic order, social imaginary or the webs of significance we are concerned with are positioned across a techno/media/self scape.

The techno/media/self scape is a production and consumption of signs and symbols as they flow through technological spaces (the web, phones, laptops, fibre optic cables, soft networks arranged, produced/consumed by users), media (producers, consumers, producer/consumers, ubiquitous) and selves (aspects of self, produced and reproduced through [and producing and reproducing] technology and media).

Locating the Site of Internet Social Research

I’d love to hear comments and criticisims! PDF is available here.

– PJG Stokes

Locating the Site; Virtual becomes Mixed and realities become dimensions

Perhaps the greatest challenge for those researching “the internet” are the issues around locating the site. Locating the site, making it somehow tangible, deciding on boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, performing methods that are ethical but also lucrative, while facing the almost impossible task of making it all valid make internet research very difficult. This is part of what attracts researchers.
This chapter looks to locate the site. It does so not be making a geographic analogy (cyber space), not by producing a false dichotomy (the virtual and the real), rather this chapter works through those conceptions of “the internet” and arrives somewhere that is perhaps only slightly closer to a clean definition of where this research is taking place, than we are at now.