A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media: The True Colours of Facebook 9781472541857, 9781441170880

Citation preview

List of Abbreviations APP

Application Action

ATA

Automated Text Action

C Comment CAL

Critical Applied Linguistics

CDA

Critical Discourse Analysis

CHTA

Critical Hypertext Analysis

CL

Critical Literacy

CMC

Computer-mediated Communication

CTA

Creative Text Action

EA

Event Action

FA

Friend Action

FB Facebook GA

Group Action

HTML

HyperText Markup Language

LA

Like Action

MOO

Multiple-User Object Orientated

MP

Multimodal Post

MUD

Multiple User Dungeons

P Post PA

Personal Data Action

RSS

Really Simple Syndication

List of Abbreviations

viii

SNS

Social Network Site

SU

Status Update

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

Preface In June 2011, a German teenager provoked a media outcry over the potential dangers of using Facebook. The girl, to be named Thessa, invited friends to her birthday party by using the Social Network Site and accidently posted her invite to millions of other Facebook members. Shortly afterwards, there were more than 15,000 Facebookers announcing that they would attend Thessa’s party. Though the girl cancelled the party and notified the police, around 1,500 party goers showed up, and threw bottles and destroyed gardens in the neighborhood (Miklis 2011). In a similar case, a British employee was fired because she forgot her work supervisor could access her Facebook profile: She vented her frustrations about the supervisor but forgot she was friends with him within the network, and was then publicly dismissed by him in a Facebook comment (Stewart 2009). In other cases Facebookers utilized the platform deliberately to harass, threaten or harm others: In recent years the media has reported on a number of Facebook-related suicides among children and teenagers who have been bullied on the Social Network Site (Pauw 2010). It seems Facebook’s (semi-)public character amplified the exposure and humiliation that these young people could not live with. This book is neither concerned with cyber-bullying, nor is it interested in the social phenomenon of ‘Facebook parties’ per se. Rather, it puts the focus on the more or less motivated discursive choices when users present themselves and communicate within Social Media. More specifically, this book examines text action and text automation within Facebook to determine in what ways the software service intervenes in the communicative flow among Facebook users. In relation to ‘text action’, the examples above illustrated that people use Facebook not only to share more or less personal texts, but to perform a variety of actions. Whenever we use language to interact, be it in electronic or non-electronic contexts, we are also doing something (see Austin 1962, Searle 1969): When the German teenager wrote her invitation, she also performed an action, as she expected her befriended members to respond to her call. Likewise, the British employee carried out an action of a more expressive kind, when disclosing her inner feelings about her supervisor. However, any text action performed within Facebook is inevitably conditioned by ‘text automation’ properties that are only

xiv Preface

partially in the control of Facebook users. Both the German teenager and the British employee miscalculated the impact of the software environment on the actions they wished to perform. Simultaneously, text automation establishes new semiotic resources, not only for bullying and harassing other members, but for self-presentation and communicating with other members. These preliminary thoughts outline the two fundamental constituents of the object of this book, i.e. the Social Network Site Facebook and the text actions that members perform within and via the network. More precisely, my overall objective interrelates these two basic components when asking in what sense the hypertextual environment Facebook affects the members’ text actions performed therein. The exploration and theoretical modeling of the various links between the properties of a particular software service and the users’ semiotic practices are embedded in a much broader discussion concerning the correlation between technological innovations and changes concerning the social customs surrounding new technologies (see Weizenbaum 1976, Postman 1992, Bolter 1997, Murray 2000). In this sense, a deep understanding of the phenomenon of Social Media in general and Facebook in particular can only be reached when acknowledging the general intertwining of computer technology and the rise of new social spaces. The computer has not only emerged “as a new kind of book, expanding and enriching the tradition of writing technologies” (Postman 1992: 118), but has also brought forward new social spaces where one can hang out with friends or meet new people. However, deeply ingrained in these new electronic spaces are conventions and procedures that are designed to calculate and standardize human behavior. As Postman (1992) has shown, such a system of rules and procedures can be referred to as a technique and “there is nothing to fear from techniques, unless […] they become autonomous” (Postman 1992: 142). As the introductory examples have shown, the technique Facebook may easily function independently of the social system it serves. Most users are highly familiar with Facebook’s conventions and operate the platform’s resources as easily as a duck swims. Very few Facebookers appear to question how the software affects them in their textual performances and how it works subversively to establish and reinforce new conventions in social interaction. Though Facebook is a rather recent phenomenon of the Web 2.0 era, many members have grown so accustomed to it that it appears almost natural to them to perform actions of friendship via the electronic platform. As the software environment directs users in giving shape and coherence to friendship discourses in particular ways, we can regard Facebook as an ideological setting. In fact, Facebook not only entails action-oriented sets of beliefs that confuse

Preface

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linguistic and phenomenal reality (see Eagleton 1993 in Scholz 2008), but also instructs users in their perception of time and space and forms their ideas of how they stand in relation to each other. Any research that aims to detect the presence of an ideological agenda in Facebook has to develop a methodological framework that grants access to the technological biases of mediated text actions. Corresponding to de Saussure’s (1916/1977) basic distinction in langue, i.e. language as an abstract system, and parole, i.e. the concrete use of the language, Facebook’s impact on user text actions will be examined from both a descriptive and an empirical point of view. The descriptive approach is directed at investigating the predispositions of Facebook as a system of semiotic resources and involves the following questions: What are the communicative functions and key features of Social Network Sites in general and Facebook in particular? How do these guide or affect the users’ textual performances? How does the software service Facebook bias the creation and reception of texts? In what ways does the software service Facebook affect the content, form and context of user text actions? Corresponding to the use of language on the parole level, the empirical foundation of this book will shed light on the textual performances of actual Facebookers and provides answers to the following questions: In what ways are the text actions performed by a sample of members affected by Facebook’s text automation properties and how does this affect the discursive performance of identity and friendship actions? To address the questions raised, this book is structured in the following way: Chapter 1 outlines the context and object of the book and specifies its focus. It presents fundamental viewpoints concerning the links between culture and technology, discusses established definitions of Social Media and Social Network Sites and specifies Facebook’s key features. The chapter then outlines the broad impact of electronic environments on user-generated texts and promotes the need for a critical approach to Social Media. Chapter 2 introduces a model that grants methodological access to the complex interlacing of electronic media, texts and semiotic practices adopted by users. Keeping in mind that texts are motivated not only by socio-political power structures, but also by the technological means that represent and amplify textual communication, attention is directed to the concept of hypertext. The chapter reveals a variety of qualities and criteria that are prototypically assigned to electronic and/or traditional texts in order to develop the ‘Critical Hypertext Analysis’ framework, a set of thirteen vital questions. The centerpiece of the work is presented in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 applies the ‘Critical Hypertext Analysis’ model to a reflective evaluation of the software service Facebook. The analysis identifies the interrelations

xvi Preface

between user-generated texts and the software environment that frame them. In this sense, Chapter 3 highlights Facebook as a system of paradigmatic relations (langue) that provides sets of discursive choices that support, delimit and/or replace the user when operating the software service. It then illustrates how users draw on novel and Facebook-specific creative and analytical acts. While Chapter 3 spells out how Facebook gradually defines and equalizes users’ text practices on a theoretical level, Chapter 4 shifts the focus to the ‘parole’ level, that is, onto how actual Facebook members employ network specific semiotic resources to perform various actions. It refines how the Social Network Site intervenes in the negation of meanings, then introduces a compound model to provide access to media bias in the text actions performed by two sample groups, i.e. a group of three university students (ages 25 to 29) and a group of three high school pupils (ages 15 to 17). The discussion of the empirical findings concerning the sample users’ text action patterns is enhanced with qualitative data, relating to the sample members’ individual perceptions when using Facebook. Chapter 5 summarizes the most important results, discusses research limitations and unanswered issues, and suggests further areas for linguistic research on Social Network Site discourse.

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Social Media and Social Network Sites

Alan Turing and Charles Babbage would not be surprised by the speed of computing or probably even by the microchip. But, they would be surprised that their ‘computing’ machines are the sites for communities that meet and communicate via listservs, MOOs, and MUDs.1 Denise Murray 2000: 51 In the quotation above, Murray (2000) emphasizes a strong correlation between technological innovations and changes in the social customs and communicative practices surrounding new technologies. More recently, the introduction of Web 2.0 technology has brought forward a range of novel software services (among them Social Network Sites) that interrelate with various social changes. Generating and distributing all kinds of personal data with the help of pre-set templates, Internet users have been transformed into empowered hypertext authors. At the same time, Web 2.0 users increasingly regard the Internet as a social space, where one can meet new people, hang out with friends and pursue all kinds of leisure activities. In order to approach Social Media from a critical perspective and evaluate its links to social changes and novel semiotic practices, it is necessary to clarify some fundamental concepts and terms. This chapter provides a brief discussion of the main terminology that comes with the enculturation of the Web. Following this, it will address the over-arching issue of the links between technology and culture, before reviewing research on Social Media and Social Network Sites

Listserv was the first electronic mailing list software service. The acronyms MUD (Multiple User Dungeons) and MOO (Multiple-User Object Oriented) evolved from multi-user interactive roleplaying games on the Internet and refer to text-based virtual reality (Davies, Shield, Weininger 1999).

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

(SNS)2 and discussing the structural features and communicative purposes of the SNS Facebook. Finally, this chapter will identify the notion of ‘Facebook’ as a third author and clarify the book’s specific focus that promotes the need to approach Social Media from a critical and hypertextlinguistic perspective.

Web 2.0, Social Media and Personal Publishing Radio broadcasting would be one of the greatest means for public communication […], if it could not only send but also receive, so that the listener could not just hear but also speak.3 Bert Brecht 1932/1967, rough translation

In his speech about the functions of radio broadcasting, Brecht (1932/1967) envisioned a new bi-directional form of mass media communication, which has come to fruition in the era of Web 2.0 technology. Most notably, in recent Web 2.0 applications, such as Wikipedia, Blogger, YouTube, Myspace or Facebook, ordinary people have become lexicographers, journalists, moviemakers or digital writers. In the early and mid–1990s, the upload and distribution of data on the Internet required, to a large extent, at least a basic knowledge of HyperText Markup Langauge (HTML). Publishing on the Web became, from the end of the 1990s onward, more and more a practice of the masses. Broader Internet connection bandwidths as well as new data-sharing technologies resulted in users perceiving the Internet increasingly as a platform to lodge data (see Ebersbach et al. 2008).4 At the same time, the increasing number of non-expert users uploading and dispersing information on the Internet troubled the thitherto dominant position of professional online news sources and databases. From the end of the 1990s onward, Weblogs mushroomed on the Web and introduced fresh voices into the national discourse on various topics, which helped to build communities of interest (Bowman and Willis 2003). Collaboratively written online encyclopaedias (such as Wikipedia) emerged to rival professional online and offline encyclopaedias, while video and photo I will use the acronym SNS to refer to Social Network Site(s). ‘Der Rundfunk wäre der denkbar großartigste Kommunikationsapparat des öffentlichen Lebens […], wenn er es verstünde, nicht nur auszusenden, sondern auch zu empfangen, also den Zuhörer nicht nur hören, sondern auch sprechen zu machen […]’ (Brecht 1932/1967: 129).  4 ‘Mit neuen datenbankbasierten Applikationen und der Erweiterung der Bandbreiten wurde es möglich, immer größere Datenmengen über das WWW zu Verfügung zu stellen. Das veränderte das Wesen des Internets insoweit, als nun das Netz zunehmend als Plattform wahrgenommen wurde, auf der man Inhalte hinterlegen konnte’ (Ebersbach et al 2008: 22).  2  3



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sharing Websites (such as YouTube or Flickr) prompted the upload and dispersion of more or less personal data. Accounting for the miscellaneous social and technological innovations associated with such genuine interactivity, various expressions emerged in the early years of the new millennium, among them ‘Web 2.0’, ‘Social Media’, and ‘Personal Publishing’. Though these terms open up different perspectives on recent Internet related changes, they are frequently used synonymously in public discourse. In the following section I will discuss the aforementioned terms in order to situate my particular focus within the interweaving of recent communication technologies and the emergence of current online spaces.

Web 2.0 Analogous to common software naming conventions for new and sometimes improved versions, the appellation 2.0 of Web 2.0 emphasizes the next envisioned version of the Web. Unlike the software label, the term Web 2.0 is not limited to a mere technical update of the online medium but also covers its interrelated phenomena on various socio-cultural levels. As a key feature and an indispensable precondition for the emergence of new social spaces, Web 2.0 stands out in its genuine interactivity simply because people can upload as well as download (Fry 2007: online). This simple but profound change in the medial communication process has lead to intense alterations in the textual habits of ordinary web users. Most obviously, in Web 2.0 applications, like Weblogs, WikiWebs or SNS, former hypertext recipients have undergone a transformation to empowered hypertext authors. While humanities still discuss the power shifts inherent to ‘first-generation hypertexts’, where the reader chooses his/her way from node to node, thus becoming ‘co-author’ of the text, (e.g. Bucher 2006, Storrer 2008) the Web 2.0 user has already become author in the primary sense of the word: An estimated 150 million Weblogs in 2012 (see Royal Pingdom 2013) give further evidence for Lanham’s (1993) notion of a vanishing boundary between ‘creator and critic’ (Lanham 1993: 6). Until the end of the 1990s, publishing on the Web was limited to the more tech-savvy users; Web 2.0– triggered online writing caught on with mainstream users. Liberated from tight technical restraints, users could now concentrate on the content of whatever they intend to publish. However, Web 2.0’s genuine interactivity not only surfaces in the blurring of the traditional roles of author and recipient, but correlates with various other phenomena on technological and/or social levels. As Rollet et al. (2007)

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emphasize, the collaborative nature and communication methods within Web 2.0 environments result in ‘an ambiguous, even polymorph concept, which is understood in different ways by different people’ (2007: 89). With regard to this, O’Reilly (2006) highlights primarily the economic value brought by technological innovations when defining Web 2.0 as a ‘business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform’ (2006 online). By characterizing Web 2.0 as ‘[…] the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence […]’, Hoegg et al. (2006: 24) point to social changes on a rather broad level, while studies in information science stress commonly the emergence of a new generation of web-related technologies and standards5 (cf. Anderson 2007). Reflecting on the multitude of phenomena covered by the term, Richter and Koch (2007) define Web 2.0 as a combination of new technologies (such as Ajax or RSS), new types of applications (Weblogs, Wikis, Mashups, Social Bookmarking), new social formations (self-representation and collaboration) and new business models (Software as Service, The Long Tail). Emphasizing how the rhetoric surrounding the term Web 2.0 cultivates certain beliefs about media, identity, and technology, Zimmer (2008) opens up a more social perspective on Web 2.0. More specifically, he delineates the ideas and visions ascribed to the term as follows: [Web 2.0] suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks. Zimmer 2008: online

At the same time, participation in Web 2.0 environments may lead to a number of more or less unintended consequences – among them the easy access to highly personal data, the dispersion of one’s identity across fragmented online spaces, the threat of online surveillance as well as the possible exploitation of online social spaces by media corporations. In this sense, Postman (1992) emphasized long before the emergence of Web 2.0 that users indulging in media communications are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in such technologies. He believes that media technologies are never neutral, but tend to endorse certain ideologies, while blurring others (Zimmer 2005). Turning to Web 2.0 and its mechanisms for transforming former (hyper-)text recipients to empowered Such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) (see Henderson 2009).

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authors, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to reflect on the various impacts of the medium on their texts: WikiWebs, just like Weblogs or SNS, are commonly based on pre-given templates, which elicit certain information, while suppressing other more or less relevant information. Likewise, the layout of these texts is, to a high degree, pre-set and users may at most decide among a limited number of default designs. By means of simple mouse clicks, users may perform highly sophisticated actions, such as uploading and publishing texts and other data (as in Weblogs or WikiWebs), generating automatic messages requesting friendship (as in SNS) or purchasing and/or selling items (as on the online auction site eBay). As the examples in Figure 1.1 show, such text actions must not necessarily be performed by ‘real’ users. The ‘Lazy Bloggers Post Generator’ assists users in maintaining their personal Weblogs by creating posts from pre-given templates; the ‘Facebook Friend Adder’ is a computer program that simulates and/or performs diverse text actions on behalf of an individual member, such as adding friends, sending messages or ‘poking’ other members; the ‘JoyBidder Auto Auction Bidder’ tool

Figure 1.1: Lazy Blog Generator, Facebook Friend Adder and JoyBidder eBay Auction Bidder tool

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supports users purchasing items on the Internet auction site eBay by automatically placing bids in the last seconds of an auction. However, recipients of such automatically generated texts most likely do not suspect a machine is responsible for the Weblog posts, the friendship requests or the auction bids. The propositional content of those automatically generated texts is, to a large extent, generated by a computer program, while its communicative function is intended to be consistent with the user’s (and secondary text producer’s) individual aims. Now it is necessary to take a closer look at the diverse applications that have been developed within the Web 2.0 environment and are often referred to as ‘Social Software’.

Social Media and Social Software On the broadest level, the term ‘Social Media’ refers to Web 2.0 applications, such as WikiWebs, Weblogs or SNS, and their various interrelations in the organization of social life. Accordingly, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define Social Media as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content’ (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010: 61). Social Software is often used as a synonym for Social Media. While both terms place emphasis on online tools supporting social interaction among users, the former term highlights the ontological quality of the environment in which the communicative practices are embedded. Throughout this book the terms Social Media and Social Software are used interchangibly. Holding the medium responsible for changes on a social level, Schmidt (2006) outlines three key functions of Social Software: First, information management facilitating the search (and detection) as well as the administration and evaluation of information online; secondly, identity management supporting the presentation of facets of the person in online environments; thirdly, contact management enabling the display, maintenance and establishment of ties online. The SNS researcher boyd6 (2006) opposes such a narrow, structuralistic reading of Social Software that binds the term to certain purpose-driven features. Arguing that the term does not simply imply a category of technologies designed to carry out specific functions, she holds that Social Software

Note that danah m. boyd spells her name using lowercase letters.

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is about a movement, […] about recognizing that the era of e-commerce centred business models is over [and that] we’ve moved on to web software that is all about letting people interact with people and data in a fluid way. boyd 2006: 17

In her view, it is less the technology, but more the attitude of the people using the software that is the key feature of the term Social Software.7 Accordingly, she argues for three fundamental changes interrelated with Social Software, i.e. ‘the design of the technology’, ‘the user’s participation’ and ‘the behaviour on Social Software’. With regard to the design of the technology, Social Software supersedes traditional software design processes: Only a few years ago the deployment and production of software lay, most commonly, entirely in the hands of technology companies. Software programs underwent long processes of design, testing and deployment before they were shipped on discs or CD ROMs to stores to be purchased. Social Software replaces such established methods of development, marketing and distribution in nearly every way. As boyd (2006) shows, the design and deployment of Social Software is highly dynamic and builds to a high degree on user feedback. As opposed to traditional software companies, Social Software designers skip lengthy processes of quality assurance and marketing. Instead, they just deploy the programs and start talking to their users about how they could support them better. According to boyd (2006), the key design values of the ‘Social Software movement’ can be described along the following four lines: Hack it up, get it out there. Learn from your users and evolve the system with them. Make your presence known to your users and invite them for feedback. When you make mistakes, grovel for forgiveness; you’re human too! boyd 2006: 20

The user’s participation plays a prominent role in the spread of Social Software as well as in the formation of a culture that surrounds it. ‘Values are built into Social Software and spread through the networks of people who join’ (boyd 2006: 22). Also referred to as ‘viral marketing’, Social Software expanded typically through ‘word-of-mouth’ delivery of information passed among befriended users. Simultaneously, Social Software tends to penetrate specific cultures, which enforce their own values and practices. In this sense, cultures that form around Web 2.0 applications provide meaningful contextual information to users, cf. how to behave and what to expect from others’ behaviour As boyd (2006) shows, the technologies underlying Social Software are not fundamentally different from technologies with other labels.

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in a specific virtual environment. While in unmediated physical spaces ‘social scripts’ are provided by the individual situation and/or conventional setting (e.g. a wedding, a consultation, a workplace conversation), contextual cues in online situations are far more complex: Social norms bound to Social Software are commonly based on a certain, more or less heterogenic group of users. On the other hand, due to Web 2.0’s key features of participation and collaboration, a quasi-unlimited group of users may access Social Software data. It follows that such a shift with regard to communities of practice and context might (at least in some cases) turn out to be problematic: ‘Teenagers on Myspace aren’t prepared for their parents – how can one be simultaneously cool to parents and peers when the norms of each are quite different?’ (boyd 2006: 26). In matters of the behaviour on Social Software, boyd (2006) emphasizes new types of social organization. From a social perspective, pre-Web 2.0 environments were primarily designed to find people with similar interests. People gathered around topics and made use of a variety of services to connect. In contrast, the ‘Social Software movement’ brought about innovative ways of context creation: Rather than being associated topically, people connected to other (known or unknown) people first, and watched shared interests emerge. As such, the virtual environment of current Web 2.0 applications builds to a large degree on ‘egocentric collections’ of people (boyd 2006). Users employ Social Software to connect with other users, who share some sort of social ties. However, as boyd (2006) emphasizes, communities formed around egocentric collections are unable to adapt to a great variety of contexts. As a result, users draw on multiple Social Software sites in order to keep different and/or contradicting contexts separate. In this sense, a user might enrol in a business networking site (such as Xing) to manage her/his job-related contacts, connect to her/his close friends via a microblogging service (such as Twitter) and look for a new partner on a dating site (such as Match.com). Boyd’s (2006) understanding of Social Software can be summarized as new ways of building and deploying software that call for the users’ participation and introduce new types of social organization. While the term Social Software emphasizes versatile interrelations among computer programs and social networks on a broad level, innovations with regard to the literacy practices of individual users are covered by the term ‘Personal Publishing’.

Personal Publishing In the most general sense, the term ‘Personal Publishing’ refers to the productive participation of ordinary users. Web 2.0 users publish and distribute their



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thoughts with great ease. As a result of Social Media and its pre-designed templates to be filled in, technical background knowledge (such as HTML or XML) has become obsolete in publishing on the Internet. Figure 1.2 illustrates a pre-designed template and its corresponding entry of the Weblog hosting service blogger.com. After having composed a new post, a single click on the publication button uploads the entry on the Web, where it may be commented on by other users, hyperlinked to other Websites or be crawled and indexed by search engines. Previous research has delineated the term ‘Personal Publishing’ as tools and techniques that enable mainstream users to reach the general public (Gillmor 2004). As it liberates authors from editorial control, Zerdick et al. (2004) describe Personal Publishing as ‘Meso Media’ that can neither be captured by the traditional concept of mass media nor by that of private media. As a form of many-to-many communication, the traditional recipient (and mass media

Figure 1.2: Personal Publishing on blogger.com

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

consumer) can transform anytime to a Web 2.0 user, or – to put it differently – to a Meso Media producer. Hoem and Schwebs (2004) define Personal Publishing as ‘publishing processed by individuals in relation to a community’ (2004: online) and point to three key characteristics: First, the liberation from any editorial control; secondly, electronic linking to virtual communities of interest; thirdly the embedding in a ‘common dialog’. However, it has to be stressed that as a side effect of Web 2.0’s public domain interactivity, every uploaded text, picture, audio or video file can almost instantly be commented on, edited or deleted by other users. Related to this, Bublitz (2008) has shown that in Web 2.0, traditional notions of bilateral interaction gave way to a concept of multilateral interaction: ‘[…] in Web 2.0– based media formats […] text-building actions can no longer be assigned to individual but only to ‘multiple authors’[…]’ (Bublitz 2008: 255). It follows that the systematic choices of text resources in Personal Publishing texts are heavily constrained by their social context, not only in the sense that meanings ascribed to language are socially constructed, but – more importantly – with regard to a collaboration among various users in the text creation. Though the single text creation processes are accomplished individually, they are based on ‘a common dialog including a number of people’ (Hoem and Schwebs 2004: 3). Depending on the individual Social Media application, the impact of such a ‘common dialog’ on text creation can be more or less pronounced. As shown by the continuum presented in Table 1.1, collaborative text-building actions stretch from simple comments of known or unknown users in SNS and Weblogs to genuinely cooperatively created texts in WikiWebs. At the one extreme, SNS profiles are usually created by a single author; though they include limited possibilities for befriended network members to contribute, e.g. by leaving messages on the pin board. At the other extreme, WikiWebs trigger thoroughly collaborative text-building actions, as they allow anyone who accesses an individual entry to contribute or modify content. In between, Weblogs prompt single authors or a group of authors (as in group blogs) to create and upload posts. Unlike SNS, it is not a limited group who are entitled to comment upon entries, but anyone who surfs by. It follows that on the level of authorship, the term ‘Personal Publishing’ cannot be taken too literally. The genuine interactivity that is the defining feature of Web 2.0 appears to hinder individual, self-contained text-building actions: Any Personal Publishing text created and uploaded with the help of Web 2.0 applications (or Social Software) triggers collaborative text creation processes at



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Table 1.1: A continuum of text collaboration in Personal Publishing Social network sites

Blogs

Wikis

Usually one author

One or a few authors

Multiple authors

+ One may post and edit postings

+ One or a few may post and edit posting

+ Anyone may post and edit postings

+ Comments by other SNS members

+ Comments by anyone who surfs by

+ Collaborative text creation of primary texts

low collaborative text creation

high collaborative text creation

least to some degree. Even SNS that are designed for the self-representation of one single author offer various means for befriended members to create text.

Technological determinism and social constructionism In view of such simultaneously occurring technological and social changes, questions of ‘cause and effect’ arise: Is computer technology the basic cause for changes in social interaction and communication or do new media just adapt to the needs and characteristics of modern society that evolved independently from technological innovations? With regard to these questions, scholars reflecting on the interrelations between culture and technology have been advocating two contradictory positions, i.e. ‘technological determinism’ and ‘social constructionism’. The term ‘technological determinism’ was coined by the American sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen and seeks to explain social and historical phenomena in terms of one principal factor, namely technology (Chandler 1995). In other words, it raises the issue of how the tools we shape determine our behaviour and are therefore influential on our future. An extreme form of technological determinism even promotes the idea that the world is a mechanism, which goes back to Descartes (Hunnex 1986). In this view, the tools and machinery we create are determined for our present, past and future and are thus the primal cause of our whole world. An often-cited and prominent advocate of technological determinism is supposed to be Karl Marx, though this is a heavily discussed issue and was disproved in various scholarly pieces on Marx.8 ‘Media determinism’ evolved as a subset of technological deter cf. ‘Marx was not a technological determinist. The dominant interpretation is wrong […]. Change in productive forces, in the narrowly technological sense that excludes work relations, is not the basic source of change in society at large’ (Miller 1984: 188).

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minism and can be summarized by McLuhan et al.’s (1967/2001) slogan ‘the medium is the message’. Its basic tenets hold media technologies responsible for socio-economic changes. In this sense, it is assumed that social phenomena are due to interaction between the intrinsic characteristics of the medium and the physiological and cognitive properties of human beings. Consequently, Bolter (1997) points to a close link between changes in literacy technologies and the modalities of self-determination. As he shows, individuals manifest themselves only in and through acts of medial representation and communication. Properties of the individual medium in use correlate therefore, in Bolter’s sense (1997), with the notion and perception of the ‘self ’: In the era of the printing press, the ‘printed self ’ was a rather stable character, determined by the consistency of linear-structured texts with fixed beginnings and ends. As opposed to this, the hypertextual ‘electronic self ’ mirrors the fragmentation of individual postmodern identities. Murray (2000) also points to the widely held belief that literacy technologies affect cultural practices and communities: The transformation from an oral culture to a literate one reshaped consciousness; the introduction of alphabetic writing in Ancient Greece transformed Greek thought; the invention of the printing press moved the power of scholar-priests to more democratic institutions […]. Murray 2000: 43

Related to this, though with a more narrow focus, Landow (1992) emphasizes various analogies among poststructuralist theories in literary studies and the specific characteristics of electronic texts, such as lack of closure, fluidity and linking. As a counterpart to a technologically deterministic frame of mind, advocates of ‘social constructionism’ assume that culture determines or affects technology, not vice versa. Accordingly, social constructionists reflect upon ‘how cultural factors shape our use and experience of technological power’ (Lister et al. 2003: 4). A strong reading of social constructionism, represented by Woolgar (1988) and others, holds that technologies are entirely based on social constructs. In this sense, properties of computer-mediated texts, such as fragmentation, interactivity and fluidity, are first and foremost social manifestations; it is culture that decides which properties we assign to them and how their implications are evaluated (Bolter 1997). As opposed to the assumption that technology is exclusively socially (and therefore ideologically) conditioned, the moderate version of social constructionism acknowledges some influence of (literacy) technologies on culture and/or communication. Acknowledging some technological impact on culture, however, by no means denies that all tools bear



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social meaning, and reflect social values and practices: Through the specific ways people make use of technologies, the individual tools and machineries themselves become cultural artefacts, developing patterns and conventions for their use and/or communication. As opposed to the strong reading of social constructionism, technology is not neutral, nor is it the principal factor of social change, as promoted by technological determinism. Murray (2000) emphasizes that [t]echnologies themselves did not cause changes such as the Reformation. Changes result from mutually influencing social and technological factors: New technologies like the printing press merely facilitated changes already beginning to take place. Murray 2000: 43

When transferring these findings to the particular focus of this book, I will neither regard the software service and its particular properties as the basic and primary factor for a novel conception of identity and friendship, nor will I maintain that these changes are exclusively socially motivated and evolved independently from technological innovations. In accordance with advocates of the moderate version of social constructionism, I support the notion of a mutual influence of social and technological factors. However, approaching Facebook from the perspective of (text-)linguistics brings about certain limitations: Cultural values and practices that go along with the implementation of Facebook will only be considered to the degree that they reflect a more or less direct impact of the software service on the communication among users. In this sense, a detailed analysis of the text practices involved when using Facebook (Fb)9 aims at providing insights into the corresponding literacy, which is understood as a socio-cultural phenomenon mirroring a community’s values and beliefs. Acknowledging the fact that ‘computer technology is not an autonomous technology that in and of itself will change the way we think’ (Murray 2000: 44), such an approach must account for the diachronic interrelations between literacy technologies and communicative practices. By setting prevailing literacy techniques (computer-mediated texts) in contrast and comparison to preceding cultural skills (traditional, mostly paper-based texts), I will therefore develop the notion of Facebook as an electronic hypertext (see Chapters 3 and 4).

From now on I will use ‘Fb’ to refer to Facebook.

 9

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

What are Social Network Sites? A closer look at the compound noun ‘Social Network Sites’ opens up a first idea of what these online tools are about. By defining a ‘network’ as ‘a large system consisting of many similar parts that are connected’ (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2008: 849), we can paraphrase the SNS in the broadest sense as Internet pages focusing on systems of interconnected parts in a social context. Another designation commonly used to refer to web applications which focus on social communities is the term ‘Social Networking Site’ (cf. Santos et al. 2009). Using the gerund form of the verb ‘to network’, the modification of the head ‘site’ experiences a considerable change when compared to Social Network Site: The verb ‘networking’ connotes relationship inducement among strangers, especially within business contexts.10 Though meeting new people is possible via such software services, it is neither the primary practice on many SNS nor is it limited to business environments. As boyd and Ellison (2007) have shown, in SNS participants ‘are primarily communicating with people who are already part of their extended social network’ (2007: online). While there are also specific services that are particularly designed for meeting new people (such as Match.com or FriendScout24.com), the SNS under focus is primarily used to manage and maintain contacts with people who are already known. I will therefore follow boyd and Ellison (2007), preferring the term Social Network Site over Social Networking Site. The emergence of computer technology and the Internet was, from the very beginning, intertwined with the rise of new social spaces. Pushed ahead by new information technologies, in recent years the Internet has become even more important for the development and maintenance of social ties. As has been shown, the formation of online communities is at the very heart of all types of Social Software. Still, in many Web 2.0 applications, people gather around certain subjects and the individual themes play a crucial role.11 Less focused on specific topics, SNS primarily stand out through the formation of social ties and interaction among users. The users’ networks are not only the key feature of SNS but establish its very content. Though SNS have established a relatively new field of research, there is a considerable number of scientific publications discussing various social and cultural aspects that interrelate with these The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2008) defines the verb ‘to network’ with ‘to meet new people, who might be useful to know, especially in your job’ (2008: 955). Examples of subject-oriented web applications are the video-sharing platform YouTube or the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

10

11



Social Media and Social Network Sites

15

web services. Currently, the Website www.danah.org/researchBibs/sns.php lists almost 600 publications focusing specifically on SNS. The online bibliography includes works from a variety of fields, such as communications, information science, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, cultural studies, computer science, etc. The Website owner danah m. boyd, one of the leading figures in SNS research, has written on SNS from a background in sociology and information science. Together with Nicole Ellison, boyd edited the first compilation of SNS research (see boyd and Ellison 2007). Boyd and Ellison (2007) devote considerable attention to the question of what constitutes a Social Network Site and deliver the following definition: We define Social Network Sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. boyd and Ellison 2007: online

In a nutshell, the authors emphasize three key characteristics of SNS: The profile, the list of confirmed contacts and the browsing of hyperlinked profiles. The profiles establish the backbone of every SNS as their set-up is a necessary prerequisite to getting in touch with other users. Once registered, SNS members are prompted to complete templates with questions that vary greatly with respect to the individual SNS service. When these questions are answered the profile is generated automatically and may be published on the Internet with just a few mouse clicks. Figure 1.3 shows a simplified illustration of a representative SNS profile. We can see at one glance the versatility of information presented on such profiles. We find a picture in an ID photo format, sections with personal details, various means of contacting the owner, and – among many other sections – an overview of the user’s network friends. Public access to a profile differs with regard to the particular settings of the individual member and is, at the same time, dependent on the respective design of the individual service.12 Public profiles are visible to anyone, regardless of ‘By default, profiles on Friendster and Tribe.net are crawled by search engines, making them visible to anyone, regardless of whether or not the viewer has an account. Alternatively, LinkedIn controls what a viewer may see based on whether she or he has a paid account. Sites like MySpace allow users to choose whether they want their profile to be public or ‘Friends only’. Facebook takes a different approach – by default, users who are part of the same ‘network’ can view each other’s profiles, unless a profile owner has decided to deny permission to those in their network. Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other’ (boyd and Ellison 2007: online).

12

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

Figure 1.3: A simplified illustration of an SNS profile

whether the viewer is registered on the individual SNS or not; the accessibility of semi-public profiles is limited to the confirmed contacts within the SNS. As a particular feature of SNS, users are prompted to identify and to connect to other users. Having linked with other users, the list of a member’s confirmed contacts is displayed on her/his individual profile. Thereby, labels designating those connections differ depending on the particular SNS services and include terms like ‘friends’, ‘contacts’, or ‘fans’.13 With regard to the individual privacy settings, the social ties among users within SNS are visible to greater or lesser degrees and can be browsed more or less extensively. In addition to the set up of a profile and the establishment of connections, most SNS provide devices for sending private messages (similar to e-mail) and/or leaving public comments. However, apart from profiles, displayed connections and messaging devices, the different SNS services may vary greatly with regard to their features as well as to their user groups. Similar to the key features illustrated by boyd and Ellison (2007), Gross and Acquisti (2005) also describe the presentation of ‘the self ’ and the formation ‘The term ‘friends’ can be misleading, because the connection does not necessarily mean friendship in the everyday vernacular sense, and the reasons people connect are varied’ (boyd and Ellison 2007: online); see also boyd (2006a).

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Social Media and Social Network Sites

17

and/or disclosure of social ties as the core features most SNS share. However, the type and amount of information participants divulge may vary significantly across different SNS services. As the authors show, some types of SNS (e.g. Facebook) encourage the use of real names, as ‘they aspire to connect participants’ profiles to their public identities’ (2005: 72). Others seek to protect the public identity of the participants by blurring connections to the online profile. Pseudonymous-based dating SNS (such as Match.com) openly discourage the use of real names and other personal demographic information.14 According to Gross and Acquisti (2005), the kind of data participants reveal on SNS centre most commonly around hobbies and interests. Apart from such rather general information, category-based representations may specify various facets of a user. Depending on the individual purpose of the SNS, we may obtain information on a SNS member’s previous employers (Xing), on her or his pet (Dogster, Catster), travel habits (Couchsurfing) as well as on her or his sexual preferences and orientations (Nerve Personals). Contrary to the recommendations of the individual hosting service itself, SNS participants tend to disclose personal information rather thoughtlessly: With regard to their corpus encompassing more than 4,000 Facebook profiles, Gross and Acquisti (2005) report that a majority of users willingly reveal sensitive details about themselves, such as birth date, phone number, current residence, relationship status, etc. The authors list different drivers for such an unconcerned revelation of privacy issues, among them peer pressure and herding behaviour, myopic privacy attitudes as well as the acceptance and/or ignorance of the default privacy setting of the service hosts. As opposed to the aforementioned authors, Richter and Koch (2008) use the gerund form of the verb ‘to network’ as modifier and the head ‘service’ (as opposed to ‘site’) to reflect on community-inducing Websites from their business administration background. Without elucidating the terminological differences between Social Networking Services and Social Network Sites, the authors propose six basic functionalities, including: (1) identity management – relating to the allocation of personal information as well as to the administration of the access settings, (2) expert search – including all functions of searching for SNS users according to specific criteria, (3) context awareness – accounting for the consciousness about ‘common contexts’, such as shared The practical tips for setting up a profile on Match.com read as follows: ‘Don’t share your real name, personal phone numbers, or any other identifying information while IMing or emailing until you are comfortable doing so. Never post personal contact information in your profile. Don’t risk having this information fall into the wrong hands’ (http://www.match.com/help/safetytips.aspx).

14

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

interests, contacts in common or similar education or working backgrounds, (4) contact management – encompassing all functions of contact administration, (5) network awareness – relating to the consciousness of other SNS members’ text actions, and (6) exchange – encompassing all functions for direct (cf. messages) or indirect communication (cf. bulletin boards and photos). Identifying contact management and identity management as the two central features of SNS, the authors provide the following definition: Social Networking Services (SNS) are application systems that offer users functionalities for identity management (1) (i.e. the representation of the own person e.g. in form of a profile) and enable furthermore to keep in touch (2) with other users (and thus the administration of own contacts). Richter and Koch 2008: online

With reference to Goffman’s (1959) work ‘the presentation of self in everyday life’, Richter and Koch (2008) compare the creation of an SNS profile to an actor portraying a character. A user’s allocation of personal information, her or his membership in certain SNS-specific groups, as well as her or his individual privacy settings, contribute to a user’s identity management. Means for keeping in touch with users include private and public message-sending devices and other functions that support the maintenance and administration of contacts. Though included as a key characteristic in their definition, the authors give no information on their precise notion of ‘identity’. When introducing Goffman’s (1959) analogy between self-presentation in everyday life and character portrayal on a theatre stage, the authors fail to specify how this relates to identity management in SNS: Which are the discursive strategies and/or text actions responsible for identity formation in SNS? How do identities portrayed within SNS relate to ‘offline identities’ of the individual SNS members? Generally speaking, identity formation involves, according to Mead (1934/1968), the interplay between the self and the environment. Thereby the self consists of two interacting phases: First, the ‘I’ as the initiative part and the individual component of the self and, secondly, the ‘me’ which originates in society and internalizes the roles which derive from linguistic interaction. Following this, the ‘me’ as the social self is the identity of which the ‘I’ becomes conscious. Turning back to SNS, we can establish that SNS open up new environments for negotiating the socialized aspects of a person (the ‘me’). The internalization of the roles deriving from textual actions within SNS affects to greater or lesser degrees a person’s response(s) to the attitudes of others, her/his ‘I’. In this sense, the linguistic foundation of the self may occupy SNS profiles on which



Social Media and Social Network Sites

19

SNS members perform various text actions furthering the ‘me’ phase of their identity. However, from the mere linguistic interaction within an SNS profile we cannot provide any further information on an SNS member’s ‘I’, as this is a rather fictious/metaphysical entity. While I shall at this point refer to SNS as means of self-representation, I will get back to SNS and/or Fb-specific identities throughout Chapter 4. Such a brief survey and discussion of established terms and definitions emphasizes the wide range of ideas and the miscellaneous concepts that are linked with the phenomenon of SNS. On the level of word formation, alternative designations shed light on different fundamental purposes for which SNS can be used, i.e. to maintain existing ties (as in SNS) or to form new ones (as in Social Networking Sites). Of course, contact maintenance among previously known SNS members does not prevent them from connecting with strangers. However, on many of the large SNS, users ‘are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network’ (boyd and Ellison 2007: online). Long before the advent of Web 2.0, the formation of new social ties was practiced through various web applications and services, such as e-mail lists, Chat rooms, online games or dating Websites. As a matter of fact, the articulation and/or maintenance of pre-existing offline relations within online spaces have emerged as a unique feature of SNS. While there is considerable research on how social connections that developed online blend into offline contexts (Döring 2000, Steinkuehler 2007), the ‘offline to online trend’, reflecting the interrelations between online media and previously existing offline social communities, represents an understudied area (see Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe 2007). As has been shown, the key SNS features in the aforementioned definitions orbit in particular around three characteristics: First, the self-presentation in the form of profiles; secondly, the formation and maintenance of contacts and, thirdly, the presentation of lists of social ties within the network. Although I agree with the main aspects of such an understanding of SNS, there are two observations I would like to add. The first relates to the fluidity of the SNS templates and/or interfaces. As a feature of Social Media, the design process of SNS is never entirely completed. Structural changes (cf. with regard to revised profile templates) and the deployment of new functions build to a large degree on user feedback. Figure 1.4 illustrates the transformation of the Facebook interface since its introduction in 2004. As an example of how users’ responses feed into the interface design of SNS, we can turn to Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ stream. Implemented in 2006 as a built-in

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

Figure 1.4: The transformation of the Facebook interface

service that would actively broadcast changes in a user’s page to every one of his or her friends, many members complained about ‘Facebook […] becoming the Big Brother of the Internet, recording every single move’ (Thompson 2008: online). In response to the users’ outcry, Facebook immediately added a privacy feature to News Feed, letting users decide what kind of information goes out. Besides giving feedback on the site’s structure and/or functions, Facebook users themselves may become involved in the deployment and implementation of new features: In 2007, Facebook launched a platform for users to create and distribute their own applications.15 My second observation concerns the blurring demarcation lines between SNS that focus primarily on the formation of online communities and web services that have different focal points, but offer functions of an SNS in addition (such as the set-up of a Personal Profile and the possibility to become ‘friends’ with other participants). In order to upload a film onto the video-sharing platform One of the most popular user-generated Facebook applications is ‘Farmville’, which allows Facebook members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees and livestock.

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21

YouTube, one has to set up an account that requires a username as well as an e-mail address. Having enrolled, one may provide further information about oneself (picture, personal interests, address) and/or use various functions to connect to other users, just like in SNS profiles. Likewise, the online auction Website eBay requires setting up an account before one can place bids. However, as an eBay member one cannot only purchase and/or sell items, but also talk about various subjects with other participants on the site’s discussion boards or join eBay member groups, such as the ‘bunny and co’ group – a platform for pet lovers (see Figure 1.5). A key feature of Web 2.0 is the transformation from users or former hypertexts recipients to empowered hypertext authors. However, this presupposes the user’s registration to a particular service. Thereby, in many services, the creation of an account involves much more than a user name and an e-mail address: Just like in SNS, members have the option to create a Personal Profile, connect to other members and build networks. Unlike SNS, the formation and maintenance of social ties do not constitute the primary purpose of the Website, but arise more or less as a side effect of users gathering around certain subjects, such as sharing videos (as on YouTube) or buying/selling items online (as on eBay). Considering the discussed features and ideas attached to SNS, I define SNS as Social Software-based Websites whose primary aim is establishing and maintaining online communities by asking participants to present themselves (in the form of public or semi-public profiles) and to connect and communicate with other participants.

Figure 1.5: Examples for SNS plus Websites

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

The aforementioned fluidity with regard to functions and interfaces is accounted for by designating SNS as Social Software-based Websites. As has been shown, an element of change is at the very heart of all Social Software. To separate SNS from subject-oriented Websites that involve the upload of personal information as well as the articulation of social ties, my definition emphasizes the inducement of online communities as the primary focus of the online service. Thereby, contact formation within the SNS may involve socializing among strangers or it may be triggered by previously existing offline connections. Referring to SNS users as ‘participants’ highlights the requirement of enrolling in the service and setting up a Personal Profile. The two described central features, self-presentation and connecting with other participants, are consistent with the main aspects of the previously discussed definitions. Comparing SNS with related software services, boyd and Ellison (2007) point to dating Websites and instant messaging services. While the former requires the setting up of a Personal Profile, the latter support the generation and the administration of lists of friends. According to boyd and Ellison (2007), the first web service to combine these two features was SixDegrees.com. Launched in 1997, SixDegrees.com established the first recognizable SNS and was followed by a number of other community tools that triggered the creation of Personal Profiles and articulated lists of friends, such as LiveJournal, AsianAvenue or BlackPlanet. In the following years, a variety of SNS emerged which serve a range of purposes, e.g. helping people to form and/or maintain business relationships (LinkedIn, Tribe, Xing), fostering the creation and administration of ties of friendship (Friendster, Facebook), or supporting the exchange of photo and/or video files (Flickr, YouTube). With regard to my definition, some of these community sites meet the key requirement of establishing and/or articulating communities, while others are organized around subject-oriented Websites and involve SNS functions (e.g. profiles and the articulation of social ties) more or less as a side effect. Figure 1.6 presents a rough timeline of the launch dates of numerous major SNS and displays the relaunch dates of some of these sites. According to boyd and Ellison (2007), among the early SNS, the community service Friendster emerged as the most significant SNS: Launched in 2002 it grew quickly to 300,000 users but then experienced a massive decline due to technical and social difficulties. Besides an inappropriate database for handling users’ information, the rapid growth of Friendster members resulted (at least in some cases) in a problematic blend of contexts that were previously separated. Friendster users were not only connected to online acquaintances, former



Social Media and Social Network Sites

Figure 1.6: Timeline of major Social Network Sites16 Adopted from boyd and Ellison 2007.

16

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A Critical Hypertext Analysis of Social Media

classmates or close friends, but also had to deal with people from their working life, such as colleagues, supervisors or employees. From 2003 onward, the popularity of SNS increased further and many sites with different objectives and target groups were launched. While some of them aimed at broad audiences, such as the friendship SNS Myspace, Hi–5 or Facebook, others focused on more specific demographics, e.g. MyChurch, connecting Christian churches and their members. As boyd and Ellison (2007) have shown for Myspace and Facebook, the dominant user groups of a specific SNS may change over time: When Myspace launched in 2003, it was initially aiming to compete with friendship SNS, like Friendster, and/or more general community networks, such as Xanga. However, within a short time, Indie-rock bands utilized Myspace to connect with fans and/or other bands and turned the SNS into a global music-related network. In 2004, teenagers began joining the SNS Myspace and formed a distinct population on the network. Unlike Myspace, which originally targeted a rather broad group, Facebook was initially designed only to support distinct networks: It began in 2004 as an exclusive service for Harvard students. Shortly afterwards, in September 2005, the SNS expanded to include ‘high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and, eventually, everyone’ (boyd and Ellison 2007: online).17 As an example of a so-called ‘friend networking site’, Facebook belongs to the most common type of SNS. The primary aim of such friend networking sites is to articulate and/or to create, manage and maintain friendship ties. However, there exist various other types of SNS supporting all kinds of relationships among users. Some of the most curious SNS I encountered when writing this book include the pet networking site ‘Dogster’, which asks dog owners to create profiles of their pets; and the DNA network ‘familybuilder’, which requests members to explore their ancestry through DNA testing in order to connect with hitherto unknown relatives via major SNS.18 Since 2003, SNS have mushroomed to support all kinds of social relations, and a wide range of different subjects. In literature as well as in online journals and blog discussions, there have been several attempts to categorize SNS. The Social Software Weblog19 classifies hundreds of SNS into nine loosely built As opposed to the objective of most SNS to solicit a high number of members and grow exponentially, others intentionally aim for small audiences. The SNS BeautifulPeople is designed for connecting a small selection of elitist and good-looking people. 18 PC mag.com, an online review journal for technology products, lists the ten most absurd SNS, including an SNS for earning your way into heaven (http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3 253,1=232498&a=232498&po=10,00.asp). 19 See: http://socialsoftware.Weblogsinc.com/2005/02/14/home-of-the-social-networking-servicesmeta-list/ 17



Social Media and Social Network Sites

Figure 1.7a: Pet networking site ‘Dogster’

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Figure 1.7b: DNA network ‘familybuilder’

categories: Business sites, common interest sites, dating sites, face-to-face facilitation sites, friend networking sites, mobile Social Software sites, pet networking sites, photo sharing sites and social networking ‘plus’. However, such classification rests on rather heterogenic criteria. While some categories are concerned with the kind of relationship being established (such as friend networking sites or business networking sites), others pertain to the medium in use (mobile Social Software sites), while others again relate to a specific subject (common interest networking sites, pet networking sites). Heidemann (2009) aims to develop more common criteria. Her approach generally differentiates between private SNS and those with a focus on business relations. She further divides them in SNS with rather general focal points and those sites which address a particular target audience. While general SNS are neither bound to a specific subject nor to a particular demographic, specific interest SNS focus on particular subjects and user groups, e.g. users of a particular age, with specific hobbies and/or certain career. Moreover, SNS can be classified with regard to information access: Open SNS apply no or only minor access restrictions and are accessible to practically anyone (cf. Xing). Closed SNS are



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limited to particular user groups, such as the employees of a company (cf. IBM Blue Pages, a company-internal network). Studying patterns of information revelation in SNS, Gross and Acquisti (2005) evaluate the different services according to the identifiability, the type and the visibility of the information disclosed. As the authors show, the ‘identifiablity of information’ changes across different types of sites: Some types of SNS (e.g. Facebook) encourage the use of real names; others (e.g. Match.com) seek to protect the personal identity of the participants by blurring connections to the online profile. In most major SNS, the ‘type of information’ orbits around general information on the members (such as hobbies and personal interests), while specialized SNS disclose more specific user details (e.g. in dating SNS). Accordingly, the ‘visibility of information’ varies dramatically across the different types of SNS, stretching from sites that offer more or less unrestricted access to sites with limited access. SNS communities have only partly evolved based on the particular design of their Website.They are also affected by whoever colonizes the pre-set templates of the individual services. In fact, the dominant group of users of a specific SNS may or may not correspond with the initial target audience of the developers (as in the case of Myspace). Further, a particular user group may be quickly displaced by another group or the SNS may be abandoned altogether within a short period of time. As a feature of Social Software, the deployment, launch and relaunch of most SNS is carried out in close collaboration with its users. Moreover, there are several online services enabling non-expert users to create their own individual SNS platforms including their own visual designs, features and member data (such as Ning.com, Elgg.com, mixxt.de). Consequently, the variety of SNS types as well as their individual structural features, objectives and communities are highly fluid and constrain any classification of the different services. Acknowledging these limitations, it becomes clear that any attempt to categorize SNS today may be outdated tomorrow. Having these restrictions in mind, Table 1.2 proposes a scheme of features, according to which the various types of SNS can be grouped. It integrates and expands several criteria of the reviewed approaches. The first category concerns the function assigned to the particular service. Of course, the individual communicative aim (and/or the combination of several communicative aims) of SNS cannot be detached from its situational context, but is derived from several extralinguistic circumstances and individual intentions. Nevertheless, I identify two rather broad sub-functions that generally hold true for SNS as they emerge from the design and pre-set templates of the

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Table 1.2: Classification scheme for Social Network Sites Function (Over-arching aim) Social ties

Other

Type of information

Offline Anchorage

General

Low

Specific

High

electronic environment, namely self-presentation and connecting with other members. Depending on the particular type of SNS, these sub-functions may serve some kind of over-arching aim, such as finding a new partner in dating SNS or staying in touch with and/or establishing business relationships in business SNS. While the higher-ranking function of SNS in the more narrow sense concerns primarily the support of social ties, the principal aim of social networking ‘plus’ SNS may be directed towards all kinds of purposes, such as data sharing (Flickr, YouTube) or online trading (eBay). Accordingly, the type of information users disclose about themselves varies dramatically across the various types of SNS. In order to set up a profile, most SNS ask for nothing more than a user name and an e-mail address. Apart from that, any additionally divulged data is mainly facultative information. It depends to a high degree on the SNS-specific pre-set templates as well as on the user’s willingness to provide private details. According to the particular over-arching aim of the SNS, the type of information stretches from broad information on the members’ likes and dislikes (as in friendship SNS) to more specific private- or businessrelated details. The feature of offline anchorage relates to the linkage of the provided information to offline contexts. While some types of SNS aim to connect participants’ profiles to their ‘offline life’, others seek to protect their personal identities. In the same vein, the articulated connections may or may not be anchored in the offline world. Following Zhao et al. (2008), an online relationship can be anchored in various ways, such as residence, institutions, or mutual friends. Thereby, ‘the level of anchorage varies depending on the degree to which online partners are identifiable and locatable offline’ (2008: 1818). In this sense, a connection with an SNS member who does not provide any clues to his offline persona and to whom other linkages are missing (such as common friends etc.), would be an entirely unanchored relationship. The introduced categories will now be applied to various types of SNS. This enables us to situate the SNS under focus, Fb, within the spectrum of various online community services. The sample of SNS types selected is based on online discussions concerning the classification of SNS, found on Fudder.de20 as well Source: http://fudder.de/artikel/2008/04/09/175-internet-communitys/1

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Table 1.3: A type classification of Social Network Sites Function (Over-arching aim) Social ties

Other

Type of information

SNS-type

General Specific Low High

Facebook Xing Match.com

x x x

x

Couchsurfing

x

x

Dogster YouTube eBay

x

x x

Offline Anchorage

x x

x x

x x

x

x x x

x x

Friendship Business Face-to-face (dating) Face-to-face (travelling) Subject-oriented Data-sharing Online trading

as on my own observations. To present a wide range of SNS types, I assembled community services with rather divergent purposes: Facebook’s over-arching aim is the support of social ties. It is used to create, manage and maintain ties of friendship and is an example of a so-called ‘friend networking site’. The information Fb members disclose covers various aspects of their personalities and gives a comprehensive, though rather general, picture of the user. More specifically, the diverse profile templates ask for general data that can be connected to the members’ offline identities, such as first and second name, hometown, date of birth, favourite books/music/movies, past/current schools and/or employers. In the same vein, the displayed connections within the network result primarily from previously established ‘real life contacts’ as opposed to entirely ‘virtual ties’ (see Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe 2007).21 In consideration of the over-arching purpose of the SNS and the type of information users disclose, Fb members tend to expect real life personas behind the online profiles, even though they cannot verify the data. As a case of cyberbullying22 within the friendship SNS Myspace has shown, teenagers in particular have great difficulties reflecting critically on the proposed online identities: The suicide of the 13-year-old teenager Megan Meier in October 2006 was attributed to a relationship Megan had formed on Myspace with a boy named ‘Josh Evans’. As police investigations have shown, the mother of one of the daughter’s friends ‘Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people’ (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2007 in boyd and Ellison 2007: online). 22 Strom and Strom (2005) define ‘cyber-bullying’ as harassment using an electronic medium to threaten or harm others. 21

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– with whom Megan Meier had had a falling out – had created the ‘Josh Evans’ account. When the fake user, writing as Josh, told Megan the world would be a better place without her, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom (Maag 2007). Xing aims, as do many other ‘business networking sites’ (such as LinkedIn or Ryze), to help people stay in touch with business acquaintances or find new jobs. Providing specific information on their business backgrounds, members seek to maintain job-related social ties and/or to form new ones. Comparable to a traditional curriculum vitae, a Xing profile provides detailed information on its owner’s educational and working background: The disclosed information gives many cues to identify and locate members in their business-related offline contexts. The ‘online dating site’ Match.com supports the establishment of new social ties, or more precisely the finding of a new partner. Besides rather general information (such as age, interests, eating/drinking habits), the profile templates provide specific details on the member’s partner of choice. Most commonly, members of online dating sites use a pseudonym instead of their real names and provide only superficial information on their location, job and other details. Likewise, the ‘hospitality exchange network’ CouchSurfing asks new participants to create a member name that does not necessarily have to be consistent with the user’s real name.23 The over-arching aim of the site is the creation of new social ties, which enable members to find home accommodation in each others’ homes. With no need to disclose the members’ real names and the deliberate holding back of users’ e-mail addresses, the ‘offline anchorage’ of data on CouchSurfing profiles is rather low. In order to compensate for a lack of information on a potential host and/or guest, CouchSurfing members have the possibility to leave references on other members’ profiles (see Figure 1.8). Both sites, the online dating site Match.com as well as the hospitality exchange network CouchSurfing ultimately facilitate getting-together in the physical environment – since they are geared towards the offline world, they can therefore be referred to as ‘face-to-face meeting sites’. Dogster, as an example of a ‘subject-oriented network site’, is aimed at dog owners and asks them to provide detailed information on their pets, such as favourite toy/food/walk, pet peeves, likes and best tricks. Contact functions, such as the ‘pup pal request’, as well as the possibility to join groups for a particular dog breed, prompt the creation of new virtual ties. Though we are In this sense, the CouchSurfing sign-up template advices to ‘[e]nter the name that you’d like to use to login and be known to other CouchSurfing members by. This name must be completely unique to other members’ (http://www.couchsurfing.org/register.html).

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Figure 1.8: Member reference on CouchSurfing24

offered various details on ‘man’s best friend’, the location and identity of the dog owners remains largely blurred. Other subject-oriented network sites include Meine-Bundeswehr (an online community for draftees and former and/or future soldiers), Yelp (a network that orbits around user reviews of restaurants, shopping, nightlife and more) and TheAutoLog.com (a social network for car enthusiasts). While the aforementioned types of SNS all aim primarily at the generation and/or maintenance of social ties, the ‘data-sharing network’ YouTube as well as the ‘online auction site’ eBay have different purposes, namely the exchange of data and goods respectively. Accordingly, they do not belong to SNS in the narrow sense. The primary purpose of YouTube is to support users in uploading and sharing videos. In order to do so, one must subscribe to the online service by creating a personal YouTube channel (equivalent to a Personal Profile). The provided information varies greatly among different users. It generally includes details on the member’s age, her/his ‘channels views’ and her/his country of origin. Most members tend to use a pseudonym and provide no or only minor personal information with regard to their offline identity and/or location. Likewise, eBay members reveal hardly any information on their real identities. Moreover, their trustworthiness is based on other members’ feedback. The criteria for grouping and assessing the SNS presented here can only account for rather broad differences among the various types of SNS and they help to describe general tendencies concerning the aims and type of information provided. Though the different services may be designed for eliciting specific information and fulfilling particular functions, the actual deployment of a particular SNS still depends largely on the individual user and/or user group. The versatility of SNS as well as the structural and functional fluidity of

Source: http://www.couchsurfing.org/profile.html?id=5R2BF2F

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these services inhibits any static categorization; the types of SNS presented here are by no means complete, but will have to be enhanced by further research.

What is Facebook? Founded in 2004, Fb began as an exclusive online community service for Harvard students. Shortly after, it was opened to everyone and experienced rapid growth: With one billion monthly active users,25 Fb has become the world’s largest SNS. Boasting over 60 million updates a day, Fb is, according to the web information company alexa, currently in second place in terms of worldwide traffic and visitors.26 Due to its status as Social Software, Fb excels as a highly fluid environment: New developments and regular updates are frequently incorporated and a structural overview always remains incomplete. In fact, since the beginning of my research in 2006, Fb has undergone several extensive relaunches. From September 2011 onwards Fb modified the Personal Profile by introducing the so-called ‘Timeline’. The book’s analysis is based on an earlier Fb version effective between January 2010 and April 2011. It is an imperative for scientific approaches to Social Media to be specific enough to expose the emergent and fluid character of the communicatve practices but, at the same time, broad enough to not be limited to a specific software version. Rather than explicating every function, I shall therefore limit my discussion of the Fb environment to more general features that have a wide-ranging impact on how people present themselves and on how they connect and communicate with others. Some of the features I identified for the 2010 version were modified or renamed in the course of Fb’s relaunches in 2011 and 2012. However, the here described communicative properties of the 2010 platform version still hold for the current version, even though some features was given a new name, i.e. the former ‘Wall’ is now called ‘Timeline’. At the core of Fb are the members’ accounts, which enable individual users not only to present individual aspects of their identity but, moreover, to connect and exchange with other members. A Fb account is structurally divided into the Personal Profile and the Home Page. In order to elucidate the complex interlacing of the Fb platform and the users’ semiotic practices, the following presents a brief description of the key features of the Personal Profile and the Home Page. See http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts See http://www.alexa.com/

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Figure 1.9: Structural components of a Facebook profile

The Personal Profile Figure 9 presents the Personal Profile of an imaginary member which I created in January 2010 in order to shed light on the structural options and restrictions of Fb accounts. On a broad level we can distinguish three broad ‘structural components’ of a Fb profile, i.e. navigational devices, advertising texts and profile data. The navigational devices at the top let the user navigate between the individual profile nodes and let him/her control the account settings. Moreover, a search mask enables users to search for friends, look for groups to join or explore other topics within the Fb environment. The advertising texts on the right-hand side provide a revenue source for the Website owners. By drawing on user data, Fb enables its advertisers to target an exact audience with demographic and psychographic filters (cf. location, age, sex, education, languages and relationship interests).27 Having a closer look at the Personal Profile we find user information that present all kinds of identity facets. The data displayed on the left-hand side convey a broad view of the profile owner including a profile picture, a brief As I switched the current location of my fake profile from Munich to Budapest, the advertisements adjusted to Hungarian.

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Table 1.4: Types of data displayed in Facebook’s Profile layers Info layer

Wall layer

Photo layer

•  Personal information elicited through profile templates •  Self labelling (sex, age, education etc.) •  Enumerartives (interests, tastes, hobbies, favourite books, movies)

•  Network activities •  Records of what the profile owner did within Fb •  Status Updates •  Posts and comments by befriended members

•  A profile owner’s image files •  Pictures that were uploaded by the profile owner •  Pictures in which the profile owner was tagged by befriended members

information box and a list of network friends. More specific user information can be obtained from three default profile layers in the centre, i.e. Info, Wall and Photos layer. Table 1.4 provides a concise description of the different data entailed in the ‘profile layers’. The layer ‘Info’ comprises data on what Bolander and Locher (2010) have referred to as ‘Self-labelling’ and ‘Enumerative’ information. In this sense, Self-labelling Data categorize individual members by providing social variables, such as sex, age, education or relationship status. Through the Enumerative Data, a Fb member describes her-/himself as a consumer ‘since he/she foregrounds interests, tastes, hobbies, favourite books, movies, etc; i.e. what she/he consumes, in the sense of “engages in” or “utilizes”’ (Bolander and Locher 2010: 173). While the Info layer presents rather static and persistent user information, the Wall and Photos layers portray a Fb member’s broader on- and offline activities. The profile layer Wall presents a short summary of a profile owner’s recent Fb activities, such as ‘Member A commented on Member B’s photo’. Moreover, it documents his/her Status Updates in reverse chronological order, i.e. brief texts concerning the members’ current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts. The Wall layer also provides a space for befriended members to post texts and/or other multimodal content. The Photos layer presents a member’s image files that were either uploaded by him/herself or in which a profile owner was tagged by befriended members. At the core of these profile layers is Fb’s

Figure 1.10: Facebook’s Publisher template



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so-called Publisher template: The Publisher allows profile owners to generate and distribute ‘Status Updates’ and enables them to add photos, videos, hyperlinks and events to their own and/or befriended members’ profile layers. As a matter of fact, a profile owner’s Status Updates as well as his Fb activities and her/his photo actions are not only displayed within his profile layers, but are, at the same time, broadcast to the Home Pages of her/his network friends.

The Home Page The Home Page is the first page that pops up every time a member logs on to her/his Facebook account and constitutes a kind of control centre and/or starting point for future text actions. Figure 1.11 illustrates Fb’s official guide to the new Home Page (which was relaunched in January 2010) and gives explanations of its ‘core features’, i.e. News Feed, Messages, Events, Photos and Friends. It is particulary interesting to note that the textual practices surrounding these core features are subject to the formation of network contacts and thus reinforce the SNS key function of ‘establishing and maintaining online communities’. Most importantly, the ‘News Feed’ stream (in the centre of the page) informs and updates a particular member about the network activities of befriended members. By design, most of the activities a particular member performs within Fb, such as altering profile information or writing a Status Update, are not only reported on her or his Personal Profile Wall, but are automatically ‘sucked up’ and displayed in the News Feed stream of befriended members’ Home Pages. When pressing the ‘Photos’ link, the activities stream is directed to uploaded and published picture files of befriended members. The ‘Messages’ site enables private communication among two or more Fb members and it also keeps records of past private message exchanges. The ‘Events’ site displays descriptions of past and future invitations of befriended members that were created with the help of Fb’s event templates. The ‘Friends’ site presents an overview of contact requests, displays a list of suggested people one may know and offers various other means of searching for and finding previously known people within the Fb environment.28 Corresponding to the defining features of SNS, the Fb Personal Profile page primarily serves the self-presentation of the particular members, while the Fb Home Page supports members in establishing, maintaining and/or intensifying Such as searching for personal e-mail contacts or browsing through Fb profiles with matching educational and/or working background details.

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Figure 1.11: Facebook’s official guide to the new Home Page29

network contacts. However as a key characteristic, the corresponding text actions are heavily interwoven: Changes to member details on the Personal Profile are dispersed throughout a user’s network of friends via the News Feed stream. Likewise, commenting on other member’s posts within the Home Page environment is recorded on one’s own profile Wall and thus contributes to a member’s self-presentation. In particular, new Fb members (newbies) appear to have great difficulties anticipating the different contexts in which their texts are automatically replicated. The dummy profile for Kurt Schwartz illustrates the complex interplay between text actions performed by the user and the (partial) replication thereof through Fb’s algorithms. Both contribute, to varying degrees, to the populating of a Personal Profile as well as to the interaction among users. In Figure 1.12 we find the Fb Home Page of Kurt Schwartz that opened up after ‘he’ logged onto his account. Among the entries in the News Feed stream we come across a post containing information about the result of a quiz application30 in which the befriended member Fabian P. took part. Kurt responded to the post by pressing the ‘Like Button’ and thus initiated the generation of at least three further posts: First, a record on Kurt’s profile Wall informing on Kurt liking Fabian’s status, secondly, a post within the News Feed streams of befriended members’ Home Pages and thirdly, a notification within Fabian’s account that ‘Kurt liked his status’. It follows that within Fb the situational context in which the text was originally generated becomes blurred. Perusing Kurt’s profile data, it is unclear Source: http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage.php The quiz application ‘Which Barbapapa Are You?’ gives information on similarities between Fb members and Barbapapa comic characters.

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Figure 1.12: Facebook Home Page of dummy member ‘Kurt Schwartz’

Figure 1.13: Automatic replication of Kurt’s ‘Like Action’

whether Kurt ‘liked’ Fabian’s post when he was visiting Fabian’s profile Wall (Personal Profile) or if he pressed the Like Button in response to the News Feed entry (Home Page). Discussing this example in terms of Halliday’s (1964) three components of the context of situation, i.e. field, tenor and mode, emphasizes the complexity

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of Kurt’s Fb-specific performance. ‘Field’ refers to the subject matter or topic; in this sense, the field of discourse is made up of semiotic choices or registers that ‘[…] are classified according to the nature of the whole event of which the language activity forms a part’ (1964: 90). In other words, the field refers to the social action, ‘in which the language figures as some essential component’ (Halliday 1985: 12) and points to ‘what is actually taking place’ (Halliday and Martin 1993: 32). The ‘tenor’ relates to the role structure and concerns the social relationship between the interactants in a speech situation, i.e. relations of formality, power, and affect. On a linguistic plane, the tenor of discourse affects the interpersonal choices of a particular utterance, mirrored i.e. in the exchange structure, personal reference, the use of pronouns or degrees of involvement and detachment. The ‘mode’ of discourse pertains to the symbolic organization of the text including the channel of communication (e.g. spoken/written/pictorial) and the social standing that it has. Kress (2003) defines mode in this sense as ‘a culturally and socially fashioned resource for representation’ (2003: 45). Turning back to the example of Kurt’s Fb-specific text action of pressing the Like Button, we reach the following conclusion: From the perspective of field, ‘Fb accustomed users’ recognize the generated text as a response to a befriended member’s text action. Users who are new to Fb might draw on their more general online experience, in particular with Weblogs and/or message boards, and recognize Kurt’s action as a comment in response to a preceding post. This is construed for them by Weblog and/or message board specific patterns involving structural as well as lexical conventions, such as a revised chronological order, the display of the time of posting/commenting as well as the possibility to take part in the ongoing discourse. The register of Kurt’s text action that creates the field of the focused-on discourse is determined and/or constrained by the algorithm underlying the Like Button. From the perspective of mode, ‘Fb accustomed users’ recognize the generated text as an algorithm-based proposition, which is, in turn, the outcome of a user having pressed the Like Button. Likewise, Fb newbies are familiar with algorithm-based proposition from other CMC-contexts, such as e-cards (i.e. ‘xxx has sent you an e-card, to see it click here’) or Chat rooms (i.e. ‘xxx has entered the room’), in which the interlocutor has initiated the proposition but is not responsible for its wording. Within Fb, the initiator of the algorithm-based proposition is frequently referred to in third person, as in ‘Kurt Schwartz likes this’. From the point of view of tenor, Kurt’s text action is performed to express his positive attitude regarding a text action that was previously performed by a befriended member. Besides the fact that Kurt and Fabian are Fb friends, the lexico-grammatical level gives no insights



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concerning their status relative to each other: The agency of Kurt’s action is partly outsourced to the designers and software engineers of the Fb platform. The choice of the individual wording is pre-set by an algorithm underlying the Like Button. It follows that the specific contextual and socio-cultural conditions, for example an institutional or non-institutional frame and their respective roles (Kurt could, for example, be Fabian’s lecturer), remain unreflected on a lexicogrammatical level. Though the Fb environment enables and triggers interaction among befriended members, at the same time it shapes the structure and, in some cases, even the content of the respective discourse. What follows from such a distillation of Fb’s key features and/or the deconstruction of its text generation practices is that ‘presenting oneself ’ and ‘connecting with other members’ within Fb is always biased. I shall now proceed to an in-depth discussion of this bias in order to identify the specific focus of this book.

Fb as a third author It has been shown that a Personal Profile encompasses several layers, of which the Info and the Wall layers are most important. While the Info layer provides personal information about the profile owner, the Wall layer presents an overview of the profile owner’s network activities. Given that the platform’s privacy settings have not been adjusted, almost all traces that have evolved from a member’s network activities are automatically collected and hyperlinked on her or his profile Wall. We come across posts created by the profile owner; we find posts of her or his friends and we find automatic records of a member’s network activities. Above all, a member’s ‘automatic activity records’ clearly mirror the impacts of the electronic environment on a member’s text actions – here the choice as well as the alignment of the respective texts is exclusively performed by the software A simplified illustration of a profile will help to elucidate the mechanisms and text practices involved in the generation of automatic activity records (see Figure 1.14). Note that the employed data stem from an actual case of miscommunication in Fb, found on lamebook.com, an aggregate site re-posting ‘everything lame and funny’ from the Social Network Site Fb. The simplified profile above belongs to a female member named Caitlynn, who is in deep mourning for her boyfriend who recently died in a car accident. Nevertheless, Caitlynn felt ready to update her status information on the Info

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Figure 1.14: Automatic activity record within a Personal Profile

layer of her profile, i.e. from ‘being in a relationship’ to ‘Caitlynn is now single’. As a result of altering data on her ‘Info’ layer, Caitlynn also initiated the automatic generation of the text ‘Caitlynn is now single’ on her Wall layer. Moreover – and what Caitlynn apparently did not realize – the ‘automatic activity record’ was by design spread to the Home Pages of all her Fb contacts. Below, we find the Home Page of Mike, who is one of Caitlynn’s Fb’s contacts (see Figure 1.15). The News Feed stream displays recent information on Mike’s befriended members. Among the entries, we also find Caitlynn’s automatic activity record. Mike, who fancies Caitlynn, did not know about her being in mourning. In response to her post, he thus pressed the Like Button and generated the post ‘Mike likes this’. Furthermore, Mike wrote a personal comment, i.e. ‘woo – back on the market, what you doin tonight girl?’. As Caitlynn realized she was misunderstood, she replied by writing another comment to explain the situation, namely that she ‘just got around to changing [her] status’. Moreover, Mike’s pick-up line was evaluated by Jonathon, who is a common Fb friend of Caitlynn and Mike.



Social Media and Social Network Sites

Figure 1.15: Automatic activity record within a Home Page

Figure 1.16: Responses to an automatic activity record

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An analysis of the communicative clash between Caitlynn and Mike highlights how the electronic environment interferes with meaning negotiation among Fb members. When Caitlynn altered the data on her Info layer, she did so in order to keep her personal information up to date. However, due to the platform’s inherent text automation process, Caitlynn’s text action was misinterpreted as an ‘approach me signal’ by her Fb friend Mike. In order to express his affection for Caitlynn, he thus initiated the software-based generation of a text proposing the positive evaluation of Caitlynn’s post, i.e. ‘Mike likes this’. Moreover, he added a personal comment that clarified the communicative aim of his previous text action. Again, Mike’s textual performances were not only visible to the ratified recipient Caitlynn, but also to more or less non-ratified recipients, such as Jonathon (see also Goffman 1981, Levinson 1988). As we can see, the software service is characterized by deep-rooted text automation processes. The latter intervene in the meaning negotiation among members and bring forward the notion of ‘Fb as a third author’. More precisely, Fb’s text automation processes can be distinguished in (1) First, ‘automatic text generation’ – accounting for the software-based generation of posts, i.e. standardized evaluations (Like Button), standardized friend requests (Add Friend Button), automatic activity records, etc. (2) Secondly, ‘automatic text distribution’ – accounting for the standardized re-contextualization of texts, commonly on the members’ profile Wall layers as well as on the Home Pages of befriended members. In traditional texts, text producers (first authors) commonly create and align textual components. When confronted with surface texts, readers on the reception side activate configurations of their individual background knowledge and thus become second authors. Turning to Fb, the software service acts as a third author, as it gradually intervenes in the communicative flow between profile owners (first authors) and profile recipients (second authors). More precisely, the platform’s impact on human semiotic practices can be related to text-centred features of text (i.e. the production and reception of the text material) as well as to more user-centred features of text, i.e. the communicative context (see Chapter 2). As a third author, Fb shapes the structure and, in some cases, even the content of the respective discourse. Moreover, it controls the context in which user- and software-generated texts are presented. As a consequence, Fb members experience a gradual loss of control over their texts (in the form of posts, comments, photos, personal data, etc.) as well as over their individual communicative aims and/or actions they intend to perform.



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The impact of social media on literacy practices Within the spectrum of different SNS, Fb can be identified as a ‘friend networking site’ supporting primarily the maintenance of previously established ties of friendship, while the creation of virtual ties is also possible. The Personal Profiles present a comprehensive, though rather general picture of the users, which can be commonly connected to their offline identities. It follows that members are inclined to deduce real life personas from the online profiles, even though the depicted person is not known from offline contexts and the disclosed data cannot be verified. As shown, the naive trust and uncritical interpretation of profile data may even result in mental and/or physical harm. Likewise, Fb’s complex text automation processes may result in users performing actions against their wills. My approach aims therefore to create awareness for the complexity of meaning creation in the electronic environment and advocates the need to develop a critical stance on hypertexts and their involved literacy practices. In this sense, literacy acquisition in Web 2.0 environments must foster the awareness that text actions are never performed in neutral contexts, but are highly affected by the specific characteristics of the service in use and by the more general features of computer-mediated communication. Accordingly, I revealed how Fb’s medial preconditions impact the network discourse: When participating in Fb based communication, members are asked to match the presented text actions against their more general linguistic knowledge and other acquired knowledge. From a pragmatic point of view, when doing so, users analyze the ‘context of situation’ and relate it to the performed actions. In particular, the contextual components of tenor (role structure) and mode (symbolic organization) are affected to a large extent by the possibilities and restrictions of the electronic Fb environment. Automatic text generation, such as clicking the Like Button and creating the proposition ‘member name likes another member name’s status’, relieves users of their semiotic choices and from their locutionary acts. Thereby, the individual social relations (tenor) among the interlocutors have no effect on the individual wording. Whatever social bindings exist between Fb friends (e.g. relatives, colleagues, partners, casual acquaintances), they are not reflected in the symbolic organization (mode), or, in other words, in the lexico-grammatical form of the algorithm-based proposition. Following Goffman’s (1981) theoretical framework deconstructing the concept of producing and receiving participants in a conversation, the ‘production role’ (Levinson 1988) involves three different jobs: ‘animator’, the

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one who utters, ‘author’, the one who selects the sentiments being uttered and drafts the wording, and ‘principal’, ‘the one who is committed to what the words say’ (1988: 144). Of course, these three jobs are not inevitably performed by one person. For instance, when a press relations officer announces news and updates about his employer, he or she functions as the animator, but not necessarily as the author of an utterance representing a whole company (principal). We can suppose that the author(s) of the press release are the employees (or sub-contractors) of the firm, though they might be acting behind the scenes. Comparing this to Fb’s automatic text generation stresses how the roles of animator and author turn into a non-figurative concept within the electronic environment: Here, the immediate ‘agent who script the lines’ (Levinson 1988: 144) as well as the one who animated them is not manifested in a human being, but through algorithm-based software designed and coded by software engineers. Animator and author of an automated speech act transform into a rather abstract entity or a kind of ‘third author’. Such a shift towards electronic agents generating all kinds of propositions can be employed strategically by users who perform speech acts without being responsible for what is said. Figure 1.17 shows how the outsourcing of the animator and author roles supports a Fb member in carrying out a possibly insulting speech act. At first glance, the proposition is neither scripted nor animated by the Fb member, but by an abstract algorithm-based Fb application. The post illustrated below shows the result of member ‘Ulli E’ having consulted the ‘omniscient zombie’, who stated that Raphael, one of Ulli’s Fb friends, ‘thinks about puppies when having sex’. Following the post’s proposition, ‘the omniscient zombie has told Ulli a secret about Rafael’,31 animator, author and principal of the statement is the intangible application ‘the omniscient zombie’. Knowing about the involved actions of creating and distributing such an automated post highlights the member Ulli E as the initiator of the post. Though she has neither typed in the propositions nor chosen the individual sentiments and their corresponding wordings, she prompted the post’s generation and is responsible for its dispersion throughout her network. Therefore, it is still Ulli E’s position to which the words attest and not some abstract algorithm in the shape of a Fb application. Another characteristic feature of text actions within the Fb environment is ‘multi-layered contextualization’: Any performed text action is not only spread Translated from German ‘Ulli hat vom allwissenden Zombie ein Geheimnis über Raphael erzählt bekommen’.

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Figure 1.17: Deliberate outsourcing of the animator and author role

throughout one’s personal network, but is also on one’s profile Wall and possibly on the profile Walls of befriended members. Comparable to offline public conversation among two or more interlocutors in front of an audience, social interaction within the Fb environment is observed and may be responded to by one’s personal network of befriended members. However, while in offline contexts the publicness of the discourse interrelates with the physical and spatial aspects of the environment (i.e. the immediate presence of the audience in unmediated discourse, broadcasting techniques, such as cameras, in mediated discourse), the public character of the online medium is rather implicitly acknowledged through the presence of a computer (or mobile devices) running specific software. Creating publicness among a limited group of connected members, Fb discourse can be grasped neither by the traditional concept of mass media, nor by that of private media (see ‘Meso Media’). In some cases, members tend to have great difficulties assessing the public character of their contributions. In relation to such a blurring of contexts through SNS, Figure 1.18 illustrates a discourse among Fb friends (1), which was obviously being observed and commented on by one of the befriended member’s mother (2). Obviously, speech acts are closely interrelated with the particular social frames in which they are performed. However, in the example below the activated social frame for Fb discourse did not include ‘parents’ for at least one of the interlocutors. Inferring the mother’s disapproval as the cause of the literal meaning of the post ‘I’m not coming to Montevallo after all’, a befriended member’s comment asks the author of the post to tell her/his mother a lie. As can be seen, within Fb the discursive strategies supporting ‘self-presentation’ and ‘contact creation/management’ are, in many respects, affected by the possibilities and restrictions of the electronic environment. Pre-set templates condition a member’s choices with regard to the structure and content(s) of her/his profile. Moreover, automated speech acts simplify, standardize and re-contextualize the communicative interaction. With reference to Mead’s (1934/1968) concept of identity formation, therefore, the ‘me’, or

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Figure 1.18: Clash of social frames in Fb discourse32

in other words the social self of Fb identities, is (at least) partly outsourced to the pre-given templates and pre-set speech acts of the electronic environment. Likewise, the internalization of the roles deriving from such automatic text generation affects to greater or lesser degrees a person’s ‘I’, as a metaphysical and individual entity. To stress the impact of the electronic environment on the network discourse, I will endorse the previously established definition by pointing to the involvement of pre-set templates and automatic text actions.33 I therefore define SNS as

Social Software-based Websites whose primary aim is establishing and maintaining online communities by asking participants to present themselves (in the form of public or semi-public profiles) and to connect and communicate with other participants with the help of pre-given templates and automated text actions.

Of course, the individual designs of the pre-given templates, just as the specific text automation processes, vary greatly across the different SNS types. The dating SNS Match.com offers automated text actions such as ‘smiling at someone’ and its templates elicit information about a member’s potential Source: http://facebookfails.com/category/facedrama/ The concept of ‘automatic text action’ refers to the software-based generation of texts by which members perform all sorts of actions.

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partner of choice. Within the business SNS Xing, automated text actions include the recommendation of contacts, while its templates elicit members’ job-related details. As a general feature of all kinds of Web 2.0 applications, SNS are based on pre-set templates that evoke certain user data, while suppressing others. Moreover, all of the investigated community services involve automated text actions. Independent of the particular SNS type, the most basic automated text action is fulfilled in a standardized contact request: SNS members press a certain link on another member’s profile and thus generate and distribute an automatic proposition asking for the confirmation of the contact request (see also Eisenlauer 2011). The booming popularity of Fb attests to users comfort in handling the electronic environment. In order to generate over 60 million updates a day and distribute them throughout the Fb environment, members are obliged to fill in all kinds of templates and/or to activate a variety of automated text actions. It seems Fb-savvy members operate within the software environment like a duck in water: When writing Status Updates, uploading photos, adding friends, changing profile details, commenting posts, etc., they seldom address the contextual embedding, but strive for immediate perception and high communicative effectiveness. Likewise, when deciphering the discourse of the Fb environment, users appear to read from the text to the thought intended (see Anton 1998). Though Fb discourse presupposes the acquisition and employment of certain network specific procedural knowledge, such as understanding and employing automated text actions, these operations take a back seat in the communicative practice and give prevalence to an immediate and transparent experience of the denoted objects. In this sense, users are looking through the text to the content as opposed to looking at the text as a medium itself (see Lanham 1993, Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008). Following the tenets of critical applied linguistics (Pennycook 2006), it is the task of researchers and educators to question this very transparent construction of the representation in order to demystify and reveal its underlying processes. However, prevailing contributions to the field of critical (media) literacy and critical discourse analysis emphasize, most notably, the socio-political level in its construction of media representations,34 while critical probes linking the intrinsic characteristics of the medium to audience participation point to somewhat macro-level In this sense, Luke (1994) shows how medial representations promote dominant social power structures, while suppressing those of marginalized groups. Likewise, Leistyna and Alper (2007) show how corporate media create and disperse images that mask the structural dimensions of class while maintaining dominant myths of the ruling elite.

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interrelations.35 My approach is neither concerned with how socio-political changes interrelate with the effects of media culture, nor is it a broad analysis of participation structure across different media. Proposing an integrative view of text and medium, this work takes a micro-level approach: How do structural options and restrictions of the medium in use (i.e. Internet-compatible networks of computers) and/or the specific software service (i.e. Facebook) set up textual constraints and the conditions for communication? Before specifying my here applied understanding of critically engaging with media texts, there is a need for a terminological clarification of the most important notions under discussion, i.e. text, medium, software service and genre. MM

MM

MM

MM

Text is defined, at this point, in a rather broad sense as an assemblage of signs, such as words, images, sounds and/or films, constructed and interpreted with reference to a particular medium of communication (see Chandler 2002). A more elaborate discussion of the term text, its core characteristics and its production and/or perusal habits across different media, will be addressed in Chapter 2. Medium is understood as a technological means for amplifying communication in order to transcend geographic and/or temporal barriers (Eiselein and Topper 1976, Posner 1991, Holly 1997). The SNS acts as a particular software service (or electronic environment) between the medium, here an Internet-compatible network of computers, and the text, here the sign-related Fb discourse. Though not tangible like a computer or a book, the software service originates in information technology and emerges in the contextual embedding of the text, i.e. field, tenor and mode. As a heuristic category that surfaces exclusively in text-external configurations, such as number of participants, temporal embedding (synchronic/asynchronic) and/or direction of communication (monologic/dialogic), the software service is comparable to what Holly (1997) Dürscheid (2005), Hoffmann (2010) and Arendholz (2011) have referred to as ‘form of communication’. A genre is bound to a specific over-arching aim, while a software service may serve a variety of functions. In this sense, the software service ‘Social Network Site’ may be used for all kinds of purposes, while the genre

cf. McLuhan et al.’s (1967/2001) division into ‘hot’ and ‘cool media’ concerning the degree of audience participation, taken up and refined by Bolter and Gruisin’s (1999) model in ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’.

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‘friendship SNS’ (such as Fb) is restricted to a particular function, namely creation and/or maintenance of friendship ties. While Hall (1980) advocates for a distinction between the encoding of texts by the producers and the decoding of the texts by the consumers, my approach challenges the naturalness of producing and processing texts. More specifically, it holds that the specific medium in use (and the particular software service, respectively) act(s) as a kind of third author. Its intrinsic characteristics facilitate and delimit a variety of discourse patterns, whose recurrences confirm users when decoding/encoding new media texts and thus reinforce the respective operational capabilities in society. The medial impact can be addressed by the following questions that specify the focus outlined in the book’s preface. MM

MM

MM

In what ways do formal, structural and/or functional characteristics of texts and text genres interrelate with the properties of the underlying medium and/or software service? To what extend do readers/users relate characteristics of recent online media texts to their knowledge of previously encountered off- and online media texts and vice versa? How do formal-structural features of software services such as Fb tie the users’ hands when creating texts and communication with other users?

Practices surrounding traditional (mostly paper-based) texts generally assume a fundamentally linear and hierarchical organization of information and reach back to the scrolled parchment and the codex volume (see Bolter 1991, Burbules 1997, Murray 2000). On the other hand, there are certain text organizations, such as encyclopaedias, newspapers or portfolios, which resist such a deeply linear sequencing and/or narrative structure. However, in Burbules’ (1997) view ‘the force of these habits is so strong that most readers tend to impose such a pattern on textual material in the process of reading, even when the content resists it’ (1997: 107). As opposed to the linear organization of traditional text, electronic hypertext can present more multifaceted, ‘rhizomatic’ links between ideas. Moreover, hypertext enables readers to engage in the actual composition by offering multiple reading paths and/or blank text templates. Both media formats, electronic and non-electronic, have advanced distinct notions of ‘what constitutes a text’ and ‘how to process a text’. Besides, distinctive, media-specific genres and forms of communication/software services have emerged and reinforce media-specific structural and functional

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patterns.36 When approaching Social Media from a critical perspective, we must not only work out and discuss its ‘electronic text features’, but also reflect on how traditional text features apply to the software service. In this sense, the theoretical standpoint of hypertext opens up a critical understanding of the medial conditioning of a text’s form and function(s) by disclosing criteria that differentiate computer-mediated texts from traditional non-electronic texts, while at the same time emphasizing the continuities among them. Drawing on established models in text and hypertext linguistics while adopting a reflective stance towards the interrelation of text and media, the heuristic method of ‘Critical Hypertext Analysis’ (CHTA) will be proposed. Though the introduced model of CHTA is directed toward a critical discussion of Fb, it also allows critical access to all kinds of other Social Media environments by sensitizing users to the medial conditioning of their texts and text actions.

cf. letters, newspaper articles, e-mails or Chats.

36

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In recent Web 2.0 environments, numerous (semi-)automated text generation processes have contributed to users’ gradual loss of control over their text actions, i.e. by automatically re-contextualizing user data (see above). In light of such novel literacy practices that interrelate with a modified concept of text, this chapter propose the framework of Critical Hypertext Analysis (CHTA). Such an approach maintains a constant critical stance towards new media texts and offers an epistemological model that grants access to the medial conditioning of formal and functional text patterns. CHTA takes as a starting point the analysis of power and control (and/or the loss thereof) and stands, as such, in the tradition of the more general field of ‘critical applied linguistics’. Before specifying the general aims and practices of CHTA, I will briefly outline key concerns and domains of applied linguistic work that maintain a critical focus on language use. I will then establish commonly perceived characteristics of traditional texts and electronic hypertexts and present the reception of these terms in linguistics. In order to highlight how hypertextual fragments combine into a meaningful whole, this chapter implements a traditional text model (i.e. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981) for analyzing hypertexts. Finally, I will present the CHTA framework that comprises a set of 13 vital questions.

A critical focus on social media In Pennycook’s (2006) view, critical applied linguistics (CAL) involves reflection on discursive strategies of domination and effects of power, on disparity and inequality as well as on identity and agency. However, CAL ‘is not only about relating micro-relations of applied linguistics to social

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relations of social and political power’ (Pennycook 2006: 287), but suggests also developing a critical epistemological stance, which maintains ‘a constant scepticism toward cherished concepts such as language, grammar, power, man, woman, class, race, ethnicity, nation, identity, awareness, and emancipation’ (2006: 287). Pennycook (2006) distinguishes 14 interlocking domains of CAL, among them critical language awareness, critical sociolinguistics, critical approaches to translation and critical language testing. In Pennycook’s (2006) view, the most popular CAL fields are the related areas of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical literacy (CL). Both approaches relate texts and their involved creative and analytical practices to questions of power, equity, diversity and change. One of the most prominent researchers in CDA is Fairclough (1989), who draws on the systemic-functional linguistic model (see Halliday 1985) in order to reflect how text and talk maintain and legitimate domination, oppression and inequality in society. Other critical discourse analysts employ a range of different paradigms and methods to capture the role language plays in challenging and maintaining social and political power, i.e. argumentation strategies (Wodak and Matouschek 1993), narrative analysis (Mumby 1993) and conversation analysis (Ehlich 1993). All in all, CDA approaches are rather heterogenic, as they follow different tenets and employ diverging methods. However, as van Leeuwen (2006) shows, a common goal of CDA is ‘the critique of the hegemonic discourses and genres that effect inequalitites, injustices, and oppression in contemporary society’ (2006: 291). In order to emphasize the need to not only participate in text-bound communicative actions of a society, but also engage in a critical discussion of texts, the model of ‘critical literacy’ has evolved.1 In this sense, CL practice puts an emphasis on the text participants’ ‘textual (en- and decoding) practices’, while being directed towards an ‘intentional subversion of meanings in order to critique the underlying ideologies and relations of power that support particular interpretations of a text’ (Myers, Hammet and Mc Killop 1998: 67). Transcending the mere ability to decode words, syntax, etc., such an approach discusses – comparable to CDA – Traditional approaches portray ‘literacy’ as the ability ‘to read and write in page bound, official, standard forms of the national language’ (The New London group 1996: online). Relating this to the introduced terms ‘text’, ‘medium’ and ‘genre’, such an understanding involves the production and interpretation of culturally conditioned assemblages of signs (text) that are recorded and transmitted on pages (medium) and serve a particular function (genre). In fact, new media technologies accompanied by the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in today’s globalized world call for a much broader view of literacy: Up-to-date ‘information processing skills’ are linked to the understanding (and controlling) of technologically bound representational forms that denote multifarious cultural concepts.

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the ideological motivations of texts and questions why certain discourses are included and others are left out. Following this, texts are described as social constructs that reflect ideas and beliefs held by some groups, while suppressing others. Approaching texts critically, therefore, involves the exposure of underlying views as well as the exploration and development of opposing interpretations. Though sometimes used synonymously with CL, ‘critical media literacy’ emphasizes the role of the media in the construction, dispersion and reinforcement of certain ideologies (cf. Luke 1994, Kellner and Share 2005). Postulating ‘non-transparency’ as a core concept of media, prominent approaches to critical media literacy explain the creation of media messages in terms of ‘decisions about what to include or exclude and how to represent reality’ (Kellner and Share 2005: 374). Others, such as Bagdikian (2004) or Mc Chesney (2004), question the ownership of media and point to a few multinational media moguls being in control of selecting and representing media content. Studies reflecting the codes and conventions of media message creation highlight how signifying processes are based on ideological and cultural codes. With regard to this, Kellner and Share (2005) illustrate how media presentations of male characters, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, signify not only a male actor, but also construct certain connotative meanings, such as patriarchal power or violent male heroes. Departing from the notion of media texts as social constructs that mirror a society’s ideologies and power relations, my approach aims at shifting emphasis to the question of how the media and its software services become manifest in the situational context, and thus affect the content and form of media messages as well as the corresponding literacy practices. In other words, I hold that the decisions ‘about what to include or exclude and how to represent reality [in media texts]’ (Kellner and Share 2005: 374) are heavily influenced by the intrinsic characteristics of the underlying media itself. Halliday (1985) has shown that grammatical categories are in fact ‘patterns of experience’, as they ‘enable human beings to build a picture of reality, to make sense of their experience of what goes on around them and inside them’ (1985: 101). Of course such a grammatical patterning of experience is never unbiased, but heavily motivated by sign-makers’ interest, which becomes manifest in a particular semiotic choice over another (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). A text producer’s semiotic choices are in no way constrained to verbal resources, but are distributed across different communicative modes (e.g. pictorial, verbal and hearing-related). Scholars in multimodality and social semiotics, such as van Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), Stöckl (2004), van

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Leeuwen (2005) and Bateman (2008), have been analyzing and theorizing how different presentational forms or ‘modes of information’ may be deployed simultaneously in order to fulfill all kinds of communicative goals. What a mode constitutes is not easy to define, for it is much more than a type of sign. Modes are socially and culturally shaped and are ‘governed by a common set of rules that state how these signs can be combined to make meaning in particular situations’ (Stöckl 2004a: 11). While researchers in social semiotics concentrate on text producers and their individual multimodal choices, my approach is interested in how the distinct medium in use provides standardized and (semi-)automated modes of expression that affect or even replace authors when creating texts. As it seems, the more sophisticated the Social Media application, the bigger the impact of the technological device on a user’s individual multimodal choices. Of course, in the first instance it is up to the user to decide for or against a partical Social Media application. Once caught in a system of pre-set templates users have no choice but to hand over at least parts of their sign-related choices. As shown for Fb, Social Media applications may even displace the users’ semiotic choices altogether. In Fb’s automated text actions, ‘patterns of experience’ do not evolve to suit the specific needs and interests of the sign users, but are predetermined by the electronic environment. Pre-set templates and ready-made sets of propositions narrow the users’ creative and analytical acts and call for a reassessment of CAL’s key tenets: Domination and disparity, just like identity and agency, are not only to be regarded as mere socio-political occurrences, but build on a variety of media, software services (or forms of communication), and (text) genres that promote and constrain the users’ discursive choices and strategies. Accounting for such a strong interrelation of media, texts and discourses that effect domination, identity and agency, CHTA involves the reflexivity of discursive patterns and/or conventions on two levels: First, on a broad level, it involves the identification of distinctive features bound to the concept of text in traditional and electronic media. Secondly, a more narrow approach is directed towards specifying and assessing distinct texts and genres in terms of the accompanying social actions. Having linked formal text patterns with specific cultural practices, we can ask in what way the software service and its specific operations support, restrict and/or replace creative literacy practices and/or social actions that were formerly performed exclusively by human interactants. In order to specify the more or less biased semiotic practices surrounding Fb, the CHTA framework incorporates and enhances models from linguistic



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research in computer-mediated communication (CMC).2 As a consequence of the development of the Internet and the adoption of the World Wide Web as a mass medium, there has been a growing linguistic interest in the study of language produced, read and transmitted via electronic media. According to Androutsopoulos (2006), the ‘first wave’ of linguistic CMC studies, established by Murray (1989), Herring (1996) and Crystal (2001) among others, was particularly interested in identifying new language genres in electronic communication and focused, for example, on patterns of language use in e-mails, Chats or Websites. Drawing on the time-related distinction of synchronous, asynchronous or quasi-synchronous forms of communication (see Dürscheid 2005), such approaches commonly reflected upon how new electronic genres differed from and/or resembled traditional spoken and written language. More recent studies question the strong homogeneity of language use in specific types of CMC and highlight the socio-cultural discourses, in which tendencies of pattern building are embedded (cf. Herring 2004, Androutsopoulos 2006). Calling for a ‘shift of focus from medium-related to user-related patterns of language use [in CMC]’ (Androutsopoulos 2006: 421), such contributions argue that it is less the computer, but more the diversity of its users that shape the language of CMC. To take the individual user into account, researchers have been drawing on sociolinguistic paradigms and applying them within CMC.3 Other approaches to CMC, e.g. Storrer (2000), Eckkrammer (2002), Huber (2002) and Bublitz (2008), have been focusing on the subject from a more conceptual perspective. In the tradition of text linguistics, these approaches shed new light on the discussion about the defining criteria of text.4 Introducing the concept of hypertext, the central issue of these models is the identification of criteria that delineate computer-mediated texts from traditional non-electronic texts. More specifically, such an approach seeks not only to contrast electronic hypertext with traditional text, but aims at the same time at disclosing the continuities between them. Though the hypertext model emphasizes the functional From now on I will use the acronym ‘CMC’ to refer to computer-mediated communication. Studies include ethnographic approaches examining the relationship between on and offline discourses (Siebenhaar 2005, Ziegler 2005), research on language variation observable in the use of regional dialects, abbreviations, emoticons (Squires 2010), investigations of social interaction and identity focusing on signs applied to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships and/or the self (Androutsoplpoulos and Hinnenkamp 2001, Benwell and Stokoe 2006) as well as studies on multilingualism investigating the linguistic diversity on the Internet (Danet and Herring 2007).  4 Hendrich (2003) compares several linguistic definitions of ‘text’ and claims that there is no agreement on its meanings: ‘Hier stellt sich die Frage, ob all diese Definitionen sich tatsächlich auf den gleichen Gegenstand beziehen […]. [Keine der Definitionen] hinterlassen uns mit dem Gefühl präzise zu wissen, was Text oder ein Text ist’ (Hendrich 2003: 5).  2  3

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enhancement of electronic texts over traditional texts, it builds heavily on the characteristics that have been defined for traditional texts. Related to this, Bublitz (2008) claims that hypertext ‘[…] refers to a much wider concept than text; indeed, it incorporates text as one of its components’ (2008: 259). It must be emphasized that both differences and continuities between text and hypertext are strongly bound to changes and improvements in information technology. In this sense, texts generated and distributed by state-of-the-art Web 2.0 technologies offer new degrees of interaction compared to texts based on earlier information technology. Without negating Androutsopoulos’ (2006) emphasis on the impact of sociocultural discourse on language use in electronic environments, I argue that it is also the electronic medium and/or the particular software service which affect the user’s semiotic choices to greater or lesser extents. It follows that only a comparison between recent online genres and equivalent non-electronic texts lays the foundations for a sociolinguistic discussion of user-related patterns of language use. In fact, pre-set templates and/or automated text actions may result in a homogenization of language use in CMC environments, or turn the role of the author to a non-figurative concept altogether. Though recipients aspire to an immediate and authentic experience of the denoted objects (see Bolter and Gruisin 1999, Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008), the underlying semiotic choices and surrounding literacy practices are never performed in neutral contexts: Language use in mediated communication involves the evolution of patterns, which are heavily biased by the intrinsic characteristics of the medium in use. It is the very task of CHTA to disclose these complex interrelations and create awareness that media texts and their surrounding practices are motivated not only by dominant ideologies and socio-political power structures, but also by the technological means that represent and amplify the communicative contents. In order to do so, my approach follows linguistic CMC studies that discuss language use in electronic environments from a more conceptual point of view (i.e. Storrer 2000, Eckkrammer 2000 and Hendrich 2003, etc.) and have brought forward the linguistic notion of hypertext.

Text and hypertext in an everyday sense In an everyday sense text is associated with written language, rather than with spoken language. It is further considered to be presented in letters, words and sentences that carry some kind of meaning. Correspondingly, the ‘Longman



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Dictionary of Contemporary English’ defines (2003) ‘text’ as ‘any written material’ or ‘the writing that forms the main part of a book, magazine etc. rather than the pictures or notes’ (2003: 1714). Likewise the ‘Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English’ (2005) characterizes text as ‘the written form of a speech, a play, an article, etc.’ (2005: 1587). In addition, the ‘Collins English Dictionary’ (2007) delineates text as ‘the topic or subject of a discussion or work’ (2007: 1667). The illustration of a printed page in a scientific article (Figure 2.1) confirms these assumptions and exemplifies further expectations bound to the common perception of traditional text. Except for the page and chapter numbers, the page comprises solely linguistic signs forming larger units, such as words, phrases, sentences and chapters. We

Figure 2.1: Page of a scientific article

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can assume that these units relate to each other and establish some kind of meaning. Furthermore, the continuous side and chapter numbers give a clear indication for a linear ordering with a fixed beginning and ending. Though we might not be able to understand the text, we suppose that the author had a particular intention when writing it. Correspondingly, Klemm (2002) proposes capturing the obligatory features of the concept of text along the following six lines. Note that from a pragmatic-functional view, such an understanding of text is highly dubious. How text is received and if it is recognized as text at all depends highly on the individual recipients as well as on its contextual embedding.5 In computer-mediated contexts such steady criteria for delineating the concept of text can no longer stand: The ‘Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English’ (2005) explains hypertext as ‘a way of writing computer documents that makes it possible to move from one document to another by clicking on words or pictures, especially on the Internet’ (2005: 800). Here, hypertext is not delineated as a secluded cultural artefact but as the processes involved in its production, thus stressing its interactive and dynamic characteristics. On a representational level hypertext is not limited to mere verbal signs but includes pictures. Due to their electronic nature, hypertexts as computer documents result in some new form of perusal: Readers move from one piece of text to another by clicking on words or pictures, which are commonly known as hyperlinks. It follows that hypertexts have neither a pre-set linear order nor a fixed beginning or end. Hypertext readers choose their individual reading paths through a multiplicity of hyperlinked textual fragments and thus become partly involved in the production of a text. To account for such enhanced levels of textual interaction, hypertext readers are commonly Table 2.1: Text in an everyday sense Text in an everyday sense 1. Texts combine verbal signs to create a semiotic artefact. 2. Texts have boundaries; they are self-contained and autonomic units. 3. Texts are structurally and semantically connected. 4. Texts indicate (at least) one identifiable subject. 5. Texts have (at least) one author and one recipient. 6. Texts fulfill a communicative function and bear some social signification. ‘Was ein Text bedeutet und was nicht, ob er überhaupt als Text verstanden wird, bestimmt nicht der Produzent allein, sondern auch der Rezipient in der konkreten Aneignung’ (Klemm 2002: 155).

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Figure 2.2: A hypertextual Website

referred to as ‘users’. Furthermore, hypertexts lack any traces of physical engraving (see Storrer 2000), as they can be deleted, changed or enhanced anytime. A specific example will help to illustrate some of the issues touched on above. Figure 2.2 displays a screenshot of the Website die-bibel-als-hypertext.de and exemplifies some of the chief differences between traditional paper-based texts and electronic hypertexts. On a representational level, the Website combines diverse formats, such as texts, photographs and drawings. In addition to this formal enrichment, it stands out in its structural dynamics: Users may reassemble ready-made text fragments into new temporal and causal orders by clicking the hyperlinks on the left-hand side of the page, by typing in a new URL6 or by posting a comment in the discussion board. It follows that the function, subject and social significance of this Website depend heavily on the reader’s individual choices when accessing pre-set text fragments. We can make no statements about the order and the content of the text units that get aligned to each other and result in individual perusals. Users might have visited the other webpages belonging to the same hypertext domain (i.e. die-bibel-als-hypertext.de) before encountering URL is an acronym for ‘Uniform Resource Locator’ and specifies the address of a Website.

 6

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the actual Website displayed in Figure 2.2. Alternatively, they might have clicked some hyperlinks outside the hypertext domain that linked them to the Website. Furthermore, users might have typed in the URL manually, or they might have generated a hyperlink leading to the die-bibel-als-hypertext.de webpage by conducting a Google (or any other search engine) search. The different methods of accessing the webpage result in individual perusals and orderings of multiple text units. As such, not only the text structure, but moreover the communicative purpose of hypertexts is highly dynamic. Both depend strongly upon the ways users go about ascribing meaning to large collections of hypertextual fragments. In summary, I suggest accounting for the chief differences between the everyday concepts of text and hypertext as summarized in Table 2.2. However, many of these characteristics established here to contrast hypertext from traditional text can also be set in relation to each other. With respect to this, recent poststructuralists have challenged long-held assumptions about the traditional division between author and reader and the texts they write and read (cf. Landow 1994). The identified characteristics for prototypical texts and/or hypertexts encompass structural, semantic and functional patterns. Moreover, they interrelate with distinct literacy practices: The perusal habits of traditional texts involve, most commonly, the processing of verbal signs that combine into a Table 2.2: Comparison of the everyday concepts of text and hypertext Text in an everyday sense 1. Texts combine verbal signs to create a semiotic artefact. 2. Texts have boundaries; they are self-contained and autonomic units. 3. Texts are structurally and semantically connected. 4. Texts indicate (at least) one identifiable subject. 5. Texts have (at least) one author and one recipient. 6. Texts fulfill a communicative function and bear some social signification.

Hypertext in an everyday sense 1. Hypertexts excel in combining verbal signs with other diverse representational formats. 2. Hypertexts have no beginning or ending. 3. Hypertexts display a dynamic structure multiplying the text’s possible meanings. 4. The subjects of Hypertexts result from a function of the readers’ individual choices. 5. Hypertext readers are (at least) partially involved in the production of the text; readers are transformed to ‘users’. 6. Hypertext functions arise from the individual reassembling of pre-set text fragments.



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fixed and static body of text. Processing hypertexts embraces all kinds of representational formats. In opposition to literacy practices bound to traditional texts, there is no pre-set body text at hand to be interpreted by readers. When users browse through a network of texts by clicking links or conducting search engines, the very structure of the text itself arises as a function of the users’ hypertextual literacy practices. However, many issues we touched upon in the above discussion cannot be entirely covered by an everyday understanding of text and hypertext, but call for an in-depth discussion of the linguistic conceptualization of these terms.

The linguistic perception of text and hypertext In linguistics, the idea of hypertext is a widely discussed and controversial subject and extends the discussion about the defining features of textuality (cf. Halliday and Hasan 1976, Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, Heinemann and Viehweger 1991, Vater 2001). Just as there are diverse notions about the concepts and characteristics of traditional text, there are various linguistic approaches to hypertext. Depending on the specific research questions, these models emphasize different compulsory and facultative criteria. Storrer (2000) correlates hypertextual reading and writing with a text model that originates in non-electronic texts. Equivalent to a pragmatic-functional view of traditional text, she describes hypertext as a computer-based collection of nodes that result from individual ‘text creation performances’ following a particular purpose and subject.7 More specifically, the actualization and linkage of the individual computer controlled nodes is highly motivated by the unifying idea of the text and the particular communicative objectives of its users. As Bublitz (2005) claims, such a notion of ‘hypertext as a real object’ resulting from individual text actions has to be distinguished from ‘hypertext as a virtual entity’ that alludes to Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of an ‘abstract (imaginary) space of information’ (Berners-Lee 1999 cited in Bublitz 2005: 312). In the latter sense, the ontological basis of hypertexts is a binary system of ones and zeroes. Such an abstract and virtual understanding of hypertext evades, however, any linguistic analysis. In contrast, the idea of hypertext as a real object establishes a multifaceted field ‘Als Hypertext bezeichne ich eine von einem Hypertextsystem verwaltete Menge von Modulen, die als Resultate von Herstellungshandlungen vor dem Hintergrund einer bestimmten thematischen Gesamtvorstellung und zu einem bestimmten kommunikativen Zweck produziert werden’ (Storrer 2000: 236).

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for linguistic research. Besides describing hypertext as a computer controlled object, Storrer (2008) highlights its non-linear organization as its key feature. More precisely, the author distinguishes between ‘medial (non-)linearity’ and ‘conceptual (non-)linearity’. The former is defined as a property of the medium and encompasses linear media (cf. a film reel storing and emitting its data in a linear order) and non-linear media, such as books, records or electronic hypertext, which enable the recipient to decide in which order to access the data. The latter concerns the decision of the text producer when arranging the information. In texts with a linear conception, the text producer aligns the information into a consecutive sequence, whereas in texts with a non-linear conception, he/she splits up the information into various self-contained units. Further real object hypertexts can be distinguished from what Storrer (2000) referred to as ‘E-texts’. While hypertexts are based on a set of hyperlinked nodes and excel in a non-linear text structure, E-texts lack such a non-linear organization, though they may be accessed via the Internet. E-texts encompass online publications of scientific articles or monographs, digital versions of literary works, such as the ‘Gutenberg Project’ (which aims to digitize and archive famous and important cultural works), or any other electronic version of conventional texts. Unlike hypertext users, E-text recipients cannot choose and link their individual reading paths. In terms of their sequential ordering, E-texts predetermine one (mono-sequential) reading path, whereas hypertexts offer multiple (multi-sequential) reading paths or give no indication about a possible reading order (non-sequential). According to Storrer’s (2000) idea of non-sequential text, users traverse the various hyperlinked texts in highly individual ways and still receive ‘an informative token of new hypertext’ (Bublitz 2005: 315). However, in a narrow sense something like non-sequential reading is generically impossible. Although hypertexts trigger users to create highly individual paths within multiple options, the reception of two combined sequences depends upon a linear ordering. Instead of non-sequential texts, I will therefore adhere to the term ‘multilinear texts’ divided into ‘pre-established multilinearity’ (software service-bound) and exposed ‘loose multilinearity’ (user-bound). Further, Storrer (2000) divides into ‘closed hypertexts’ and ‘open hypertexts’. Closed hypertexts are static products based on a set structure and a fixed number of links. As a defining feature, closed hypertexts are finite and can be converted into non-electronic printed texts without any loss of information. Figure 2.3 displays the start menu of a DVD containing information about an exhibition on typography. The rigid numbers of links offer multiple alternative paths to a finite set of data.



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Figure 2.3: Multiple reading paths within a closed hypertext of a DVD-menu

Open hypertexts exhibit the peculiar novelty of electronic text. They are based on a variable number of nodes and result in a highly dynamic text structure. Also referred to as ‘self-selected types of hypertext’ by Bublitz (2005), open hypertexts and their ‘available options leave room for the creation of a highly individual path, [thus] users can turn authors and build new, possibly original messages, for whose coherence they alone are responsible […]’ (Bublitz 2005: 315). In summary, a first and rather broad understanding of the linguistic phenomenon of hypertext includes the following qualities. (1) ontology – distinguishing between ‘hypertext as virtual entity’ and ‘hypertext as a real object’ (2) seclusion – reaching from ‘closed hypertexts’ to ‘open hypertexts’ (3) sequencing – encompassing mono-sequential, multi-sequential and non-sequential reading paths. A narrower concept of hypertext emphasizes an ongoing discussion in CMC research dedicated to the constitutive criteria of hypertext. With reference to representative studies in that area (such as Storrer 2000/2008, Eckkrammer 2002, Huber 2002, Bublitz 2005/2008 and Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2010), my proposed framework of CHTA is based on four constitutive hypertext criteriea, i.e. multilinearity, fragmentation, interactivity, and multimodality. Note that some of these characteristics are heavily interrelated.

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(1) Multilinearity Hypertexts are combined in multilinear ways rather than in one single linear, causal and temporal order. It follows that hypertexts are highly selective: Users can choose their own reading paths from pre-established trajectories. Hypertextual artefacts, such as homepages, Weblogs, WikiWebs, search engines or SNS, may follow a hierarchical structure and predetermine the multilinear choices in some way (‘pre-established multilinearity’). However, hypertext users are free to traverse the networked nodes in highly individual ways (‘loose multilinearity’). In hypertexts, as opposed to E-texts, the subjective choices of the individual user may reject predestined mono-sequential reading paths. (2) Fragmentation A structural requirement for the multilinear perusal of hypertext is its fragmentary organization. Fragmentation concerns the text clusters which are inter-connectable into meaningful wholes. It can be divided into intranodal and internodal fragmentation. The former refers to the fragmentary text arrangement within one node, while the latter applies to the fragmentation across different nodes. Moreover, embedded external hyperlinks link nodes of a present online text with nodes that are stored outside the hypertext database at hand. Such text arrangements across different databases can be referred to as extranodal fragmentation (see also Bublitz 2008, Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2010). (3) Interaction Interaction refers to the ways users may engage in the composition of text units and can be described on three different levels: First, on a cognitive level, users interface with the hypertext in terms of their individual background knowledge. Just as traditional texts, hypertexts are seen as the output of the user’s interpretation, as opposed to isolated, self-contained and static objects. Secondly, on a structural level, users manipulate the online texts by clicking hyperlinks, by typing in Website addresses manually or by using search engines. Hence, users combine their individual perusals within a multiplicity of possible reading paths. Thirdly, on a productive level users may create, comment and extend the text and thus participate in the generation of text content. Since the advent of Social Media, people increaslingly interact with the text on a productive level, thus turning users to authors in the primary sense of the word. (4) Multimodality



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Multimodality, also referred to as ‘hypermedia’ (Landow 1992) or ‘synaesthetic texts’ (Bolter 1991), refers to the combination of diverse representational formats or modes, such as text, pictures, audio or film. Although not a unique feature of electronic hypertexts, computer-mediated texts are technologically more convenient for storing, accessing, retrieving and copying pictures and photographs in online texts. As opposed to traditional, paper-based texts, electronic texts may further incorporate video and audio files. Subsuming the most relevant features of the introduced criteria, my working definition of hypertext reads as follows: Hypertexts are combined in multilinear ways rather than in one single linear, causal and temporal order. As a result of their fragmentary organization, single independent text clusters can be connected into meaningful wholes. Such a re-assembling is built on the users’ interaction with the text that encompasses not only a manipulation of textual structures, but, moreover, its cognitive processing as well as the users’ active participation in the production of text content. Hypertexts combine multimodal representational formats, such as text, pictures, audio or film, into cohesive and coherent textual artefacts.

Text and hypertext in concurrency: Seven standards of (hyper-)textuality The four constitutive features of hypertext emphasize first and foremost its formal and functional enhancement over traditional text. On the other hand, neither of the above-mentioned properties may explain sufficiently how hypertext functions in human interaction. How do textual constituents integrate to actual texts? How do users recognize the combination of signs as texts and in what way do these relate to their communicative settings, i.e. the medial, situational and cultural context? The hypertext model succeeds in highlighting electronic texts as highly disjunctive entities that call for a more elaborative participation of the reader. However, it is only partly capable of giving information on the way single hypertextual units combine into a meaningful, cohesive and coherent whole. In this sense, Eckkrammer (2004) also rejects a thorough electronic revolution in text linguistics and claims that ‘a wide semiotically, functionally, communicatively, cognitively grounded conception of text still serves the purpose’ (Eckkrammer 2004: 216). Correspondingly, researchers in hypertext linguistics have been implementing traditional text models and their respective features for analyzing hypertexts.

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A relatively broad understanding and functionally grounded conception of traditional text is that given by Beaugrande and Dressler (1981). A key aspect of their text model is the question how texts are utilized in social activity. Consequently, the authors insist on discussing all description levels of texts in terms of their function in human interaction and introduce a compound model for linguistic description and analyzes. Their systematic focus on texts as communicative artefacts as well as their integration of the contexts in which textual contents are negotiated is well suited for an in-depth discussion of characteristics and literacy practices surrounding hypertext. In this sense, it promises to provide an in-depth understanding of the text automation processes characteristic for Social Media (see Chapter 1). In detail, Beaugrande and Dressler’s so-called ‘procedural approach’ interrelates syntactic, semantic and pragamtic levels of description to ask how texts function in human interaction. Hence, Beaugrande and Dressler direct the focus on both text-centred and user-centred features of text. The former capture the structural organization as well as the immediate and evaluative reception of the text material. Such characteristics emerge in the two textuality standards cohesion and coherence. The latter concern the activity of textual communication at large (by both authors and recipients) and are accounted for in the textuality standards intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. Beaugrande and Dressler give the following definition of text: A text will be defined as a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality. If any of these standards is not considered to have been satisfied, the text will not be communicative. Hence, non-communicative texts are treated as non-texts. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 3

Subsequent models in text linguistics questioned such a rigid dichotomic view of texts and non-texts based on the application of these criteria. Renkema (2004) has shown that the standards of intentionality, acceptabilty and informativity are highly dependent on the subjective evaluations of the individual authors and recipients. In this sense, the sequence ‘Santa Claus laid three eggs into the lion’s net’8 is likely to be a non-text for most recipients. However, in a particular situation it might make perfect sense, e.g. by knowing that ‘the lions’ is another designation for Munich’s soccer club and the sentence was broadcast by a radio sportscaster during a soccer match in the weeks before Christmas. Translated from a radio commentary on a soccer game when Bayer Leverkusen won against 1860 München.

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In the following discussion, I will thus regard Beaugrande and Dressler’s seven standards of textuality not as criteria of exclusions, but rather as benchmarks that allow access and analysis of texts and their contextual embeddings in systematic ways. In particular, Beaugrande and Dressler’s emphasis on a text’s contextual setting, as well as their central question of how texts are utilized in social activity, promise important insights into Social Media discourse. As shown for the case of Fb, the software service conditions distinct contextual parameters, thus facilitating certain discourse patterns (such as automatic text generation), which in turn relate in many ways with the performed social activities (such as self-presentation and friendship maintenance). However, before applying Beaugrande and Dressler’s (1981) textuality standards to a discussion of the software service Fb and its involved texts (Chapter 3), I shall introduce the textuality standards one by one and examine their validity for hypertexts in general.

Cohesion in text and hypertext Most obviously, any individual language system (langue) is governed by grammatical dependencies. Likewise, any individual act of arranging words, phrases, clauses and sentences into communicative artefacts (parole) underlies syntactical principles that restrict and connect simultaneously the specific meaning potential of each element. Beaugrande and Dressler highlight this function of syntax in communication, by introducing the term cohesion.9 The first standard will be called cohesion and concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence. The surface components depend upon each other according to grammatical forms and conventions, such that cohesion rests upon grammatical dependencies. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 3

It follows that the language system of syntax imposes not only organizational structures on the surface text, but signals at the same time relations among surface elements. Table 2.3 summarizes Beaugrande and Dressler’s model of cohesive devices signalling surface relations among long-range stretches

‘Cohesion’ as a linguistic term was originally introduced by Halliday (1964) and later by his wife Hasan (cf. Hasan 1968, Halliday and Hasan 1976). The term derives from lat. cohaere ‘sticking together’.

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of text and illustrates them by means of the example of the fairytale text ‘Rumpelstiltskin’. Applying these cohesive patterns to hypertexts puts emphasis on the general assumption of a linear reading order bound to traditional text. Obviously, these organizational patterns presume a consecutive succession of textual elements, which is challenged by the multilinear conception and (re-)arrangement of Table 2.3: Cohesive devices signalling text surface relations Cohesive Device

Knitting

Example

Recurrence

Straightforward repetition of elements or patterns.

Partial recurrence

Shifting of previously used elements to different classes.

Parallelism

Reusing surface structures but filling them with different expressions. Repeating content but conveying it with different expressions. Economic, short place holders empty of own particular content replacing contentcarrying elements.

Once there was a miller who was poor. One day the king said to the miller … His daughter could spin straw into gold. And then the girl was given a spinning-wheel. Today I bake, tomorrow I brew, the next I have the young queen’s child. His daughter could spin straw into gold. And then the girl was given a spinning-wheel.

Paraphrase Pro-forms

Ellipsis Tense Aspect

1 Anaphora – using a pro-form after the co-referring expression.

Once there was a miller who was poor. He had a beautiful daughter.

2 Cataphora – using a pro-form before the co-referring expression.

And when the king found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and the miller’s daughter became a queen. Today I bake, tomorrow brew, …

Repeating a structure and its content but omitting some of the surface expressions. Signalling surface relations in terms of their temporal progression. Defining the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state.

Once there was a miller who was poor. One day the king said to the miller … There I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping.



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Indicating the logical relations among events or situations. Four major types: 1 Conjunctions – linking occurrences which have the same status.

The little man took the necklace and seated himself in front of the wheel.

2 Disjunction – linking occurrences which have alternative status.

Perhaps your name is shortribs, or you call yourself sheepshanks, or laceleg.

3 Contrajunction – linking occurrences having the same status but appearing incongruent or incompatible in the textual world.

She said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, that is not my name.

4 Subordination – linking the occurrences when the status of one depends on that of the other.

She promised the manikin what he wanted, because she did not know how else to help herself.

hypertexts. Based on their novel electronic ways of mutually connecting surface text elements within and across sequences, hypertexts excel in highly dynamic and multilinear forms of perusal. With regard to surface relations in hypertexts, we can thus discern three different cohesive levels: ‘intranodal’, ‘internodal’ and ‘extranodal cohesion’. Intranodal cohesion concerns textual surface relations within one single node. Just like in traditional text, users follow a more or less linear reading order by relating the node’s surface text elements to each other, as in the surface relations within each single node (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) illustrated in Figure 2.4. As hypertexts are always embedded in wider networks of nodes, ‘internodal’ and ‘extranodal cohesion’ serve to account for cohesive patterns across the node boundaries. Internodal cohesion refers to surface relations across hyperlinked nodes belonging to the same hypertext database.10 Nodes 1, 2 and 3, illustrated in Figure 2.4, are all part of the hypertext database die-bibel-als-hypertext.de. As a result of their ‘non-linear conception’, the information of these nodes is split up into various self-contained units and can be rearranged in multiple orders. At the same time, all nodes belonging to the respective database contribute to a Hypertext databases can be accessed by the same domain name (URL).

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Figure 2.4: Intranodal, internodal and extranodal cohesion

certain principal subject, in our case a discussion of the hypertextual structures within the Bible. As an effect of the factual equality of all nodes with regard to their reading order, anaphoric and cataphoric pro-forms as well as ellipsis are incapable of internodal cohesion. On the other hand, the explicit (recurrence) or implicit (paraphrase) repetition of surface elements appear highly effective for relating surface elements internodally. Extranodal cohesion concerns the surface relation across nodes belonging to different hypertext databases. In Figure 2.4 we find three different hypertext databases: The nodes 1, 2 and 3 are connected to node 4 and 5 by extranodal cohesion. Most commonly, the texts across different databases are produced by different authors. Besides the hyperlinks, external nodes show no or only minor connections on a surface level. With regard to extranodal cohesion, Kuhlen (1991) also claims that traditional cohesive structures either dissolve altogether, or are made explicit by electronic linking. From that he infers that the single nodes must be organized in cohesively self-contained ways.



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We can maintain that grammatical dependencies (as identified by Beaugrande and Dressler) apply only partially to cohesion in hypertexts. Moreover, relations among surface elements in hypertexts are indicated by electronic textual ties, commonly known as hyperlinks,11 within one node (intranodal cohesion), within one hypertextual database (internodal cohesion) or across different hypertextual databases (extranodal cohesion).

Coherence in text and hypertext While cohesion covers the mere surface connections among linguistic forms, Beaugrande and Dressler’s notion of coherence embraces the formation of a mental model of the text’s content. The second standard will be called coherence and concerns the ways in which the components of the textual world, i.e. the configuration of concepts and relations which underlie the surface text, are mutually accessible and relevant. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 4

In this understanding, concepts comprise ‘configurations of knowledge’ that are activated by recipients when confronted with a particular expression. The use of such knowledge configurations is delimited by its possible and present relations to other concepts. Beaugrande and Dressler divide knowledge structures into four primary concepts. These are: (1) (2) (3) (4)

objects: Conceptual entities with a stable identity and constitution situations: Configurations of mutually present objects in their current states events: Occurrences which change a situation or a state within a situation actions: Events intentionally brought about by an agent. (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 95)

Typically, object concepts comprise ‘things’, like table or car, as well as ‘people’, such as women or policemen (see Schubert 2008). When activated, object concepts relate in a particular way to each other, thus establishing more comprehensive situation concepts. Likewise, action concepts present one particular case of more general event concepts. In the brief text ‘Drivers – slow down! Children at play’ (see Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 3) the object concepts ‘drivers’ and ‘children’ relate in such a way to each other that a prototypical Typically displayed in underlined blue texts, hyperlinks give hints to structural conjunctions among textual sequences.

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situation emerges, such as ‘road traffic near a place where children live’. Equally, the action concepts ‘slow down’ and ‘at play’ combine into a particular event concept, e.g. children playing on a playground and cars reducing their speed. In both phrases the relation ‘agent-of ’ apply, marking ‘the children as the agents of the action of playing’ and ‘the drivers as the agents of the action of driving and/ or of slowing down’. It follows that both concepts and relations are about cognitive entities that form the basis of the textual world, which is again the outcome of a cognitive process. As Beaugrande and Dressler stress, the textual world depends on a continuity of senses, or in other words, on a successive matching between the configuration of concepts and relations expressed and the receiver’s prior knowledge of the world. It follows that the textual world contains more than the sense of the expressions in the surface text: ‘Cognitive processes contribute a certain amount of commonsense knowledge derived from the participants’ expectations and experience regarding the organization of events and situations’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 85). In fact, what Beaugrande and Dressler refer to as commonsense knowledge encompasses various knowledge domains, such as declarative and procedural knowledge. The presentation of declarative knowledge can be covered by the expression ‘knowing that’. It is independent of the respective discourse situations and encompasses facts or beliefs about events and situations in the real world. As opposed to this, representation of procedural knowledge refers to ‘knowing how’. It encompasses facts and beliefs relevant and exercised in specific types of uses and tasks. Unlike declarative knowledge, it is impossible to value procedural knowledge as true or false, but only in terms of its success in its specific communicative use. As Winograd (1975) claims, ‘some things [such as driving a car] are better represented procedurally, others as declarative facts [such as knowledge about concrete things in the world], and all we need to do is to work on how these can be integrated’ (Winogard 1975: 189). Tulving (1972) specifies declarative knowledge further by introducing two different principles of storing and utilizing knowledge, namely episodic and semantic memory. One’s own experience regarding individual events and situations turn up in one’s episodic memory. The general structures of events and situations, or in other words, one’s view of the world at large is stored in one’s semantic memory. Obviously, these two analytical categories are heavily interwoven: Personal experience constantly affects one’s abstract world view; similarly, the latter feeds heavily into the organization of one’s experience. Nevertheless, episodic memory that is heavily tied to the original contexts of encounter is shared by individuals or limited groups, while semantic memory



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evolving as a set of abstract principles is shared by and accessible to larger groups of communicants. As a particular feature, frequently used configurations within the semantic memory are stored as wholes, thus contributing to the economy of storage and search (see Kintsch 1998). Such global patterns of semantic knowledge are commonly referred to as frames and contain commonsense knowledge about some central concepts, such as ‘being in a certain kind of living room’ or ‘or going to a child’s birthday party’ (Minsky 1975: 212). Each frame comprises several kinds of information, e.g. how to use the frame, what one can expect to happen next or what to do if these anticipations do not prove true. Frames are hierarchically structured and can be divided into ‘top level’ and ‘lower level frames’. While top level frames represent more abstract and obligatory facts ‘that are always true about the supposed situation’ (Minsky 1975: 212), lower level frames comprise a collection of attributes or slots that may be potentially filled with values. In this respect, the top level frame for the concept of ‘monastery’ gives general information about its broad function, e.g. the residence of a religious community. Depending on the particular situation and/or its contextual embedding, lower level frames and thus the specific attributes and conditions of the concept of monastery may vary dramatically. Christian monasteries are inter alia associated with large complexes of stone buildings comprising the cloisters, workshops and possibly a brewery. They are typically attached to a church or a cathedral. In contrast, Buddhist monasteries are linked inter alia to pavilion-like wooden structures, including pagodas, temples and grottos. While frames can be thought of as an unordered set of conceptual nodes, the notions of schemes, scripts and plans highlight some form of progression within and across frequently used conceptual configurations. On the broadest level, schemes are about global structures of knowledge ordered by time proximity or causality (Beaugrande and Colby 1979, Yule 1996). These rather abstract successions can be specified by plans and scripts, which are both types of knowledge patterns that encode goal-oriented sequences of actions. However, the boundary between these two analytical categories seems to be only a matter of degree. Scripts are about consensual and socially institutionalized patterns. They are called up frequently and involve some kind of pre-established routine. Oftencited examples refer to the ‘restaurant script’ or the ‘doctor visit script’, both involving ‘predetermined, stereotyped sequence[s] of actions that define a well known situation’ (Schank and Abelson 1977: 41). However, plans cohere in more abstract ways and stand out as more flexible. In fact, planning as an action always implies that ‘there is a choice among alternative overall plans […]’ (Galambos

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et al. 1986: 101). In this respect, the conventional expression of ‘having a plan of something’ as opposed to the less common version of ‘having the plan of something’ illustrates the rather dynamic notion of what a plan constitutes. According to Beaugrande and Dressler, scripts are about ‘stabilized plans called up frequently to specify the roles of participants and their expected actions’ (1981: 91). Moreover, the authors highlight the effects of such global patterns of semantic knowledge for the production and reception of texts: Frames appear to have various consequences on how a topic might be developed. In this sense, the choice and/or the reception of a text title may, among other contextual cues, activate global knowledge configurations. Schemes may contribute to the overall progression of events within the textual world, e.g. the schema for flight invokes an ordered progression of events that may or may not materialize on the surface text level. Plans apply in giving information on ‘how text users or characters in textual worlds will pursue their goals’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 91), while scripts grant access to prototypical episodes and situations within and outside textual worlds. Table 2.4 summarizes the key concepts that have been identified as analytical models for describing commonsense knowledge. The top-down organization relates to the degree of abstractness and/or definiteness of the respective knowledge configurations, with commonsense knowledge being at the most general and the script model at the most definite level. All these categories are, of course, heavily interrelated. In this sense, a frame for ‘structural aspects of a child’s birthday party’ and a plan for ‘organising a child’s birthday party’ open up different outlooks on the same basic knowledge. Table 2.4: A model of commonsense knowledge Commonsense knowledge Declarative knowledge Episodic memory

Procedural knowledge Semantic memory Frames Schemes Plans Scripts



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Turning to hypertext, the formation of a mental model of what is ‘behind the screen’ challenges traditional notions of coherence for several reasons. With regress to the four constitutive features of hypertext, we can discern several factors that have great impact on coherence-building in hypertext. At the same time these effects shed light on the question of how the development of a ‘hypertextual world’, as a cognitive category, differs from coherence inducing processes of a ‘textual world’. In traditional texts, there are authors creating and aligning textual components on the production side, and, correspondingly, readers on the reception side who are confronted with surface texts activating configurations of their individual background knowledge. However, in hypertext such a dyadic role split can no longer be taken for granted. As shown, hypertexts excel in enhanced levels of ‘interactivity’, thus turning users into authors, who engage in the combination of individual perusals (structural interactivity) and/or participate in the generation of text content (participatory interactivity). It follows that text surfaces are not simply at hand to be processed, but have to be strung together or even extended with regard to content by the user. Thus, in hypertext the formation of a mental model goes hand in hand with the retrieval and arrangement of the text surface. To come back to Winograd (1975), in hypertext users constantly need to integrate their declarative knowledge, facts or beliefs that get activated when processing hypertext nodes with their procedural knowledge about proceeding through hypertext, e.g. about clicking hyperlinks or using search engines. To ensure topic continuity, users are required to plan their next ‘click’ carefully, after having processed the surface texts of the present node. From a structural point of view and with regard to a hypertext’s ‘fragmentation’, we can therefore divide in intranodal, internodal and extranodal coherence: ‘Intranodal’ and ‘internodal coherence’ encompass text relations within one hypertext database, with the former accounting for text alliances within one node and the latter for those across different nodes. Belonging to the same database, the text surfaces address intranodally and internodally typically a more comprehensive theme and serve a discernable text function (Storrer 2000). Ergo, text alliances within one hypertext database join to set a common global reference frame, activating commonsense knowledge about some central concepts. In this sense, all nodes belonging to the hypertext database fk.1000.de (see below) cohere within the global frame ‘car’. Due to the ‘multilinear’ organization of the Website, each node may have several precursory nodes and likewise numerous nodes that come after. However, given that the user limits her/his multilinear choices to the nodes

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Figure 2.5: Coherence-building within the hypertext database fk.1000.de

belonging to the fk.1000.de database, the proposed concepts and relations all lie within the ‘car frame’. Like traditional texts, interpretations of local coherence relations within one node or across different nodes (of one hypertext database) are all based on a more comprehensive reference frame. As opposed to ‘intra-’ and ‘internodal coherence’, ‘extranodal coherence’ concerns the traversal of nodes belonging to different hypertext databases and demands new strategies from the users in building the corresponding mental models. While the number of nodes belonging to the same database and their contingent order is finite, text alignments across various databases are potentially infinite. Depending on the particular intention of the user, he/she manipulates the interactive text bases in unanticipated ways, e.g. by clicking hyperlinks, by typing in URLs or by using search engines. It is up to the user where to begin and where to end her/his individual text session. Disregarding navigational aids (such as typed links), users decide in a trial and error manner if the present node fits their communicative purpose. As a matter of fact, the easy access to most diverse nodes and databases all over the world results in a clash of diverging reference frames. Ascribing sense continuity to the individually aligned text bases, the user lacks a partner to negotiate meaning: Being confronted with a collage of assembled surface texts that are embedded in the most diverse global knowledge structures, users thus rely, as Bublitz (2005) postulates, on their ‘cyberegos’. More specifically, the cyberego can be seen ‘as a



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kind of third partner between the [hypertext] system and […] the user’ (2005: 319). When browsing the Internet by stringing nodes of diverging databases together, users negotiate meaning with themselves, or more specifically with their ‘virtual others’. Due to the user’s status as an ‘author-reader’ (Barthes 1977), ‘hypertext surfing sessions’ may involve a hotchpotch of opened-up reference frames across various nodes. It follows that the set-up of shared knowledge systems among authors and readers is likely to be suppressed. Jumping from node to node, users commonly scan text surfaces superficially before they quickly decide if the Website meets their purpose and if they want to indulge in a more profound perusal. In relation to this, Figure 2.6 illustrates three entirely different thematic nodes one might come across when searching for information on the particular car featured in the ‘fk1000.de–Website’, a ‘Ford Taunus Transit’. Entering the search items ‘bus’ (German word for ‘van’) and ‘taunus’ into Google search engine, the first hit (node 1) gives information about public trains and busses in the Taunus region in Hesse, Germany. To build a mental model of the text surfaces at this point, one has to rely inter alia on the knowledge frame ‘public transport’. Having found the Website on the ‘Ford Taunus’ (node 2), one has to resort to one’s knowledge patterns on cars. One might then come across the Website of an auxiliary fire brigade, as this is hyperlinked to the ‘fk1000.de– Website’. Being confronted with an entirely different reference frame, namely one of ‘fire brigade’, users might struggle to work out the topical relation between the two succeeding nodes (node 2 and node 3). Knowing that the Ford

Figure 2.6: Coherence-building across several hypertext databases

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Taunus Transit used to be a popular fire engine establishes, in this sense, a lower level frame of fire brigade. Thus, users might come up with the idea of browsing through the fire brigade’s car pool and find there a picture of the Ford Taunus Transit (node 4). As should have become clear from the assumed browsing session, extranodal coherence-building reinforces the authorship of the user. The process of stringing nodes together is constantly adapted to one’s individual knowledge system and has great impact on the outcome of text data. The formation of a mental model within a hypertextual environment goes hand in hand with the retrieval and arrangement of the text surface. Thus hypertext users must persistently integrate their declarative knowledge with their procedural knowledge about proceeding through hypertext. Intranodal and internodal coherence-building processes are typically based on a common reference frame, while extranodal coherence-building encompasses a variety of reference frames, thus suppressing the set-up of shared knowledge systems among authors and readers.

Intentionality and acceptability in text and hypertext While the first and the second textuality standards (cohesion and coherence) emphasize the structure as well as the processing of the text material, the standards three to seven focus on the activity of textual communication at large. For something to become ‘a text’, it is not enough for textual components to fit together and to make sense. A text, as such, is obliged to be intended by an author and accepted by a recipient within a particular communicative interaction. Beaugrande and Dressler introduce intentionality (author-bound) and acceptability (reader-bound) as their third and fourth standards of textuality, which I shall introduce successively. The third standard of textuality could then be called intentionality, concerning the text producer’s attitude that the set of occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text instrumental in fulfilling the producer’s intentions, e.g. to distribute knowledge or to attain a goal specified in a plan. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 7

In other words, cohesion- and coherence-building devices are employed by the producer as purposeful means to attain higher order discourse goals. However, a lack of connectivity among text surface components cannot automatically be



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ascribed to an author’s lack of intention. In this sense, the hesitant answer ‘well… uh … eh…my – I lost my license’ is not linked syntactically to the preceding question ‘can you give me a lift tomorrow?’. However, it is an appropriate answer, giving information implying that the person who was asked is not able to follow the specific request. Here, the incomplete or inconsistent surface structure appears rather from the particular context and serves as an appropriate means of meeting the text producer’s intention. To avoid communicative disturbances, both text producer and text receiver must have access to the contextual causes of the reduced cohesion or the lack thereof. Therefore, the diverse intentions text producers may pursue do not translate directly to particular linguistic forms and definite meanings. The creation as well as the reception of coherent texts results, rather, from the interlocutors’ ability to infer the function of what is said by considering and relating its form to the particular contextual embedding. The question of how text producers employ texts in particular contexts to follow (and fulfill) their specific intentions establishes the key concerns in ‘speech act theory’. Questioning ‘how to do things with words’, Austin (1962) initially distinguished between two kinds of utterances and introduced the ‘performative – constative distinction’, which he later abolished. As Austin (1962) shows, there are some utterances which ‘constate’ some kind of facts and describe the world as it is by stating or reporting something. These so-called ‘constatives’ can be proven true or false and include descriptions, reports, statements, assertions and other utterances. In contrast, ‘performatives’ can not be regarded as truth claims, but carry out a performance and/or some kind of action. In this sense, making a performative utterance, such as ‘I apologize’, ‘I name this ship Queen Elizabeth’ or ‘I bet you that it will …’, is ‘doing something’, as opposed to ‘saying something’. For a performative to succeed in carrying out a specific action, it must meet certain criteria: Performatives must be based on some kind of convention dictating that the process that it accomplishes (e.g. marrying someone by responding with ‘I do’ to the question ‘do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?’). Further, the person carrying out the performative must be appropriate for the act, e.g. a groom, and he or she must have true feelings and thoughts about the performance. If this is not the case, the performative is ‘abused’. Discussing various examples of constatives and performatives, Austin (1962) dissolved his initially-proposed distinction in these two types of utterances. As he also shows by ‘constating something’, text producers may perform various kinds of speech acts. Obviously, constatives always involve some kind of verbal action, such as speaking, stating, asserting, etc. Simultaneously, ‘stating something’ may be used in particular contexts to

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carry out various other sorts of actions. In this sense, the constative ‘the bull is in the field’ is not only a speech act by virtue of something being stated. Depending on the particular situational embedding, it may perform a multitude of other actions, such as warning, apologizing or expressing anger. Though, the ‘constative–performative distinction’ cannot hold, it creates a vital awareness that language is used intentionally, aiming at diverse communicative goals that go above and beyond saying something is true or false. Thereby, the particular action is not to be considered as an intrinsic property of an utterance. With regard to the particular contextual embedding, any utterance could be used to carry out any speech act. Nevertheless, there are certain verbs, such as promising, warning or naming, that denote the same speech act as they perform in a standard situation. To find an answer to ‘how to do things with words’, Austin (1962) saw the need to develop a more comprehensive model that eventually replaced the ‘performative – constative distinction’. To this end, he proposed three simultaneous processes intrinsic to every speech act: Locution, illocution and perlocution. Locution describes the act of saying something, e.g. the mere verbal performance of uttering ‘I’m sorry for coming late’. It comprises the ‘phonetic act’, referring to the voicing of distinctive sound units (phonemes), the ‘phatic act’ that arranges phonemes into words and larger syntactic entities, as well as the ‘rhetic act’ concerning the propositional content of what has been uttered. Illocution describes the act in saying something and alludes to the communicative function of a particular locution. Respectively, performing the locutionary act of uttering, ‘I’m sorry for being late’ may commonly aim at the illocutionary act of an apology. However, in other contexts the same locution might be used to insult someone, for example by coming late on purpose and uttering the sentence in a sarcastic way. It follows that illocutionary acts are highly variable in relation to the corresponding locutionary acts. In different situations the same propositions can be used to perform various functions, such as insulting or apologizing. Perlocution describes the act by saying something and involves the ‘[…] consequential effects upon feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, of the speaker, or of other persons […]’ (Austin 1962: 101). Highlighting the real production of real effects that result from voiced and intended utterances, Austin (1962) paraphrases the perlocutionary act with ‘by-doing-acts’. Table 2.5 illustrates the multi-layered configuration of speech acts by means of an example. A discussion of these three layers in terms of Beaugrande and Dressler’s notion of ‘intentionality’ shows that the locutionary act as well as the illocutionary act emerge from a text producer’s intention to attain a specific communicative goal. In light



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Table 2.5: Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech act Locution

By uttering “I’m sorry for being late!”

Illocution

she intended to apologize to me

she intended to insult me,

Perlocution

and I accepted her excuse.

but I did not care.

of the dual nature of communication, we can assume various discourse situations, such as a verbal dispute or everyday talk, in which the communicative goals (or illocutions) that were intended by the speaker/author might be misinterpreted by the recipient. Furthermore, the intentionality of the effects of the utterance (perlocutionary act) can be described from the text producer’s point of view as well as from the text recipient’s position. In most cases the text producer deliberately aims at evoking a particular effect. However, this does not prevent non-intentional effects evolving on the recipient’s side. To account for the recipient’s attitude in communication, Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) introduce the notion of acceptability. The fourth standard of textuality would be called acceptability, concerning the text receiver’s attitude that the set of occurrences should constitute a cohesive and coherent text having some use or relevance for the receiver, e.g. to acquire knowledge or provide co-operation in a plan. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 7

Before the individual propositions, functions and effects of a specific text can evolve, it has to be accepted as such by the recipient. In other words, text recipients are required to acknowledge a succession of linguistic signs as a cohesive and coherent communicative artefact in order to extract its specific and highly individual communicative relevance. Thereby, recipients act upon a ‘default assumption of coherence’, taking a continuity of sense as a given, even if this is not designed/intended by the author (Bublitz 2009). Obviously, acceptability is highly dependent on the recipient’s individual knowledge of conventional patterns of text genres: Provided that recipients are familiar with the Japanese genre ‘Haiku’, the following lines would be acceptable as texts; otherwise one might suppose that this is about a random sequence of word fragments. As a matter of fact, the lines below were composed arbitrarily by the algorithms of the ‘Shadoikus Website’, a page that lets users generate ‘nonsense poetry’ without typing a single word.12 Source: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/shadoks/shadoiku.html

12

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Table 2.6: Haiku poem from the Website ‘Shadoikus’ mezozo gazo mega bubu bugame? buzozo mebu! a frog jumps chopsticks, from Earth too much giving up, great are small high noon?

Applied to the concept of hypertext a reflection of Beaugrande and Dressler’s textuality standards of ‘intentionality’ and ‘acceptability’ highlights how the digital context contributes to the performance of a user’s individual communicative aims. Software engineers design and implement hypertextual environments that have great affect on users’ choices and performances when operating the services (‘pre-established multilinearity’). On the other hand, users are free to traverse the networked nodes in highly individual ways (‘loose multilinearity’). When browsing through the Internet, users are constantly required to ponder their particular intentions of accessing and aligning text sequences to each other. At the same time, it is vital for users to recognize and accept the text(s) as such. As a matter of fact, the versatility of information, the vast array of linked nodes as well as the sophisticated processes initiated by a simple mouse click may result in more or less unintentionally produced texts on the user’s behalf. In this sense, Figure 2.7 presents a thread on a discussion board commenting on an accidentally purchased item in an online auction.13 Summing up, software engineers employ ‘pre-established multilinearity’ as an intentional strategy to follow and/or attain their particular communicative goals. From a user perspective, hypertexts as ‘loose multilinear’ objects result in the collapse of the dyadic role split between author and reader. In hypertexts, the distinction between ‘intentionality’ and ‘acceptability’ is no longer relevant: Users deliberately access and align hypertextual fragments to individual perusals, while adopting the attitude that the set of textual modules should at least have some relevance or use for them. Further, hypertext automation processes may easily result in unintentionally produced texts.

Source: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081111181748AAfe4jB

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Figure 2.7: Unintentionally generated text in eBay

Informativity in text and hypertext To address the quantity of new or expected information, Beaugrande and Dressler introduce the textuality standard of informativity. The fifth standard of textuality is called informativity and concerns the extent to which the occurrences of the presented text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs. unknown/certain. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 8

According to and Beaugrande and Dressler, informativity is applied to content, which again arises from the dominant role of coherence. Likewise, occurrences of other language systems, such as phonemes or syntax, may contribute to a text’s range of expectedness and/or unexpectedness. In this sense, the bizarre sound configurations of a poem by Ernst Jandl obstruct the formation of an unambiguous mental model of the text. Nevertheless, the sounds may activate the hypothesis building of the text’s possible meanings (see Table 2.7). To specify further in what ways texts can be expected and/or unexpected, Beaugrande and Dressler amend Shannon and Weaver’s (1949 in Beaugrande and Dressler 1981) information theory. In Shannon and Weaver’s view the information value of a message depends on the statistical probability it will occur. Accordingly, the informativity of a text would decreases at the ratio of its likelihood of occurrence. Highlighting the impracticability of calculating all the probable instances in a natural language, Beaugrande and Dressler replace the concept of ‘statistical probability’ with the concept of ‘contextual probability’

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Table 2.7: Informativity in a poem by Ernst Jandl14 schtzngrmm schtzngrmm t-t-t-t t-t-t-t grrrmmmmm t-t-t-t s------c------h

and propose three orders of informativity. First-order informativity evolves from frequent and trivial occurrences that receive only minor attention, such as ‘function words’, like articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. Beaugrande and Dressler’s notion of second-order informativity is rather vague and is described as ‘occurrences [that] are below the upper range of probability’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 143). They assume at least some second-order occurrences in the normal standard of textual communication, ‘since texts purely on the first order would be difficult to construct and extremely uninteresting’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 143). Third order informativity evolves whenever text-presented patterns do not match patterns of stored knowledge. In such cases, the text understanding is highly dependent on the reader’s motivation. She or he is required to strike a balance between her/his general world knowledge, her/his experience, her/his background and the textual world. Further, the extent to which textual artefacts are new and/or known varies according to the general world knowledge and beliefs of a specific society and is at the same time due to the individual channel of communication/medium in use. Turning to hypertext, informativity is heavily bound to the individual text actions of the user. Before we can make a statement about the information value of the presently accessed nodes, we have to survey the way the user called up these individual sites, for example by (knowing and) typing in the relevant URL, by following a hyperlink or by using a search engine. As a side effect of the vast array of linked information on the Internet, users can easily ‘drift off ’ thus coming across accidently called-up nodes. Though the information on these sites is very likely to be unexpected, the information can only arise if the user dwells Source: Jandl, Ernst (1986) Laut und Luise. Stuttgart.

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on the site and scans it for relevant information. As Huber (2002) has shown, the reception of hypertexts tends to be highly selective. To this end, browsers and Website applications, such as built-in search engines or structural overviews, support well-directed forms of perusal and may assist users in a systematic search for new information. In the same vein, hypertexts as fluid media can be changed, deleted or enhanced anytime, thus updating and enhancing the informational value of the occurrences. In recent hypertextual Websites so-called ‘web feed formats’ serve to syndicate new information. Users having subscribed to such feeds will be notified every time content is updated on a particular site. The extent to which hypertextual artefacts provide new information is heavily bound to online-specific literacy practices. Due to the vast array of information on the Internet, the reception of hypertexts is highly selective and is supported by various software services and applications, such as online portals, search engines or web feed formats. Further, it is conditioned by the fluidity of the electronic texture.

Situationality in text and hypertext To account for the role of the talk constellation and speech situation in text production, Beaugrande and Dressler introduce the criterion of situationality. The sixth standard of textuality can be designated situationality and concerns the factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 9

To assess a text appropriately, it is crucial to know where and in what situation it was used. As shown, statements such as ‘the bull is in the field’ (see Intentionality) may perform various speech acts (cf. warning, apology, complaint, etc.), as their particular communicative purposes arise from the particular situational embedding. Bell (1991) claims that ‘the situation of occurrence is […] derived from ‘real world knowledge’ – knowledge of contexts of utterances, schemas, frames, etc. – and is mediated by our own personal goals, values and attitudes’ (Bell 1991: 170). Accordingly, Beaugrande and Dressler distinguish between situation monitoring and situation managing. The former derives directly from the ‘knowledge of contexts’ and is performed in ‘unmediated accounts of the situation model’, in which the text producers’ higher order goals are, to a large extent, neglected. In contrast, the latter is carried out whenever it is ‘the dominant function of a text to guide the situation in a manner favourable to

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the producer’s goals’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 162). However, as the authors show, the borderline between these two concepts is extremely fuzzy. Even in occurrences aiming at simply describing entities constituting a specific situation, the texts are conditioned by much more than mere ‘stimuli of the scene’. As an effect of their personal beliefs and their communicative experiences within a given society, text producers have set up systematic strategies to screen situations for relevant information. Even in mere descriptions, the salience of some characteristics results from the socially and individually motivated choices of the text producers. As Halliday and Hasan (1976) have shown, within the ‘context of situation’ (see Chapter 1) ‘situation monitoring’ is supported through the use of pro-forms within the mode or symbolic organization of a text. More precisely, such pro-forms are about exophoric references that give information on the context of situation, e.g. the environment in which the text is being produced. By nature, the first and second person pronoun are expohoric, pointing to the text producer and receiver. By means of third person pronouns and deictics such as ‘here’ and ‘now’, exophoric references may further designate other participants and provide information about the spatio-temporal embedding. Still, ‘whether a text is acceptable may depend not on the correctness of its reference to the real world, but rather on its believability and relevance to the participants’ outlook regarding the situation’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 179). The situationality of hypertexts is, most basically, marked by the fact that their generation as well as their reception is tied to computer media. Disregarding individual ‘knowledge of contexts’ activated by the hypertextual content, an indispensable situation of every single node is subjection to algorithmic manipulation. As subsumed by the fundamental hypertext quality of ‘ontology’, every text fragment generated by means of a computer originates in a binary code. Most non-expert users15 neglect the virtual ontology of hypertexts. However, when browsing the Internet, hypertext users employ the underlying digital code to rearrange and modify the textual surfaces, i.e. when clicking hyperlinks, using the keyword function or adjusting the whole layout of a site. Hence, when applying the textuality standard of situationality to hypertext, we have to distinguish between real object situationality and virtual situationality. The former adheres to the hypertextual world (see Coherence) and involves socially motivated and individually obtained knowledge of contexts. On this level, users interpret and situate texts within contexts of utterances, schemas, Lacking any further knowledge in information technology.

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frames, etc. and negotiate personal goals, values and attitudes. ‘Virtual situationality’ regards the hypertext’s algorithmic constitution and engages the computer’s data organiz­ation. An effect of this is that hypertexts can be reorganized and altered by users when accessed, which again has great impact on their ‘real object situationality’. The strong interdependences between ‘virtual’ and ‘real object situationality’ are particularly apparent in the personalized options of Google Maps. As we

Figure 2.8a & b: Dynamic ‘real object situationality’ in Google Maps © 2013 Google; Map data © 2013 Geo-Basis-DE/BKG

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can see below (Figure 2.8a & b), users may manipulate the text’s data organization (or virtual situationality) and thus modify the represented real object situationality. By ticking the respective boxes on the left-hand side of the Google Maps Website, users may access extra information on the displayed city map: The left image entails information on hotels in the city of Munich, emergent in the blue dots which give further information about the respective hotels when clicked. The right image establishes a new ‘real object situationailty’ for the city map of Munich: The square boxes are linked to videos that were uploaded on the video platform YouTube and relate to the suburbs in which the hyperlinks are positioned. It follows that users create a new situationality regarding the text data of the map each time they tick another box of the menu bar. In this sense, we can establish that the fluidity of hypertexts emerging from their virtual situationality results in a highly dynamic real object situationality. The situationality of hypertexts is marked by the fact that their generation as well as their reception is tied to computer media. ‘Virtual situationality’ regards a hypertext’s algorithmic constitution. ‘Real object situationality’ adheres to the modelling of the world itself and involves socially motivated and individually obtained knowledge of contexts. In fact, virtual situationality informs real object situationality and vice versa.

Intertextuality in text and hypertext To account for principles linking texts to each other with regard to particular genres or varieties and, more generally, in terms of preceding or simultaneously occurring discourse, Beaugrande and Dressler introduce intertextuality as their seventh standard of textuality. The seventh standard of textuality is to be called intertextuality and concerns the factors which make the utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously encountered texts. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 10

The extent a previous text feeds into the reception and production of a new text is discernable by a process Beaugrande and Dressler refer to as ‘mediation’. More specifically, mediation accounts for the expanse of time and the process activities ‘between the use of the current text and the use of previously



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encountered texts’ (Beaugrande and Dressler 1983: 182). In other words, the extent of mediation mirrors the degree one’s individual knowledge of earlier read texts contributes to the understanding of the text at hand. Accordingly, Beaugrande and Dressler distinguish three different grades of intertextuality: First, intertextuality regarding text types, secondly, text allusion and, thirdly, intertextuality in conversation. Extensive mediation is emergent in intertextuality regarding text types. Pertaining to the systematization of texts, a text type encompasses certain groups of texts that can be characterized and distinguished from other groups of texts by fundamental and repeatable characteristics (see Fix 2008). There are several descriptive standpoints according to which such distinguishing features can be discerned (see Eisenlauer 2009). On a ‘grammatical-structural level’, text types evolve according to their common formal qualities, thereby neglecting the impact of text-external parameters. Conversely, the focus on the ‘situational level’ elaborates on regularities of the communicative situation. Accounting for the text’s socio-cultural and/or institutional embedding, researchers with such an approach commonly reflect upon the text’s spatial-temporal context as well as upon the involved participants. On a ‘semantic level’, recurring sequences of semantic relations can be classified according to distinctive references to the world, as for example in descriptive, narrative or argumentative relation patterns. Finally, on a ‘functional level’ the texts’ communicative purpose can be questioned, thus emphasizing its intentionality as well as its actual contribution to human interaction. However, many text types cannot be distinguished from others from a single theoretical standpoint and thus call for a dynamic interlacing of the diverse descriptive levels. Due to the diverse communicative contexts, a rigorous categorization into text types is unattainable. Still, text types and their prototypical features provide text participants with heuristic access for producing, predicting, and processing textual occurrences. Text allusion highlights the implicit and explicit ways participants refer to well-known texts and/or their specific structural patterns in order to attain their particular communicative goals, e.g. by quoting the contents and/or forms of famous speeches or works of literature. Thereby, the success of an allusion depends highly on the recipients’ ability to recognize it as such. If the text producer omits any further information indicating the allusion as such, recipients are required to know the ‘pretext’ that the author alludes to. In comparison to the intense ‘mediation’ processing text types and their respective prototypical features, mediation dealing with text allusions is much smaller (see Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 182).

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With regard to conversational activities, mediation is extremely slight. As an effect of the specific communicative situation, participants are bound to a limited time-frame when processing and developing contributions. Textual occurrences are selected and developed in order to be relevant to other texts in the same discourse. Further, they may serve to monitor the ongoing discourse, particularly when the previous text violated conversational conventions, such as Grice’s (1975) maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner. As we can see, intertextuality applies to all levels of textual communication. The involved mediation processes may be more or less prominent and encompass relatively specific knowledge, e.g. knowledge about features, form and function of specific text types, as well as rather vague knowledge, e.g. about conversational principles. As such, intertextuality establishes economical means to help avoid discontinuities and disturbances in textual communication. Discussing the concept of intertextuality for hypertexts highlights the dissolving of fixed medial boundaries. Obviously, hypertexts may, just like traditional texts, relate to knowledge about previously encountered (hyper-)texts. It is, however, unresolved where to draw the textual boundaries, or to put it differently, where a hypertext begins and where it ends (see Chapter 2). As a result of their hyperlinked and multilinear organization, it is the user who may decide, where to embark on and where to end her or his individual perusal. As a consequence, a clear-cut distinction between ‘text’ and ‘context’ appears to dissolve: Do we regard hyperlinked nodes within one hypertext database and/or across different hypertext databases as still belonging to the same text? Where should the text boundaries be drawn when nodes are accessed and aligned to each other by the help of a search engine? Gaggi (1997) claims that in mulitlinearly organized texts […] the sense of centrality of certain primary text […] will be weakened. The distinction between text and context will dissolve and intertextuality will cease to be regarded as such because there will be, in fact only one text, one intertext, one hypertext. Gaggi 1997: 103

Users choosing and combining nodes from vast arrays of hypertextual databases experience the individually combined text sequences not as separated, but as electronically interconnected text chunks. As shown, users manipulate a hypertext’s overall structure by clicking hyperlinks, typing in Website addresses or by using search engines. This way, they may combine thematically diverging nodes produced and uploaded by different authors and will experience them as at least structurally interconnected. On the other hand, hypertext producers



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may harness hyperlink technology to illuminate the intertextual nature of their works. In this sense, the quote displayed in Figure 2.9 is not necessarily dependent upon the user’s familiarity with the text it alludes to. If users lack the relevant background knowledge, they may click on the hyperlinked quote, thus accessing information specifying the primary author and context of the quote. The hypertext feature of ‘multimodality’ sheds light on the use of pictorial and/or layout formats as an intertextual entities. Mediation, as the cognitive balancing between the text at hand and previously encountered texts, is by no means limited to the linguistic level. In hypertext, the arrangement and use of pictorial presentation devices, such as layout, colouring, font as well as pictures and films, builds heavily on layout/picture conventions of preceding media. Such implicit or explicit references to earlier media and their distinct use of pictures may support the user’s efficient evaluation of the accessed hypertext nodes. In this sense, the user’s general knowledge about the world as well as her/his experience in dealing with related text types and their distinct layout conventions assist her/him in assessing the individual nodes. The constant obligation of choosing individual trajectories among an infinite array of linked information may result in users getting lost in hyperspace. The holistic reception of the overall text layout of a called-up node may counter such a threat of disorientation. By drawing on individual knowledge about text design conventions of previously encountered

Figure 2.9: Hyperlinked allusion on quotationspage.com

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texts, the user may decide at one glance if the present visual patterns match the text type he or she was looking for. In this sense, looking for a scientific article on the Internet involves/activates certain ideas about distinct layout patterns of this text type, e.g. a continuous text comprising abstract, title, subtitles, quotes and references. Figure 2.10 illustrates two thematically diverging nodes, which can both be accessed when entering the search term ‘Johannes Gutenberg’ into a search engine. Evaluating the layout patterns of the nodes below by drawing on intertextual knowledge about scientific articles, one may instantly recognize the right-hand node as belonging to the scientific text type. In order to specify the manifold structural bonds existing between text production/reception and text layout, I defined elsewhere (Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008) four elemental phases of how new electronic media repurpose – or ‘remediate’ (Bolter and Gruisin 1999) – representational conventions of preceding media and/or text types. These are simulation, improvement, refashioning and incorporation. With regard to ‘simulation’, a new text type, such as an online newspaper, reproduces and repurposes habitual layout patterns of a related text type bound to a preceding media format, such as a printed newspaper. ‘Improvement’ concerns the gradually enhancement of conventional text patterns of a related and previously encountered text type. In terms of the online newspaper, the keyword search functions as well as the use of hyperlinks are an improvement over the print version. The phase of ‘refashioning’ emphasizes the new text type’s improvements over the old further. Here, the difference among the representational conventions is highlighted rather than erased. Nevertheless, the formal logic of the related text type are, at least to some degree, translucent. The phase of ‘incorporation’ is reached when ‘new media begins to incorporate older media entirely into their design resources’ (Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008: 12), as in the case of interactive computer games absorbing familiar cinematic conventions. Thereby, users understand and process new text surface conventions and draw only subconscious parallels to related text types.

Intertextual knowledge of previously encountered hypertexts accounts for the dissolving of fixed text boundaries. The infinite linkage of textual networks suspends a clear-cut distinction between text and context. On the other hand, hypertext producers may harness hyperlink technology to illuminate the intertextual relations of their works. Moreover, multimodal hypertexts embrace diverse representational formats as intertextual entities.



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Figure 2.10: Multimodality and intertextuality

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The theoretical framework of Critical Hypertext Analysis (CHTA) The discussion above introduced the concept of hypertext by disclosing a variety of qualities and criteria that are prototypically assigned to electronically mediated texts. Drawing on established hypertext characteristics and standards of textuality allows us to specify in what sense a present hypertext is motivated and influenced by the technological means that represents and amplifies the communicative contents. In other words, the established (hyper-)text characteristics enable us to access and disclose media-imposed patterns of the presented text material that affect and direct the cognitive practices of hypertext users. Methodologically, the CHTA framework bases the analysis on 13 vital questions that can be deduced from the (hyper-)text features presented and discussed throughout Chapter 2. From the three hypertext qualities, the following questions arise that relate to the gradual conditioning of a present online text by the electronic environment: (1) Ontology Which technological qualities and/or discursive strategies contribute to the perception of the selected online text as virtual and/or real object entity? (2) Seclusion To what degree does the selected online text show characteristics of a static product (cf. set structure and fixed number of links)? Where can we find traces of a dynamic text structure which leave room for the creation of individual paths? (3) Sequencing Where does the structural design of the selected online text indicate monosequential or multi-sequential text orders? While the aforementioned questions relate to rather broad formal and cognitive patterns of hypertextual communication, the four constitutive hypertext features allow for a more narrow analysis reflecting an online text’s medial conditioning. Nevertheless, it must be noted that some of the categories are heavily interrelated: (1) Multilinearity



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In what sense does the selected online text follow a hierarchical structure and thus predetermine the users’ multilinear choices in the sense of a ‘pre-established multlinearity’? In what sense are users free to traverse networked nodes in highly individual ways that correspond to the concept of ‘loose mutlilinearity’? (2) Fragmentation How is the selected online text clustered and dispersed within (intranodal and internodal fragmentation) and/or across hypertext databases (extranodal fragmentation)? (3) Interaction How and to what degree may users engage in the composition of the selected online text, i.e. cognitive, structural and productive interaction? (4) Multimodality Which representational formats (modes) does the online text at hand combine into a meaningful whole? It was shown that traditional (print) media and electronic media have brought forward distinct ideas about prototypical features of text. When applying the above-mentioned questions to a CHTA, we are granted access to the extent a present online text exploits the potential hypertextual qualities and characteristics. Moreover, we get an idea how the electronic medium interrelates with new patterns of semiotic practice (such as clicking hyperlinks). However, such a discussion is only marginally capable of giving information on how an online text functions in human interaction. Therefore, the CHTA framework sets text and hypertext not only in opposition, but also in continuity to each other: The impact of the electronic media emerges not only by emphasizing enhancement over traditional texts, but, moreover, by integrating and discussing identified patterns of traditional text communication practice. In fact, the hypertext model builds heavily on characteristics that have been developed for traditional non-electronic texts. In this sense, the peculiar novelty of hypertext surfaces in the variations of the seven standards of classic textuality (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981). In light of the discussion above, I suggest amending Beaugrande and Dressler’s (1981) seven standards of textuality as indicated by Table 2.8. The ‘seven standards of hypertextuality’ highlight hypertexts as communicative artefacts by interrelating syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels of description. The CHTA framework involves the application of each standard to a discussion of a present online text in order to provide information on

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Table 2.8: Seven standards of hypertextuality Seven standards of hypertextuality Cohesion

Grammatical dependencies (as identified by B&D) apply only partially to cohesion in hypertexts. Moreover, relations among surface elements in hypertexts are indicated by electronic textual ties, commonly known as hyperlinks, within one node (intranodal cohesion), within one hypertextual database (internodal cohesion) or across different hypertextual databases (extranodal cohesion).

Coherence

The formation of a mental model within a hypertextual environment goes hand in hand with the retrieval and arrangement of the text surface. Thus hypertext users must persistently integrate their declarative knowledge with their procedural knowledge about proceeding through hypertext. Intranodal and internodal coherence-building processes are typically based on a common reference frame, while extranodal coherence building encompasses a variety of reference frames, thus suppressing the set-up of shared knowledge systems among authors and readers.

Intentionality In hypertexts, the distinction between ‘intentionality’ and and ‘acceptability’ is no longer relevant: Users deliberately access and Acceptability align hypertextual fragments to individual perusals, while adopting the attitude that the set of textual modules should at least have some relevance or use for them. Further, hypertext automation processes may easily result in unintentionally produced texts. Informativity The extent to which hypertextual artefacts provide new information is heavily bound to online-specific literacy practices. Due to the vast array of information on the Internet, the reception of hypertexts is highly selective and is supported by various software services and applications, such as online portals, search engines or web feed formats. Further, it is conditioned by the fluidity of the electronic texture. Situationality The situationality of hypertexts is marked by the fact that their generation as well as their reception is tied to computer media. ‘Virtual situationality’ regards a hypertext’s algorithmic constitution. ‘Real object situationality’ adheres to the modelling of the world itself and involves socially motivated and individually obtained knowledge of contexts. In fact, virtual situationality informs real object situationality and vice versa. Intertextuality Intertextual knowledge of previously encountered hypertexts accounts for the dissolving of fixed text boundaries. The infinite linkage of textual networks suspends a clear cut distinction between text and context. On the other hand, hypertext producers may harness hyperlink technology to illuminate the intertextual relations of their works. Moreover, multimodal hypertexts embrace diverse representational formats as intertextual entities.



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the media bias when hypertexts combine into a meaningful cohesive and coherent whole. Beyond exposing an online text’s syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties, the analysis is directed at questioning the driving force and authorship of the text material. In order to do this, CHTA shifts the focus from the text material to the electronic environment that surrounds it. More specifically, a CHTA aims at assessing the impact of the electronic environment on the production and processing of a text and asks in what sense a user’s semiotic choices are conditioned, supported and/or carried out altogether by specific functional properties of electronic texts. Accordingly, with reference to the seven standards of hypertextuality, the CHTA model has to answer the following questions: (1) Cohesion How does the electronic environment affect the construction of textual and hypertextual surface relations? (2) Coherence In what ways is the formation of a mental model shaped by the distinct properties of the electronic environment? (3) Intentionality and Acceptability Who is the producing, who is the receiving participant of the text? In what ways are user text actions supported and/or displaced by electronic agents? (4) Informativity In what ways does the electronic environment support/take over the identification and display of new (and recently updated) content? (5) Situationality How does the algorithmic constitution of the electronic environment interrelate with the modelling of a textual world? (6) Intertextuality How does the software service support the indication of text boundaries and/ or intertextual relations? In what ways does the electronic environment draw on knowledge of related environments and/or texts? The framework of CHTA fosters awareness regarding the general intertwining of computer technology and the rise of novel software-affected semiotic

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practices. Though the questions were designed to evaluate how Fb supports and/or affects the creation and reception of texts, my model is well suited to assess the medial impact of various other Social Media environments, such as Twitter, Myspace or YouTube.

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This chapter presents a Critical Hypertext Analysis of the software service Facebook. Applying the conceptual framework and key questions of the CHTA model to a discussion of the SNS Facebook, it provides a synthesis of Chapters 1 and 2. On the basis of the observation that the functional properties of the Fb platform support, restrict and/or take over users’ creative semiotic practices, the following analysis is directed at specifying the interrelations between user text actions and the electronic environment that frames them. On the basis of the concept of hypertext it will be shown how the specific functional properties of the Fb platform condition the semiotic choices of a Fb participant. In the following I will refine the term ‘software service’ and relate it to the SNS Fb. Allowing for basic hypertext characteristics, I will reflect novel creative and analytical acts involved in producing and comprehending Fb discourse. This will be followed by an application of the seven standards of hypertextuality to a discussion of Fb-bound texts and its involved semiotic practices. Finally, I will summarize the most important results and illustrate how potential user choices are inherent in the software service.

Facebook as a software service Before conducting an in-depth investigation of the impact of Fb on the participants’ semiotic choices, there is the need for a terminological clarification of the term ‘software service’ and more or less synonymously used concepts, i.e. ‘electronic platform’, ‘electronic environment’ and ‘web application’.1 In Chapter 1 Note that these terms in computer science refer to related, but very distinct concepts from their counterparts in the humanities and social sciences.

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I identified a ‘software service’ as standing between the medium and the text and as emerging primarily in the situational context that becomes manifest in field, tenor and mode of a distinct text. In addition to SNS, recent software services encompass, among others, WikiWebs, Weblogs, Chats and Message Boards as well as Video and Photo Sharing Platforms. As a characteristic feature, all these software services involve typical temporal embeddings as well as distinct author/recipient configurations, reaching from ‘many-to-many’ in WikiWebs to ‘one-to-one’ in private Chats. Software services can be further categorized in specific service types (or genres) that support particular communicative aims, among them private Weblogs being directed at self-presentation or friendship SNS aiming at exchange among friends. While software services commonly implement a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of default templates that enable users to upload and distribute text data (and other representational formats). Though used more or less synonymously, the term ‘electronic platform’ highlights a software service’s interface that allows users to interact with the service’s individual functional and communicative properties. In a similar vein, ‘electronic environment’ directs the focus towards the spatial and social dimensions of a software service. Software service users are surrounded by a distinct electronic environment that enables them to ‘engage in a process or practice of mediation, of communication, representation, and expression’ (Kitzmann 2004: 21). The term ‘web application’ draws attention to the fact that software services are commonly accessed via the Internet and are hosted in a browser-controlled environment. I define a software service as Website that provides a variety of pre-set templates allowing for the creation and upload of user-generated texts. When following individual communicative aims, users interact with a software service’s electronic platform. As an electronic environment, a software service involves distinct spatial, temporal and social settings. What is most significant about the particular (functional) design of a software service is how it affects a user’s creative and analytical text practices when handling the platform. Related to this, the adaption of the CHTA model to a discussion of Fb will distinguish interrelations between the software service’s functional and communicative properties and a user’s limitations and possibilities for text creation and reception.



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Approaching Facebook from a hypertext model The questions developed in Chapter 2 provide us with heuristic access to Fb’s hypertextual qualities and let us reflect on Fb-specific semiotic practices. In this sense, the perception of Fb as hypertext exposes the extent to which the software service draws on computer media and specific text processing practices. Likewise, we obtain information on whether and how the properties of Fb’s electronic platform refrain from indulging in the possibilities of hypertextual media. In fact, Fb’s strategic deployment of hypertextual characteristics is heavily interlinked with distinct creative and/or analytical practices of Fb users. The following conclusions apply the key questions of the CHTA framework to Fb in order to approach the perception of Fb as a hypertext. Ontology Which technological qualities and/or discursive strategies contribute to the perception of Facebook as virtual and/or real object entity?

A reflection on Fb’s ontological qualities emphasizes how recent Personal Publishing techniques as well as the authentic presentation of real life personas blur Fb’s binary constitution, or the concept of ‘Fb as a virtual entity’. As a particular feature of Personal Publishing techniques, text data can be created and uploaded with just a few mouse clicks. Technical knowledge (such as HTML, xml or any other code) has become unnecessary for filling in and uploading the provided Fb templates. Such open and simplified access facilitates the distortion of ‘Fb as virtual entity’. Moreover, the pre-set and categorized profile templates of the software service encompass important issues regarding social life (i.e. personal details and friends). Such authentic presentations of real life personas promote the transformation of ‘abstract binary codes’ into highly relevant mechanisms for documenting and maintaining social relations. In addition, the user’s communicative experience with related off- and online genres and/or software services contributes to the perception of ‘Fb as a real object’. More specifically, Fb users may draw on their knowledge of text genres (or service types) that serve a similar purpose as well as on their experience with software services that involve similar operations. Examples for functionally related off- and online genres include the poetry album/friendship book which aim at documenting and or maintaining social relations, as well as the personal Website and private Weblog, which aim at users’ self-presentation (see Eisenlauer 2011). Weblog and WikiWeb are, among others, software services that involve similar operations:

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Both web applications are based on pre-set templates that trigger user-generated texts. Moreover, most Weblogs involve the display of posts in a reverse chronological order and offer a comment function, just as the software service Fb does. It follows that Internet acquainted Fb ‘newbies’ experience various formal and functional properties of Fb as more or less familiar and operate the platform more or less intuitively. In the smooth flow of communication, most users will not reflect on the underlying binary code of their individual text actions. In summary, Fb’s Personal Publishing techniques and the intuitive design of its platform that rests upon complex intertextual relations as well as the presented content that concerns important issues of social life promote the perception of Fb as a ‘real object entity’. Awareness of Fb as a virtual object is developed in situations of defective or insufficient transmission, such as the erroneous display of profiles or pictures. Seclusion To what degree does Fb show characteristics of a static product (cf. set structure and fixed number of links)? Where can we find traces of a dynamic text structure which leave room for the creation of individual paths?

Fb’s degree of seclusion can be subsumed in the following ways: The online network exhibits many features assigned to open hypertexts that involve the creation and reception of highly dynamic and infinite texts. Entries presented on someone’s Fb Home Page and/or Personal Profile are virtually infinite. They evolve from their own and/or befriended member’s network actions and can be changed, enhanced or deleted at anytime. The individual reading paths and presented contents within the Fb network increase directly with a member’s own network activity as well as with the quantity and individual network activity of her/his Fb friends. On the other hand, the software service exhibits features that were assigned to closed hypertexts: Fb’s structure (i.e. the division between Home Page and Personal Profile) as well as its core features, such as News Feed, Messages, Photos and Friends, are, to a large extent, pre-set, and thus guide and impair the creative and analytical acts involved in producing and comprehending Fb discourse. Taken together, the individual content that comprises a Fb profile displays strong characteristics of open and more or less infinite hypertext, whereas the layout, structure and communicative properties of the software service itself show characteristics of closed hypertexts.



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Sequencing Where does the structural design of Facebook give indications of mono-sequential or multi-sequential text orders?

In terms of sequencing, we typically come across various multiple reading paths that result from the pre-given structure of the online environment. The identified structural features of the Personal Profile and the Home Page (see Chapter 1) facilitate and constrain the users’ multilinear options when creating or analyzing Fb-bound texts more or less extensively. The navigational devices mirror the relative static structuring of the software service. Profile data as well as the Home Page entail fixed core features that involve distinct multilinear reading paths, i.e. Wall, Info and Photos layers within the Personal Profile, the News Feed, Messages and Events links within the Home Page. On the other hand, some of these features can be enhanced individually to reflect the specific interests of the profile owner. Figure 3.1 illustrates the index of a Facebook member’s photo albums and demonstrates the impact of pre-established multilinearity on the users’ text processing practices. When Fb participants view the photos, they may browse through these albums by selecting multiple pre-defined paths; they may begin with the album

Figure 3.1: Pre-established multilinearity within a Fb photo album

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‘Bday weekend’ (1) just as with the album ‘Berlin Beauties and Ravishing Rome’ (2). Alternatively, they may embark on viewing the profile owner’s photo comments (3) or browse through other photo albums by clicking the next button (4). Though Fb members have certain options concerning the arrangement and labelling of photos and albums, the individual display and implementation into their profiles is largely pre-set by the properties of the platform. When creating texts and other data within Fb, users cannot help but integrate their contents into the pre-set multi-sequential structure of the software service. The automatic integration of user-generated texts with other network nodes impairs mono-sequential text orders.

The four constitutive hypertext features approach the concept of hypertext from a more narrow and stucturalistic view. The application of the criteria of ‘multilinearity’, ‘fragmentation’, ‘interaction’ and ‘multimodality’ to Fb exposes the software service as a more or less prototypical hypertext. Multilinearity In what sense does the software service Facebook follow a hierarchical structure and thus predetermine the users’ multilinear choices in the sense of a ‘pre-established multlinearity’? In what sense are users free to traverse networked nodes in highly individual ways that correspond to the concept of ‘loose mutlilinearity’?

From the profile owner’s point of view, template-based text generation techniques interlace personal data into the more or less static and pre-set design of the platform. Though profile owners have various possibilities to customize their profiles individually, they are, all the same, bound to the pre-given structural options of the online environment. Contrary to a person’s general conception of her/his individuality that encompasses rather subtle and complex notions about the self, the software service’s subject-based templates, as well as its pre-established multilinear structure, restrict members’ options for self-presentation. Moreover, the software’s pre-set design results in a more or less enforced sign- and structurerelated uniformity among participants. On the other hand, Fb participants may experience the platform’s multilinear and multimodal design as comprehensive prospects for self-presentation that do not necessarily conflict with their self images. Being offered a set of structural and modal options for sign-related self-presentation to choose from, Fb participants may neglect to question how this delimits their discursive possibilities for self-presentation. This is in line



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with Postman’s (1992) claim that users who indulge in media communications are encouraged to disregard the ideas embedded in such technologies. Moreover, when embedding external hyperlinks, Fb participants may overcome the platform’s structural constraints. From the profile recipient’s point of view, the software service’s pre-established multilinearity opens up many options to experience other members’ profile data. When browsing through a network of befriended members’ profiles, he or she will not come across a pre-conceived, causal and temporal ordering of these ‘online identities’. They are free to select from a pre-established multilinear set of modules containing personal details of the profile owner. Moreover, Fb members can add comments to the message board, upload their own data, generate new links by using the search engine or create individual path sequences that lead beyond the Fb environment (i.e. external hyperlinks). The software service Fb relies on subject-based templates that result in a more or less fixed hierarchical structure. The latter enable and restrict the Fb participants’ semiotic choices (sign and structure-related) when presenting themselves and/ or connecting to other members. In light of the various structural and modal options offered by the software service, participants are likely to lose sight of how the software service delimits their discursive possibilities. Fragmentation In what ways is the the software service Facebook clustered and dispersed within (intranodal and internodal fragmentation) and/or across hypertext databases (extranodal fragmentation)?

Fb stands out through ‘intranodal text fragmentation’ in the form of different text clusters that build a Personal Profile and/or Home Page. In this sense, the various layers of a Personal Profile (cf. Wall, Info and Photos layers) and/or the core features of a Home Page (cf. News Feed, Messages, Events, Photos, Friends) comprise single and independent text units. Each text unit is accessible within the superordinated node (here the Home Page or Personal Profile). On the other hand, their successive arrangement as well as the reading conventions of Western cultures suggest a continuous reading to the user: From left to right and top to bottom. ‘Internodal fragmentation’ applies to the total sum of nodes forming the Fb environment: This involves inter alia nodes, such as member profiles, group sites and/or games and applications. As a unique feature, the production of texts within Fb always involves intranodal and internodal

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fragmentation simultaneously: Any text action a user performs is automatically reported on her/his profile Wall and at the same time spread throughout her/ his personal network via the News Feed stream. Embedded external hyperlinks connect Fb nodes with nodes that are stored outside the SNS network. Such text arrangements across different networks or databases can be referred to as ‘extranodal fragmentation’. In fact, integrated external hyperlinks commonly display reduced-sized images and contents of the target node. Figure 3.2 illustrates a profile Wall entry consisting of an external hyperlink that gives a snippet of the specific target node, a Website on a band that plays electronic music. Moreover, contents taken from diverse video-sharing platforms (such as vimeo or YouTube) may be integrated directly in the Fb environment. Figure 3.3 displays a video that was embedded in an individual member’s profile Wall, although it is stored on the external platform ‘vimeo’. In fact, besides viewing the video within the Fb environment, members may integrate it into their network actions, such as writing comments or pressing the Like Button. Outside the Fb environment, members may also evaluate, comment and share any site across the Web by employing Fb’s so-called ‘social plugins’. Figure 3.4 illustrates the Fb external site raphkoster.com that includes a Fb Like Button.

Figure 3.2: Embedded external hyperlink



A Critical Hypertext Analysis of the Software Service Facebook

Figure 3.3: Embedded external video file

Figure 3.4: Like Button plugin outside the Facebook environment

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Having pressed the Like Button on the Website raphkoster.com, members initiate diverse automatic text generation processes within their Fb networks: An entry reporting their evaluation of a Website is automatically generated and added to their recent profile activities (1). Moreover, the entry is automatically linked to the respective post on the page raphkoster.com (2). Above that, the ‘story’ is shared among the individual friends’ networks via the News Feed stream (3). Such a merging of Fb discourse with external content transcends the fragmentation resulting from different data storage locations. From an ontological perspective, these texts are still separated, as they are stored on different servers. From the perspective of the user, however, they are interpreted as cohesive and coherent profile components. It follows that contents from external Websites are contextualized as illocutions serving self-presentation and/or friendship maintenance. The members’ perception of extranodal fragmentation can thus be reduced. In fact, Personal Profiles tend to incorporate all kinds of external data and thus transform into personalized windows to the vast and heterogenic contents of the Internet. A news story or Website that was selected and shared by a befriended member is more likely to get passed-on than equivalent content that was listed by anonymous and algorithmic search engines, such as Google (see also Cranston and Davies 2009). The software service Fb displays high degrees of fragmentation: Intranodal fragmentation applies to the presentation of individual subjects, such as member profiles, group sites or Home Pages. Internodal fragmentation concerns the single nodes building the Fb environment. By integrating external contents and hyperlinked thumbnails into the Fb environment, the users’ perception of extranodal fragmentation (relating to data dispersed across different servers) can be reduced. Interaction How and to what degree may users engage in the composition of Fb-bound texts, i.e. cognitive, structural and productive interaction?

Within Fb, members are interactively engaged in the creation and reception of Personal Profiles and other Fb-bound texts, i.e. Home Pages, group sites or Fb games. More precisely, such an interactive engagement with Fb-bound texts encompasses the individual (re-)combination of textual fragments (structural interactivity) as well as the cognitive processing thereof (cognitive interaction).



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Text templates as well as automatic text generation trigger the productive interaction of members. Taking a closer look at the employed encoding practices highlights the involved ‘physical acts’ of such a multi-layered interaction: By pressing certain hyperlinks, such as the Like Button or the Add Friend Button, members may perform all kinds of speech acts, while delegating the individual semiotic choice of their locutionary acts to an abstract algorithm. Within the Fb environment the physical act of ‘clicking’ that was for years connected with more receptive practices of perusing hypertexts, has transformed into a performative act. It follows that Fb’s automatic text actions further the liaison between hypertext author and reader and contribute to the blurring of productive and receptive semiotic practices. Within Fb, ‘clicking links’ may rearrange textual nodes to individual perusals and, moreover, the same physical practice may perform speech acts, such as a friend request or evaluations of other members’ texts. Figure 3.5 illustrates a case of productive interaction that is generated by means of a simple click on a hyperlink: The dummy member Kurt Schwartz expressed his positive stance towards the study course ‘Ethik der Textkulturen’ by simply clicking the Like Button below the course entry. This resulted in the automatic generation and dispersion of the proposition ‘Kurt Schwartz likes Ethik der Textkulturen’ among his Fb network. When discussing productive interactivity for the Fb environment, we therefore need to ask to what degree users were actually involved in the generation of text content. As in other hypertexts, Fb users interact with the electronic platform on cognitive, structural and productive levels in order to create and/or peruse Fbbound texts. As a unique feature of the software service’s functional properties, participants may engage in the generation of text content (productive interaction) by simply pressing hyperlinks and thus performing some sort of automated text action (such as adding friends, evaluating other members’ texts or confirming invitations).

Figure 3.5: Productive interaction by operating the Like Button

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Which representational formats (modes) does Facebook combine into a meaningful whole?

The Fb environment offers many possibilities for composing multimodal texts: A variety of templates facilitate the integration of all kinds of representational formats, such as picture, audio or video files. When registering as a Fb member, users are prompted to upload a picture in an ID photo format. By default, the pre-set profile templates ask new members to create a photo album. Furthermore, members have various opportunities to integrate video and audio files, either by embedding multimodal content that is stored on external servers (such as YouTube films) or by uploading and distributing their own data. As a particular virtue of the Fb environment, allocated multimodal content is absorbed and distributed by the News Feed stream and can be commented on and evaluated by other members. Fb enables members to employ all kinds of representational formats, i.e. text, audio, image and video data. The members’ multimodal acts can be divided into two types: Genuine multimodal acts apply to the upload and distribution of one’s own data (such as photos or videos), remixed multimodal acts apply to the pasting of already available data (as in the integration of a YouTube video).

Approaching Facebook from a traditional text model The discussion of prototypical hypertext characteristics disclosed Fb as a virtual environment that gradually builds on CMC-specific semiotic practices, but could not sufficiently account for the more narrow processes that combine disjunctive Fb entities into meaningful, cohesive and coherent wholes. The application of the seven standards of (hyper-)textuality helps to specify how the properties of the software service promote the evolution of formal-structural (cohesion and coherence) and communicative patterns (intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality) within user-generated texts. Cohesion How does the software service Facebook affect the construction of textual and hypertextual surface relations?



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In order to exemplify the interrelation between the properties of the software service and the surface connections of Fb discourse, I will turn back to the dummy profile of Kurt Schwartz that emerged from my showcase Facebook subscription. The medial bias of cohesion within Fb can be illustrated by discussing linguistic and visual surface relations that were provided and generated by the software service and its underlying algorithms. Having a closer look at the software-induced textual surface relations in Figure 3.6, we find a variety of software-generated texts that are automatically interconnected to preceding and following entries. A specification of the pre-set and automatic surface connections illustrated in Figure 3.6 is presented in Table 3.1, where I adapted traditional cohesive devices to an analysis of Kurt Schwartz’ profile. Note that none of these propositions were typed in and/or uploaded by the profile owner and that the creation of a large variety of text surface relations was handed over to the distinct functional properties of the software service. In summary, the discussion attributes the outsourcing of traditional cohesive acts generating grammatical and lexical surface relations. Kurt Schwartz’ creative acts of producing and uploading texts are bound to the completion of text templates, whose particular qualities result in the consistent display and

Figure 3.6: Software-induced cohesion within Personal Profile data

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Table 3.1: Analysis of software-induced traditional cohesion Traditional cohesive devices Recurrence:   straightforward repetition of symbols (i.e. heart, pencil, figure) signifying surface relations among classes of displayed activities.   direct repetition of lexical elements (i.e. Kurt, Kurt Schwartz, friends, relationship, married, etc.). Parallelism:   reuse of layout patterns, while filling them with different content: consistent use of font colour and size, consistent alignment of text boxes, uniform arrangement of activity entries and comments.   sequences of similar, though not identical, actions are expressed in parallel clauses:      Subject + Verb + Object      (Ind. Det. + Adj. + Noun)     Kurt added a new job.     Kurt has a new address.    Subject + Verb +Adverb + Subject Complement   (Copular) (Temporal)    Kurt and Volker Eisenlauer are now friends.    Kurt and Sonja Sydow are now friends.    Subject + Verb + Object    (Poss. Det. + Complex Noun)    Kurt edited his relationship status.    Kurt changed his Interests. Paraphrase:    Repeated content while conveying it with different expressions     On a linguistic plane:     friends → people you may know.     employer: + entry → job.     On a multimodal plane:     Kurt Schwartz → picture in an ID photo format. Pro-forms:    Co-referring anaphora with a possessive determiner     Kurt changed his interests.      Kurt edited his Work Info.



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   Co-referring anaphora with a personal pronoun     Kurt changed his phone number to +491713214567. It has been added to your Phonebook. Tense:    Surface relations in terms of the organization of time in the textual world     Present tense     Kurt and Volker Eisenlauer are now friends.     Kurt is in an open relationship.     Kurt has a new address.     Past tense     Kurt changed his interests.     Kurt edited his Work Info.     Kurt added a new job. Junction:    Logical relations among Kurt’s Fb actions are indicated by conjunctions:      Kurt edited his Work Info, Interests and Activities.

uniform arrangement of his data. Automatically generated clauses establish surface relations through a parallel structure, the repetition of content and many other software-induced cohesive devices, such as paraphrases, pro-forms and tense. Though Kurt has theoretically the option to adjust individual profile categories and create individual text entries, the formation of surface relationship within and beyond his Profile/Home Page is conditioned by programmed text generation and alignment processes. A discussion of characteristic hypertext cohesive devices emphasizes various kinds of hyperlinks connecting nodes within (intranodal and internodal cohesion) or beyond (extranodal cohesion) the Fb environment. Pre-set hyperlinks organize the structure of the Fb environment and establish electronic surface connections among Fb nodes (e.g. between the Home Page and the Personal Profile) and profile layers (e.g. between the layers, Wall, Info and Photos). Moreover, members have various opportunities to incorporate individual links into their profiles and messages. Figure 3.7 illustrates two common examples of how users may include hyperlinks to their profiles. The upper image shows a text template that is specially designed for the upload, presentation and dispersion of external hyperlinks. After having typed in the URL of the Website to be linked, a member may attach individual thumbnails presenting an overview of the individual contents, thus reducing

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Figure 3.7: Software-induced hypertextual cohesion

extranodal fragmentation. The lower image illustrates how Fb members may establish surface connections between a section of an uploaded photo and a profile of a befriended Fb member. Again, there is no need for expert knowledge of programming languages to generate the hyperlink. In both cases the individual design of the templates supports the user in her/his creative acts of establishing structural relationships within the Fb environment. In the illustrated examples, the labour of establishing surface connections across and beyond profiles is still in the Fb member’s hands, though she/he is supported by the individual properties of the respective Fb templates. In contrast, Fb’s automatic text generation processes involve the creation of surface connections by design. Frequently, software-induced cohesive devices emerge as a side effect of a user’s more general performances within or beyond the Fb environment: As illustrated in Figure 3.8, the action of posting a comment on a befriended member’s profile (1) involves the automatic generation and dispersion of surface connections that highlight and link the proposition to its author and the recipient, here Kurt Schwartz and Sonja S (2), as well as to the node where the comment was posted, see link to Sonja S’s profile Wall (3). My discussion of surface connections within the Fb environment highlights the impact of the software service on the creation of traditional and hypertextual



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Figure 3.8: Automatic generation of hypertextual surface connections

devices that hold a text together. While the authoring of traditional cohesive devices is frequently outsourced to programmed text generation processes, the generation and incorporation of hyperlinks is either supported or accomplished altogether by the software service and its fundamental algorithms. Moreover, consistent visual layout patterns of the software service promote the structural alignment of various fragmented entities into a cohesive whole. As a result, we can establish that the labour of creating traditional and hypertextual surface relations within the Fb environment is, in large part, taken out of the users’ hands and transferred/delegated to the distinct functions and properties of the software service. Coherence In what ways is the formation of a mental model shaped by the distinct properties of Facebook’s electronic environment?

In consideration of the introduced categories of text coherence, the discussion of Fb’s impact on the formation of a mental model has to allow for a variety of subsequent questions: Which concepts are activated when confronted with Fb discourse? In what sense does the Fb platform with its pre-designed templates

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condition the activation of certain knowledge structures, while suppressing others? How does Fb-specific procedural knowledge about producing, retrieving and arranging texts interrelate with declarative knowledge, i.e. facts or beliefs that are activated when creating and/or processing Status Updates, comments, profile information, etc.? In what way does the development of shared knowledge systems among authors (members) and readers (befriended members) resort to text relations within (intranodal/internodal) and/or beyond (extranodal) the Fb environment? Asking for the concepts that underlie Fb’s surface texts emphasizes the wide variety of divergent topics that are discussed within the electronic environment. When Fb members perform and/or process text actions, such as providing personal information, adding friends, commenting on befriended members’ entries, uploading photos, the development of a textual world, as a cognitive category, calls up miscellaneous and highly individual knowledge configurations. However, accounting for Fb as a ‘friendship SNS’ (see Chapter 1) identifies distinct concepts as crucial cognitive categories for Fb discourse: (1) object concepts, such as ‘friend’, ‘buddy’ or ‘acquaintance’ (2) situation concepts, relating object concepts, such as ‘friend’, ‘buddy’ or ‘acquaintance’ in a particular way to each other (3) action concepts, such as ‘meeting’, ‘gathering’, ‘hanging out’ or ‘chatting’ with ‘friends’, ‘buddies’ or ‘acquaintances’ (4) event concepts, such as ‘meeting with a group of friends’ and ‘having a reunion with an old acquaintance’. Fb’s sets of defined templates elicit specific user information and draw on patterns of semantic knowledge (or frames) that contain commonsense knowledge about the central concepts of ‘friendship’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘social ties’. Most obviously, the software service designates established network connections as ‘friends’ and displays a member’s total number of friends in the lower left section of the profile. By default, automatically generated texts refer to the inquiry of connecting profiles within Fb as ‘friend requests’. Likewise, the action of establishing (and documenting) contacts is reported as ‘member A and member B are now friends’ on a member’s profile Wall, while being dispersed via the News Feed stream. Moreover, Fb applications such as ‘My Top Friends’ allow members to label chosen network contacts as ‘top friends’. As we can see, Fb exhibits various lexical entities that activate patterns of semantic knowledge that interrelate with friendship. However, nothing has been said yet about the attributes assigned to ‘friendship’ as a cognitive category. Bubel (2006) promotes the notion of friendship as a



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prototype concept, i.e. as a fuzzy set. More specifically, the author lists a set of friendship attributes in Western society that are typically, but not inevitably, present in a friendship, among them ‘equality’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘intimacy’, ‘trust’, ‘being oneself ’ and ‘voluntary interdependence’. In this sense, ‘the presence or absence of these attributes is continually negotiated in friends’ interactions’ (Bubel 2006: 31). She specifies, therefore, the concept of friendship as a process that is continuously mediated between the friends’ positive and negative face wants (Brown and Levinson 1987), such as connection vs. autonomy or openness vs. closedness. Accordingly, Bubel (2006) defines friendship as ‘a dialectic process of calibrating an appropriate balance between association and dissociation’ (2006: 31) and emphasizes that all friendship ties are in a constant state of flux. Similar to Bubel (2006), Svennevig (1999) cites ‘solidarity’ and ‘familiarity’ as vital dimensions of social distance (and/or relatedness), but points also to ‘affect’ as another crucial dimension. In his view, these three dimensions are closely interrelated: An increase in solidarity concerning the mutual rights and obligations will lead to an increase in familiarity (regarding the degree of mutual knowledge of personal information) as well as in affect (i.e. mutual liking). Obviously, different interpersonal relationships involve different degrees of solidarity, familiarity and affect. Moreover, people tend to ‘develop working models of their relationships that function as cognitive maps to help them navigate their social world’ (Baldwin 1992: 462). In this sense, repeated interpersonal experiences are generalized in order to develop interactional scripts that include images of self and other. Turning back to a discussion of the concept of friendship within Fb highlights the software service as a platform for negotiating friendship. Various formalstructural and functional properties of the software environment embrace the aforementioned understanding of friendship as a process involving a variety of dimensions. Evidently, the fluidity of the electronic texture allows for frequent updates of personal information while providing various means for communication among friends (cf. Status Updates, personal messages, Wall posts, comments, automatic text actions, etc.). Just as ties of friendship, Personal Profiles and their documented social relations are in a constant state of flux. An application of Svennevig’s (1999) model to the Fb environment highlights the impact of Fb’s pre-designed templates on the activation of certain friendship-related knowledge structures: When setting up a Personal Profile, members are prompted to complete various templates with general as well as more personal questions, such as date of birth and hobbies as well as status of relationship and sexual orientation. If the privacy settings are not applied, any disclosed data is accessible to everyone in someone’s

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personal Fb network, thus promoting the ‘familiarity’ among members, i.e. the degree of mutual knowledge of personal information. Without the need to connect personally to someone’s friends, within Fb, members may learn rather intimate details about other members and, moreover, get automatically updated about changes in the private lives of network friends. In this sense, Figure 3.9 displays a News Feed stream entry and its evoked comments reporting the change of a particular member’s relationship status. In order to inform her Fb friends about being in a relationship, all the profile owner had to do was change her Fb profile settings. As a result, the software service and its underlying algorithms generated the text ‘Ulli E is in a relationship’ and dispersed it among Ulli E’s personal network. Depending on individual feeling towards her, the Facebook member’s text action may have different impacts on the recipients’ ‘affect dimension’ and its corresponding knowledge structures. Befriended members may express their emotional stance towards Ulli E’s entry by either composing an individual comment or by simply pressing the Like Button. In close relation to ‘familiarity’ and ‘affect’ stand the mutual rights and obligations among Fb members or in Svennevig’s (1999) terms the ‘solidarity’ among members. Depending on their individual privacy settings, connected Fb members are entitled to access and/or comment on each others profiles (‘rights’). ‘Obligations’ arise from the individual text actions of befriended members and concern, among other things, the response to friend requests, Wall posts and Status Updates. In fact, the software system exhibits various features that not only inform about other members, but may imply an

Figure 3.9: Increase of familiarity among members via the News Feed stream



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obligation to engage with Fb friends, such as notifications about befriended members’ birthdays, their requests and events or their general network activities, see below. Depending on the individual dimension of affect to each other, a notification of a Fb’ friends birthday not only informs a user about her/his friend’s special day, but may likewise prompt her/him to send birthday wishes. Likewise, a notification about a befriended member having ‘liked’ or commented on one’s own text action may trigger a response to her/his comments, while an overview of all kinds of requests is likely to elicit some kinds of reaction. Concerning the knowledge categories of declarative and procedural knowledge, I have shown that within hypertextual environments, the formation of a mental model goes hand in hand with the retrieval and arrangement of the text surface, i.e. that users’ declarative knowledge patterns are persistently integrated with their procedural knowledge of proceeding through hypertext. Accordingly, within Fb, members’ activated knowledge joins their know-how in handling the electronic environment. Facebook operations that draw on procedural knowledge (for example when clicking the Like Button) may easily lead to software-generated texts which are directed at the participants’ declarative knowledge domains. Acknowledging Fb’s multilinear structure, the set-up of shared knowledge systems encompasses intranodal, internodal and extranodal coherence-building processes. By integrating extranodally stored content into the software environment (e.g. by incorporating YouTube videos or other external storage sites), Fb members may activate a variety of reference frames that depend on the individual subjects. As opposed to the general concept of hypertext, where extranodal coherence suppresses the set-up of shared knowledge systems (see Bublitz 2005), extranodal content in Fb is displayed as if belonging originally to the Personal Profile (see also ‘fragmentation’). Hence, incorporated contents from external Websites – just

Figure: 3.10: Obligations arising through Facebook’s notification displays

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as any other text within the Fb environment – rely on the common global reference frames of self-presentation and/or friendship. The above-mentioned discussion of coherence has revealed that the formation of a mental model of Fb discourse is based on, among other knowledge structures, the cognitive concept of ‘friendship as process’. Its attributes are mirrored and likewise conditioned by various formal, structural and functional properties of the software environment, such as pre-set templates and software-generated texts. When processing Fb discourse, members need to integrate activated factual knowledge with their know-how in handling the electronic environment. Extranodal coherence-building processes draw on the same global reference frames as intranodal and internodal coherence-building processes, i.e. selfpresentation and friendship.

Intentionality and Acceptabilty Who is the producing, who is the receiving participant of Facebook-bound texts? In what ways are user text actions supported and/or displaced by electronic agents?

Within Fb, members peruse befriended members profiles, Status Updates, photos and other data in multilinear and highly individual ways and thus easily change into author-readers or users. Moreover, with the help of the software service’s various kinds of templates, users may create, upload and disperse more or less personal data. Thereby, the semiotic choice of these texts is not inevitably accomplished by the users themselves. In line with Postman’s (1992) notion of an ‘agentic shift’ that accounts for ‘the process whereby humans transfer the responsibility for an outcome of themselves to a more abstract agent’ (Postman 1992: 114), Fb users gradually relinquish control to the software when initiating the creation and/or dispersion of software-generated texts, such as ‘member A likes this’ or ‘member A and member B are now friends’. In fact, such automatic text actions not only elevate Fb text recipients to productive authors, but are, at the same time, instrumental in fulfilling the user’s individual intentions. From the perspective of speech act theory, ‘initiating automatic text actions’ can be described in the following way: First, Fb members let go of their locutionary act to varying degrees. In some cases, such as commenting on a profile Wall entry, the locutionary act is still performed by a distinct user within a distinct virtual environment. Due to Fb’s standardized automation properties, the propositions are, by default, replicated and re-contextualized in new virtual



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environments, such as the News Feed streams of befriended Fb members’ Home Pages (see also ‘Secondary Text Actions’ in Chapter 4). In other cases, such as pressing the Like or the Add Friend Button, Fb is largely in control of the locutionary act, as users delegate the discursive choice and the presentation of the text to the platform’s text automation processes. Likewise, the illocutionary act of Fb-bound text actions is gradually biased by the electronic environment. In this sense, individually performed actions, such as ‘confirming a friendship request’ or ‘liking other members’ comments’, result in the generation of texts that are automatically linked to individual Fb profiles. However, such an ‘automatic linking’ may transcend the ‘primary illocutionary act’ performed by the human agent, who pressed, for example, the Confirm Button in response to a friendship request simply to establish a new Fb connection. At the same time, the software-generated texts and hyperlinks ‘perform’ a directive speech inviting befriended members to check out the respective profiles (see Figure 3.11). As a consequence of software-biased text generation within Fb, text producers gradually release control over the perlocution: In this sense, non-Fb-savvy members might, for example, perceive a standardized friendship request as rather impersonal. Likewise, changing the relationship status of one’s profile details might have been simply directed at keeping one’s details up to date,

Figure 3.11: Software-biased illocutionary acts of a friendship confirmation

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while the thereby involved software-generated text within befriended members’ News Feed streams will most likely evoke all sorts of feelings among the text recipients. The great ease with which software-generated texts are set off, as well as the default semi-public character of the propositions, complicate the control over the effects of Fb-bound texts. In fact, these characteristics may easily result in the non-intentional production of utterances that evoke certain reactions on the recipients’ side (for further insights concerning the application of speech act theory to Fb, see Chapter 4). Due to the multilinear persusal as well as to automatically generated and dispersed texts, the distinction between intentionality on the production side and acceptability on the reception side dissolves. As a result of automatic text generation/dispersion processes, Fb-bound text actions experience an ‘agentic shift’. Such an agentic shift supports users in or relieves users of the locutionary acts and has, at the same time, great impact on the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Informativity In what ways does the software service Facebook support/take over the identification and display of new (and recently updated) content?

Within Fb new information evolves as a result of the members’ individual hypertextual practices, such as accessing befriended members profile data or searching for new Fb contacts. By default, the News Feed stream supports the identification of novel content and updates a particular member on the network activities of befriended members. Moreover, the electronic platform places an assortment of texts in the foreground, which entail new and relevant information for the profile owner (see Figure 3.12). Reflecting the kind of information Fb members disclose, we can divide it into ‘first hand-’ and ‘second hand user information’, which both contribute to the creation and presentation of a member’s self in the SNS environment. ‘First hand user information’ results from text actions that were authored, animated and performed by Fb participants and encompass, among others, filling in the profile templates, writing Status Updates and posting Wall entries and comments. ‘Second hand user information’ emerges from the software’s automation processes that support, replicate or take over the creative semiotic practices of the user: In re-contextualized text actions, it is still the Fb participant who is responsible for the individual wording of the text, though the



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Figure 3.12: Automatically forgrounded information

individual propositions are automatically pasted into new virtual environments. In automatic text actions, the Fb member merely initiates the software-based generation of texts. Thereby, the semiotic choice, as well as the display and dispersion of the individual proposition, is accomplished by the underlying algorithms of the software. Figure 3.13 presents an analysis of Kurt Schwartz’

Figure 3.13: First and secondhand user information within a Personal Profile

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profile in terms of the introduced binary distinction in ‘first’ and ‘second hand user information’. Here, first hand user information encompasses a profile picture, a Wall entry and a comment as well as personal details. Though supported by pre-given templates, all information was generated and uploaded primarily by the profile owner and/or his Fb friends. In contrast, secondhand user information evolved as a side effect of the profile owner’s text actions within and outside the Fb environment. Though these entries entail information on his activities, likes and Fb-related semiotic practices, the profile owner (Kurt Schwartz) is not responsible for the individual wording of these texts. In summary, the extent to which presented text materials within Fb are new and relevant for individual users varies according to their individual semiotic practices and world knowledge/beliefs. At the same time, it is due to various automation processes that detect recently updated content by design, aggregate text from many different profiles into a member’s individual News Feed stream and highlight particularly relevant information. Regarding the kind of information, we can divide it into ‘first hand’ and ‘second hand user information’, with the former referring to data created and uploaded by the user and the latter relating to automatically generated data on the user. Situationality How does the algorithmic constitution of the software service Facebook interrelate with the modelling of a textual world?

When Fb members harness the functional properties of the software service to present themselves and connect with their Fb friends, they constantly integrate ‘virtual situationality’ with ‘real object situationality’ As such, Wall entries, Comments, Status Updates and other Fb-related texts can be accessed individually by Fb members and are thus constantly put in novel situational contexts. Moreover, the fluidity of texts imposed by Fb’s text automation properties and emerging from its virtual situationality results in a highly dynamic real object situationality. In other words, Fb members interpret and situate texts within contexts of utterances, schemes and frames provided by constantly changing ‘virtual environments’ within or outside Fb. However, at the same time, the cognitive modelling of Fb is due to the situational embedding of the ‘physical environment’ in which Fb-related literacy practices are taking place. The following quote will help to shed light on the complex situational contexts of



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Fb discourse. On a bulletin board discussion of whether using Facebook has negative effects on school grades, a user posted the following entry. For me, I use Facebook while I do homework, surf the Web, watch TV, and listen to music. I also access Facebook from my phone when I’m bored and I don’t see how using this and multitasking could be for people who generally have lower GPAs [Grade Point Average ].2

Taking a closer look, we come across co-occurring actions taking place in the physical environment, such as listening to music, as well as co-occurring actions performed in a virtual environment, such as surfing the Web.3 Both environments constitute the situationality of Fb and affect, to varying degrees, its form and content. Accordingly, the examples below entail information about both situational contexts, i.e. the physical environment in which the text was being produced and the virtual environment in which the text is presented. As shown in Figure 3.14, Elisabeth G’s entry ‘lazy sunday in Budapest’ refers to her physical environment; more precisely it specifies her current physical spatio-temporal situation. In contrast, the software-generated text ‘Ulli E was tagged in an album’ refers to the virtual situation of her profile data, i.e. a photo album of a befriended Fb member. However, virtual environments may also intermingle as a result of the Fb members’ individual performances (see Figure 3.15). We can see here the illustration of a post or so-called ‘tweet’ that was originally written for the microblogging service Twitter and entails information on how to save time in the physical environment. As a result of the user having connected his Fb profile with his Twitter account, his texts generated with Twitter are integrated into his Facebook profile. The factors which make Fb-bound texts relevant to a situation of occurrence evolve from exophoric references to virtual and physical environments. Both environments surround Fb-related literacy practices and affect, to varying degrees, form and content of Fb discourse. With hyperlinked textual fragments and the incorporation of external content into the Fb environment, the distinct properties of the software service blur the division in text (Fb environment) and virtual contexts.

Source: http://economic101.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/is-facebook-bad-for-your-grades/ However, some of these actions cannot unambiguously be ascribed to a particular environment (such as doing homework or watching TV).

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Figure 3.14: Indices to Facebook’s physical and virtual situationality

Figure 3.15: Blurred physical and virtual situationality Intertextuality How does Facebook support the indication of text boundaries and/or intertextual relations? In what ways does the electronic environment draw on knowledge of related environments and/or texts?

The dissolving of fixed text boundaries in hypertextual environments bears various consequences for Fb’s intertextuality. The infinite linkage and dispersion of personal data across and beyond the network suspends a clear-cut distinction in text and context. On the other hand, intertextual relations within and across Fb may become manifest in the formal–structural level of the texts: Posts, comments and other personal data frequently illuminate their intertextual relations through the purposeful integration of hyperlinks. Figure 3.16 illustrates a post on a study dealing with advertising media.



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Figure 3.16: Illuminated intertextual relations of a Facebook post

The author of the post explicitly quotes the headlines of an Internet magazine article and, moreover, creates a hyperlink connecting to this very article. Thereby, the contents of the target node are displayed in a reduced size below the post. When clicked, one is led to the Internet magazine article. Though the purposeful implementation of hypertext technology may establish a surface connection between two related texts (see cohesion), intertextuality as a mere cognitive category still depends on the text participants’ individual knowledge. A reflection of the extent to which the software service relies on knowledge about other texts emphasizes the distinction between ‘software service’ and ‘software service type’ introduced at the outset of this chapter. I have shown that a software service relates to the general electronic environment/platform that enables user-generated texts, while distinct types of software services connect such wide-ranging environments/platforms to a specific communicative aim. If we ask for references and influences to and/or from other software services, we find that Fb intermeshes and recombines textual and contextual patterns of various other template-based environments, among them Weblog, Instant Messaging Service and Chat. A common feature that all these services share is that none of them can be captured by the traditional concept of mass media nor by that of private media. Similar to Weblogs, the software service Fb displays text entries in a reverse chronological order and allows recipients to add comments. Just as Instant Messaging Services do, the Fb platform supports the generation and the administration of lists of friends. Like Chat (and Message Boards), the

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software service Fb promotes the emergence of dialogical structures. Moreover, Chat environments frequently entail the generation of automatic propositions. Just like software-generated texts identified for Fb, the screenshot of a Chat sequence entails various propositions that were initiated, but not authored by the Chat participants. Fb newbies being confronted with Fb’s automated text actions may thus fall back on their knowledge of Chat environments (see Figure 3.17). Belonging to the service type ‘friendship SNS’, Fb supports self-presentation as well as exchange among friends. As such the SNS draws on various functional interrelations to associated online genres, among them the Personal Homepage or the Private Weblog: Similar to Fb’s aim of self-presentation, Personal Homepages and Private Weblogs are being used for users’ self-portrayal and enable recipients to give feedback in the form of comments or guestbook entries. Moreover, Fb shows various functional similarities to other friendship SNS (such as Orkut, StudiVZ or lokalisten) as well as to miscellaneous SNS with different focal points, such as business SNS, face-to-face SNS or subject-oriented SNS. Related offline genres with comparable focal points include the poetry album and the friendship book. Both are directed at documenting networks of friends, while providing room for more or less explicit self portrayals (see Eisenlauer 2011). However, Fb’s intertextual, or rather intermedial relations, not only become manifest through implicit textual and contextual bonds between the Fb environment and other software services and/or service types, but in fact, the Fb environment stands out through the straightforward integration of a variety of established services, such as Chat, Video Platform, Online Advertising or e-mail.

Figure 3.17: Software-generated texts in a Chat environment



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Thereby, the individual service is adapted to the new virtual environment. In this sense, Fb establishes not only a new electronic environment in itself, but also a new format for established software services and their individual content (see also Cranston and Davies 2009). Figure 3.18 displays how Fb generates new ways in which older software services and genres are produced, distributed and consumed. Various textual fragments that contribute to a Fb profile borrow from existing paradigms of earlier services and service types. When doing so, the Fb environment not only simulates habitual text layouts and implements established content of other online text types, but – moreover – adapts their individual properties to the data and the identified aims of the friendship SNS: The placed banner advertisement considers the individual demographics of a profile owner and can be evaluated and shared among befriended members by pressing the Like Button underneath. Likewise, the hyperlink in the form of a condensed preview of an online newspaper article can be liked, commented on and shared within one’s individual network. Thus, when accessing the newspaper text from the Fb environment, the relevant conceptual frameworks are not restricted to those underlying the surface text of the article but also involve knowledge structures that surround the friendship SNS. In other words, the interpretation of established

Figure 3.18: Straightforward integration of software services into the Facebook platform

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online genres absorbed within the Fb environment is biased gradually by its surrounding discourse. Likewise, Cranston and Davies (2009) have found that, within SNS, texts are ‘more likely to spread on the basis of a user seeing that a friend is interested […] than they are to spread on the basis of users subscribing to a given news source or topic of interest’ (2009: 37). In view of Fb’s various communication formats and online genres that are intermeshed within the online environment, the electronic platform simulates and transforms structural and functional conventions of preceding services and service types. When operating the platform, Fb members draw on their experience of processing established software services and service types. This principle reveals salient similarities to Bolter and Gruisin’s (1999) concept of ‘remediation’ that can be described as the process when a newer medium, or in this case a newer software service, replaces an older service (medium) by borrowing, reorganizing and enhancing established formal and functional characteristics ascribed to the older service (see also Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008). The software service Fb supports the illumination of a text’s intertextual relations by enabling members to implement hyperlinks. Moreover, the Fb environment stands out through the straightforward integration of a variety of established software services. As such, Fb generates new ways in which older software services and service types are produced, distributed and consumed. When doing so, electronic platforms with related technical properties as well as service types with related communicative aims feed, to varying degrees, into a Fb participant’s literacy practices.

Summary Adopting a critical stance towards Fb-bound texts, my analysis disclosed complex interrelations among formal and functional properties of the software service and the members’ performed creative and analytical acts when using the platform. More precisely, the application of the methodological framework of CHTA revealed that user-generated texts imply a dialectical relationship between Fb-bound discursive events, i.e. providing personal data or connecting to/with friends, and the software properties (or medial contexts) which frame them, i.e. the use of text templates and software-generated texts. Obviously, Fb-specific text actions as forms of social practice are likewise shaped by institutions, social structures and other contextual factors that contribute to their



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situational embeddings (Fairclough and Wodak 1997). However, when creating or processing profile data, Fb participants have no alternative but to operate the platform’s interactive devices. The latter enable non-expert users to upload and distribute personal information, while establishing and maintaining contact with other users. It follows that the emergence of ‘user-related patterns of language use’ (in the sense of Androutsopoulos 2006) is bound to the distinct interactive and communicative properties of the software service. In other words, prior to the social impacts on Fb-bound texts are the effects of the electronic environment that enable, delimit and sometimes even standardize participants in their individual communicative acts. The CHTA of Fb described and specified the impact of the electronic environment on various levels of user-generated text: Drawing on criteria of prototypical texts and hypertexts, my discussion discerned how the software service affects the immediate production and evaluative reception of the text material and showed how this connects with contextual factors at large. The analysis of Fb in terms of hypertext qualities and features highlighted the software service’s impact on the processing of digitalized textual fragments by drawing on an integrated view of text and medium. From the perspective of ‘ontology’, the electronic environment facilitates the reception (and production) of Fb-bound texts (such as profiles, group pages, messages, photos, etc.) as real objects. The employed Personal Publishing techniques, the user-friendly design of the platform and the very content of Fb turn abstract, digitalized fragments of data into real object entities, or more precisely, into highly relevant texts for self-presentation and maintenance of social relations. Concerning the structural quality of ‘seclusion’, the software service exhibits strong characteristics of open hypertexts that come to bear in fluid, ever-shifting and infinite assemblages of user-generated textual fragments. In fact, the quantity of potential reading paths and presented contents increase with the extent of user network activity: As a result of the software service’s functional properties, any performed text action within Fb is reported on one’s profile Wall and is at the same time hyperlinked to and spread throughout one’s personal network. On the other hand, the overall structure of the platform, i.e. the division into Home Page and Personal Profile, as well as certain core features cannot be modified by the participants. Therefore, the software service also exhibits features of static products or closed hypertexts. The discussion of Fb’s ‘sequencing’ qualities revealed that the software service rests upon a default multi-sequential structure. Though Fb participants may create and upload texts (and other data) individually, they are inevitably bound to the software service’s pre-set muti-sequential structure. It follows that textual acts of

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self-presentation and friendship maintenance within Fb are always subject to a multi-sequential structure. In other words, when portraying themselves within Fb, participants are forced to structure their personal data in multilinear ways. Though there is an ongoing debate in the humanities concerning postmodern identities corresponding with the multilinear structure of hypertextual environments (see Landow 1999, Hayles 2005), we have to keep in mind that software services, such as Fb, leave participants no other choice than to present facets of their self images in a multilinear and hyperlinked structure. In the same vein, the discussion of Fb in terms of ‘multilinearity’ has revealed that Fb’s pre-set structure (and default templates) restrict members’ options for self-presentation. In contrast to a member’s complex and subtle comprehension of self, the individual text actions building her/his Fb profile are bound to standardized templates, default options and a more or less fixed hierarchical structure. However, the sheer quantity of pre-set options and default processes of (semi-)automatic text generation make it difficult for users to become aware of the other-directedness of their text actions. Evidently, the software system’s manifold options of creating and uploading personal data suppress a critical reflection on how the platform delimits and/manipulates user-generated texts. The analysis of Fb’s ‘fragmentation’ highlights the platform’s automatic text generation processes: By design, a member’s text actions, such as writing Wall entries or pressing the Like Button, are reported on her/his own profile Wall, i.e. by means of automatic texts, such as ‘member A wrote on member B’s Wall’. Moreover, the programmed text is automatically hyperlinked to the profiles of the involved members as well as to the actual entry. In this sense, text clusters within the same node, such as the befriended member’s profile Wall, are automatically connected to other nodes within the Fb environment, i.e. to the user’s own profile. In other words, by design, Fb-bound text actions involve intranodal fragmentation and internodal fragmentation simultaneously. External fragmentation, that is the dispersion of text data across different servers, can be mitigated through the straightforward integration of external content into Fb participants’ profile data. What is most significant about the software service’s predetermined patterns of fragmentation is their consequences for Fb participants’ self-presentation. As a result of the software’s programmed internodal fragmentation, participants’ textual identities are spread automatically throughout the Fb network. While in real life contexts, discourse participants determine different things as appropriate for different kinds of audiences, Fb’s default dispersion of user-generated texts among the network is characterized by reductionism and other-directedness: Individual interpersonal relationships, as well as the appropriateness of the textual performance, remain



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largely unreflected upon at a linguistic (or semiotic) level. A Fb participant’s individual network of friends may encompass parents, colleagues, ex-lovers and best friends. By default, all of them are informed about the participant’s individual network actions, though these might be directed at one (or more) particular member(s). Figure 3.19 was taken from a Website that looks at miscommunication in SNS and illustrates a case where Fb’s programmed internodal fragmentation led to a girl losing her job.4 Whereas the software’s programmed internodal fragmentation processes result in the inevitable dispersion of user-generated texts across the network, the platform’s ‘link templates’ enable the incorporation of external content into a user profile. Thus Fb participants may create a more unified image of themselves and are able to repurpose all kinds of content for their individual communicative aims. More precisely, the implementation of data stored on external Websites (such as films on YouTube) into a Fb participant’s profile turns external data into illocutions for self-presentation and/or friendship maintenance. The hypertext feature of ‘interactivity’ spotlights the Fb participants’ productive literacy practices. Text actions that contribute to self-presentation and/or friendship maintenance can be performed by a single click on Fb’s diverse functional devices, such as the Add Friend, the Like or the Share Button. Though attesting to the position of an

Figure 3.19: Communicative clash evolving from programmed internodal fragmentation Source: http://www.lamebook.com/fired-via-facebook/

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individual Fb participant, the individual semiotic choice as well as the actual display is undertaken by the text automation processes of the software service. In terms of ‘multimodality’, we can establish that the software service Fb enables the display and implementation of a wide range of different representational formats, such as text, photo, audio and video. Fb participants may upload and distribute multimodal texts of their own composition or they may repurpose and remix multimodal texts by pasting other authored data into their profiles. However, concerning the individual display of multimodal texts, Fb participants are bound to the individual possibilities and limitations of the pre-set layout. The discussion of Fb’s literacy practices from the perspective of a traditional text model has led to the following: From the perspective of ‘cohesion’, the labour of creating traditional and hypertextual surface relations within the Fb environment is largely taken out of the users’ hands and delegated to the distinct functions and properties of the software service. Concerning ‘coherence’, the software service exhibits various lexical entities that activate patterns of semantic knowledge that interrelate with ‘friendship’. More precisely, the formation of a mental model of Fb discourse is based, among other concepts, on the cognitive concept of ‘friendship as process’, which surfaces in various structural, functional and lexical properties of the platform: First, established network connections are, by default, designated as ‘friends’. Secondly, the platform provides various communicative means to prompt exchange among friends. Thirdly, just like friendships (which may shift), Personal Profiles and their network connections are in a constant flux. Beyond cohesion and coherence directed at the ‘usergenerated text material’, the ‘communicative context of user-generated texts’ is shaped in various ways by Fb’s distinct properties and can be specified with the help of the (hyper)textuality standards of ‘intentionality/acceptability’, ‘informativity’, ‘situationality’ and ‘intertextuality’: MM

MM

MM

MM

On the level of ‘intentionality/acceptability’, my analysis revealed how Fb’s automatic text actions support and/or relieve users from their locutionary acts and have, at the same time, great impact on the illocutionary and perlocutionary act. By design, the software service identifies recently updated content and disperses it automatically within the network (‘informativity’). Hyperlinked textual fragments and the incorporation of external content blur the distinction between text and virtual contexts (‘situationality’). The straightforward integration of a variety of established software services into the Fb platform generates new ways in which older software services and genres are produced, distributed and consumed (‘intertextuality’).



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What emerges from applying a text and hypertextlinguistic model to a critical analysis of Fb is a language-based explication of how specific implemented features and properties of a software service impose limits on and, likewise, create possibilities for the participants’ text actions: Discursive acts of self-portrayal are inevitably bound to multi-sequential, fragmented and automatically linked pieces of text. Most noteworthy, when creating new spaces for self-expression and exchange among friends, Fb’s functional properties result in a simulation of a typical human function, i.e. the creative act of choosing and aligning semiotic signs in order to carry out specific communicative acts. When generating an online presentation of self and/or connecting with other members, Fb participants are guided, directed and/or replaced by external influences that evolve from the platform’s functional properties and their text actions are gradually other-directed. More precisely, such other-directedness within Fb expands to various levels of text creation processes, i.e. text alignment, text structuring and linking as well as the generation of entire text entries. Thereby, various possibilities for customizing a Personal Profile5 obscure the impact of the software service on the users’ discursive choices of self-presentation. Considering the various options for semiotic practices surrounding the concept of (open) hypertext, such as empowered users creating and aligning multilinear perusals, the software service Fb does not tap its full potential. Rather, it delimits and governs members in their creative acts of producing and processing texts, to favour a holistic, standardized and equalized production (and perception) of Fb discourse. Though Fb participants may choose among various multilinear options and present/read through all kinds of content, any creative and/or receptive act of text processing is unavoidably bound to the pre-set functional options of the platform. In this sense, the software service Fb represents a system of paradigmatic relations, providing sets of discursive choices that support, delimit and/or replace the user when providing personal information and connecting to other members. Following Halliday and Matthiessen’s notion of system (2004), we can establish as a result that ‘Fb-bound user-generated text’ is the semiotic process made possible by the potential choices inherent in the software system. The following discussion of a Fb template will substantiate this rather abstract notion. Figure 3.20 illustrates one of the software service’s most important templates that I introduced in Chapter 1, i.e. Fb’s Publisher template. As I have shown, the Publisher allows members to update their status (3) or add photos (4), videos (2), hyperlinks (5) and events (1) to their own or befriended Such as the modification of profile categories and/or access rights.

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Figure 3.20: Potential semiotic choices provided by the Publisher template

members’ profile Walls. Beyond the mere technical support of users uploading content to Fb, the Publisher embodies a system of relationships that motivates and affects the creation of user-generated text. An over simplified illustration of the network of choices for the Publisher as a ‘system’ is shown in Table 3.2. Note that the list of options that interrelate with the uploading und publishing of different representational formats does not claim to be exhaustive. Fb participants indulging in the generation and upload of personal data by means of the Publisher are faced with the choice of filling in the template with a verbal Status Update and/or uploading an attachment. If the latter is selected, a further choice must be made between the kinds of attachments users wish to



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Table 3.2: The Publisher as a system of potential user choices Upload a Photo from your drive Photos Take a Photo from your webcam Upload a Video from your drive Video Profile Wall

Record a Video from your webcam

Attachment

Add title and location Event Add time

User generated text

Choose a thumbnail Link No thumbnail

News feed

Verbal status update

upload. Again, each attachment option implies distinct choices as well as actions Fb participants are obliged to perform in order to successfully create a user-generated text. It follows that, by breaking down Fb’s text creation processes into the most basic steps we can establish particular realizations of how the Publisher tool gives shape and coherence to user-generated texts: When creating verbal Status Updates, Fb participants are free to choose the individual wording, but have to keep their messages to 420 characters or less.6 When uploading links or events, Fb participants are automatically prompted to include distinct information (i.e. title, location, time) and/or representational formats (i.e. thumbnail). Likewise, pre-set options that interrelate with the upload of photos and videos encourage users to record themselves while using their computers. By default, Publisher-based texts appear on the members’ profile Walls and are simultaneously distributed throughout individual networks of friends by means of the News Feed function. Similar to the Publisher template, a large quantity of other Fb templates affect/inform participants’ text actions by offering them networks of options that support, direct or even replace the users’ semiotic choices: In relation to a member’s Personal Profile, various templates elicit and affect the user’s creative acts contributing to her/his self-presentation by targeting specific user information (such as profile picture, relationships, likes and interests, education, work In November 2011, Fb has increased the character limit to more than 60,000 characters.

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and contact information). Equally, templates involved in the exchange among participants, such as posting Wall entries, commenting on befriended members’ posts as well as Fb applications such as ‘consult the omniscient zombie’ (see Chapter 1), affect the members’ text actions to varying degrees. Whereas in traditional texts for the documentation and presentation of someone’s social relations (e.g. the German poetry album, see Eisenlauer 2011), creative text practices interrelate with the author’s individual knowledge about the genre. Within Fb the underlying form of representation is confined by the formal and functional properties of the applied templates and other text generation techniques. However, it cannot be the aim of this work to specify the whole network of Fb templates in terms of the discursive paradigms they provide for users. Though such an undertaking could provide further insights into the platform’s functional properties, it shifts the focus away from the Fb participants’ text actions. A detailed account of all the Fb templates and their pre-set discursive options provides no information on the manner in which Fb participants deploy the potential choices of (textual) action. The CHTA analysis of the software service Fb has disclosed that the platform’s text automation processes and pre-set semiotic choices gradually define and equalize user text actions. Moreover, it related such sources of other-directedness to the creation and reception of text material as well as to contextual factors: We could, for example, establish that the platform’s default multilinear structure leaves Fb participants no choice but to portray themselves hypertextually. Likewise, it was shown that Fb’s automatic text dispersion and creation processes may interfere with individual communicative aims of Fb members while blurring the division between Fb environment and other virtual environments. Though the results of the aforementioned analysis supply many answers to the research question raised at the outset of this book, we are still given no insights into the degree individual Fb participants delegate their individual choices and textual practices to the software service’s functional properties. Obviously, numerous identified interrelations between the software service Fb and user-generated texts are difficult to operationalize in empirically measurable ways: The extent a member’s general knowledge of other software services feeds into the processing of Fb is highly individual and depends on a range of factors (i.e. Internet sophistication) that are unknowable beforehand. Equally, we have no information on how the software service’s automatic text detection processes actually result in relevant tokens of information for individual users. In order to assess how the software service Fb conditions the textual practices of actual Fb members, Chapter 4 discusses a data sample of Fb-bound text actions performed by two different user groups.

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This chapter assesses textual performances of actual Fb members in relation to the impact of the electronic environment. More precisely, it investigates how sample members transfer their text actions (or parts thereof) to the communicative properties and automation processes of the software service. To this end, it develops an analytical framework that specifies the gradual outsourcing of Fb-bound text actions and demonstrates how this applies to a sample of Fb data. More specifically, the text analysis involves both a broader and more narrow perspective. On a broad level, the focus is on quantification of software-based text actions performed by six sample members. The more narrow approach investigates how the disclosed text automation processes affect the discursive construction of identities in Fb. The results of the text analysis will be enriched by information gained from questionnaires as well as from personal interviews concerning the Fb members’ perception of being ‘software-directed’. In the following I will present the research question and provide background information on the general research design. I will then specify the gradual transfer of (text) actions to electronic agents, before I introduce distinct patterns of actions in Fb-bound texts. Following this, I will discuss previous findings on ‘language and (Fb) identity’ and relate them to the developed model of Fb-bound text actions. Finally, I will relate the identified issues to matters of data collection, before applying the developed frameworks to a sample of Fb data.

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Research questions and design of the study The final discussion of Chapter 3 highlighted the need to shift the focus from an abstract description and systemization of Fb-specific means of expression towards the textual practices of actual Fb members. From a theoretical perspective, I identified systems of pre-set and (semi-)automated texts that gradually bias and standardize the textual operations of Fb members. To assess the practical implications of these rather abstract findings, the following discussion is directed at investigating how distinct users deploy potential, pre-given semiotic choices to attain individual communicative aims. Such an undertaking implies a number of general and more specific questions, among them: (1) How do actual members employ Fb’s functional properties in communication? (2) To what extent do they outsource their (text) actions to the service? (3) In what sense are they in control over and responsible for the actions they perform? (4) How do outsourced text actions interrelate with identity and friendship performances? (5) To what degree do Fb members account for and/or reflect on Fb having an impact on their text actions? Taking a closer look, we find that many of the issues under focus partially overlap, as they orbit around certain key concepts, i.e. ‘functional properties’/‘text automation’, ‘text operation’/‘text action’, ‘control’/‘responsibility’ and ‘identity’. Hence, I will at this point subsume the identified issues in the more general research question that I presented at the outset of this book. In what ways are the text actions performed by a sample of members affected by Fb’s text automation properties and how does this affect the discursive performance of identity and friendship actions?1

An investigation of how the electronic environment interferes with meaning negotiated between Fb members presupposes a constructivist epistemology that is mirrored in the design as well as in the methodology of this book: Obviously, individual Fb members will create and ascribe meaning to Fb generated texts in different ways. When they perform text actions of all kinds (e.g. adding friends, An identification of the involved key concepts, the employed analytical frameworks as well as data collection methods is discussed throughout this chapter.

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writing Status Updates, perusing other members’ profile data), users draw on their unique Fb-related knowledge as well as on their individual understanding of the world. Accordingly, the focus is on the individual Fb participants when asking how they experience and interact with the platform’s automation processes and how this may have multiple meanings for them. In order to develop a deep understanding of form and use of Fb-bound texts, I decided to spend a relatively prolonged period of time in the research setting, and focused on two small and carefully chosen groups of Fb participants. Access to the individual profiles opened up an insider point of view (or emic perspective), as I could browse through provided personal data, follow conversations and – if necessary – interact with the participants personally as well as via the platform’s message devices. Adopting an etic point of view enabled me to relate my collected data to an external and critical hypertextlinguistic perspective on reality, thus providing further explanations of the subjective meanings and understandings that members create when interacting within and via the Fb platform. In fact, emic and etic perspectives inform and complement each other: The CHTA approach disclosed the automation and standardiztion of text actions and their semiotic forms. This made a categorization and quantification of sample data a promising undertaking for providing insight into the medial conditioning of user text actions. Drawing on the outcome of such a quantitative discussion, a qualitative approach reflected on the individual intentions and mind-frames that interrelate with the creation of Fb-bound text actions and/or the outsourcing thereof. According to Croker (2009) there are five research approaches that are commonly applied in qualitative linguistic research, i.e. narrative inquiry, case study, ethnography, action research and mixed methods. In order to specify and outline the methodological procedures of my project, Table 3.3 delivers a brief introduction of prominent approaches based on Croker (2009). In view of these established research approaches in qualitative linguistics, I developed the following three guiding principles that deliver a more focused picture of the methodological procedures. (1) Considering the fact that there is hardly any existing research reflecting on the linguistic behaviour of Fb members, this book aims, in line with a case study approach, at exploring patterns of language use for a limited and carefully chosen sample. Such a focus promises to provide new insights into practices of digital literacy, while challenging established critical approaches to media and text linguistics.

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Table 4.1: Common approaches in qualitative linguistic research Common approaches in qualitative linguistic research Narrative inquiry

Narrative inquires are based on the notion that people employ narratives to make sense of their individual worlds (i.e. what they experience and who they are). It uses “first-person accounts of life experiences as data, mostly gathered through interviews” (Croker 2009: 14).

Case study

Case studies use manifold data sources in order to deliver a detailed description and interpretation of one or a small number of cases.

Ethnography

Ethnography commonly focuses on groups that share the same culture and seeks to disclose the underlying customs of this culture, such as shared beliefs, practices, artefacts, behaviour and knowledge.

Action research

Action research explores problems in teaching/ learning contexts and aims “more often [at] a change in understanding and behaviour than some form of a published report […]” (Croker 2009: 15).

Mixed methods approach The mixed methods approach is defined through the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. When accounting for quantitative and qualitative data equally or giving one type more prominence, the mixed methods approach aims to attain an in-depth understanding of the issue(s) under focus.

(2) Following the tenets of ethnography, my interest is in the evolution, distribution and reinforcement of two sample group’s shared text and meaning creation practices. Such an investigation relates to shared meanings concerning the operation of the electronic platform, i.e. creating and distributing texts (procedural knowledge) as well as to shared meanings and values that relate to more factual knowledge, such as concepts of action and self-directedness, as well as to ideas of friendship and privacy.2 (3) Interviews and open questionnaires that are designed to elicit recounted experiences of Fb members draw on the framework of narrative inquiry. Such a focus revives the discussion concerning the interrelations between technological and social changes (see Chapter 1). Considering the software service Fb as the basic cause for changes in the society (see technological determinism) puts forward the notion of a ‘Fb culture’ that becomes manifest in cohesive groups of people with shared beliefs, values, practices, meanings and artefacts. Conversely, in the social constructionist mind frame, ‘values and meanings that Fb members share’ are first and foremost social manifestations that are negotiated and/or reinforced via the software service. However, my study is not intended to answer questions of cause and effect, but is interested in the evolution of new literacy practices that interrelate with new media technologies and software services.

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However, in line with the mixed methods approach, this case study combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods: Applying an empirical lens, it investigates patterns of actions in a sample group’s profile data. The quantitative interpretation of the sample texts is enriched through qualitative data collected in personal interviews and questionnaires. As we can see, the here applied research methods and corresponding data collection methods combine a variety of frameworks with corresponding data gathering techniques. However, the emphasis is on text analysis. While frameworks with a more qualitative focus (involving data collection methods, such as interviews, questionnaires and verbal reports) rely primarily on subjective judgements of individual participants, text analysis provides access to what the Fb members actually ‘do’. More specifically, such a framework endeavours to compile a rich and contextualized set of profile data that can be examined in terms of ‘outsourced’ user text actions. To do so, I developed a text model that exposes the medial impact on the creation/interpretation of hypertexts in general (see Chapter 2) and on Fb-bound texts in particular (see Chapter 3). More specifically, the CHTA model has developed descriptive categories capturing the users’ gradual transfer of creative text practices to abstract electronic agents. In order to build up a methodological framework that allows us to specify how authentic language use in Fb is affected by the software service, I will in the following refine the notion of Fb-bound text actions (as described in Chapter 3). The application of the model to authentic language data promises to deliver empirical evidence on the extent the performance of sample Fb members’ text actions is outsourced to pre-set text automation processes. However, reflecting on a sample group’s text actions from a mere empirical point of view still gives no insights into the individual communicative aims attached to these automatic propositions. Hence, the here-adopted text analytical approach will be backed up by a qualitative approach eliciting sample members’ intentions when doing things with Fb.

Doing things with Facebook Throughout this book, I have repeatedly used the term ‘text action’ to cover both a broader and more narrow understanding of ‘doing things with and within Fb’. The former relates to the general action of users generating and distributing text, while the latter points to the involved goal-directedness and

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consequential effects of user-generated texts. With regard to linguistic research on intentionality and language use, at this point we need to elaborate on the aspects of actions that are involved when users ‘do things with/within Fb’: Most generally, members are required to perform all kinds of physical actions in order to operate the Fb environment, such as typing, using the mouse or working the touch screen of a mobile device. It is evident that the members’ behaviour is not primarily directed at the hardware, but rather at the software interfaces. When filling in text templates (such as the Status Update or the comment field), clicking hyperlinks (such as the Like Button) or updating personal information (e.g. from ‘engaged’ to ‘single’) Fb members not only generate and distribute texts, but perform versatile actions, such as flattering someone, breaking up with a partner or asking someone to become Fb friends. As shown, many actions may be performed with the help of pre-set propositions that are automatically generated and distributed within the Fb environment, when activated. In light of the great ease with which Fb members may do things, the notion of intentionality of such text actions has to be reassessed.3 Searle (1983) defines ‘intentionality’ loosely as ‘that property of the mind (brain) by which it is able to represent other things’ (Searle 1983: 24). In other words, intentionality is a state that is realized in the neurophysiology of the brain. It becomes manifest in how the mind grasps things in the world. Furthermore, Searle (1983) claims that it is vital to distinguish between intentionality as the primary property of the mind and the representative content thereof. He therefore divides ‘intentionality-with-a-t’ and ‘intensionality-withan-s’: ‘Intentionality-with-a-t is, so to speak, a ground-floor property of the mind. It is how the mind grasps other things. But intensionality-with-an-s is primarily a property of sentences and other forms of representation’ (Searle 1979: 189). Austin rejects such an ‘inner-mental’ understanding of intentionality and emphasizes its conventional and linguistic nature (Bornedal 1997). Likewise, Grice (1957) highlights that intentions are attributed to speakers (authors) by addressees (recipients) in interaction, maintaining that ‘the intended effect [of an utterance] must be something within the control of the audience, or at least the sort of thing which is within its control’ (1957: 59). In his view, participants generally assume that a speaker is being cooperative, and thus they make conversational implicatures about what is being said. Haugh’s (2008) distinction in ‘a priori’ and ‘post facto’ [sic!] intentions sums Note that I deliberately use the term ‘text action’ instead of ‘speech act’ in order to stress the textrelated manifestation of the individual actions.

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up the contradicting views of intention as an inward act and intention as an interactional act: ‘[A] priori intention is closest to what we normally understand intention to be in the intuitive folk sense, namely as a plan or aim formulated by the speaker before uttering something’ (Haugh 2008: 202), whereas post facto intention is implicitly invoked through interaction and therefore accounts for actions, including violation of norms or interactional troubles. Research in pragmatics commonly draws on the concept of ‘action’ to show how intentionality relates to language use. The underlying concept of action can be best described when set in opposition to the related concept of ‘behaviour’. Most commonly, behaviour can be delineated as an organism’s reaction to a stimulus or situation, as something that happens to a living thing (or human being) and that is beyond her/his control (Holly, Kühn, Püschel 1984 in Bublitz 2009). In contrast, an action is deliberately chosen and controlled by the living thing that performs it. In this sense, yawing can display a non-controlled, reflexive behaviour or – in the case of a bored yawn – it can perform a motivated and communicative action that, for example, may signal another person that she/he has been talking for too long. It follows that an action includes a meaningful and goal-oriented performance that is deliberately chosen. The ‘actor’ controls the action and is responsible for it. Nevertheless, it has to be recognized and interpreted as such by the discourse participants. Intentions correspond in the broadest sense with the individual goals an action strives for. As Heinemann (2001) maintains, such goaldirectedness can be related to three phenomena: First, to the anticipated goal state of the world to be changed; secondly, to the creation of a cohesive and coherent text or statement (see Chapter 2); and thirdly, to the addressee’s/recipient’s mental state that is affected by the performed action. When relating these concepts to the focus of this work, we see that a methodological approach to Fb’s impact on user-generated texts has to consider different aspects of intentionality and action, i.e.: (1) When performing Fb-bound actions, members’ intentionality as an innermental process defies quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. Even Fb members’ ‘thinking aloud reports’ (see Table 3.3) uttered while using the platform would inevitably involve a retrospective account and thus a reflective construction of their original intentions. Accordingly, this book will concentrate on the reflective and interactional side of Fb members’ communicative aims. (2) Considering that intentions become manifest in actions that are controlled by the actor (text producer), we need to assess to what degree

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Fb members are in charge of the actions they perform. This relates to three questions in particular: First, to what extent are Fb members in control of the creation of the text material and its proposed meanings when setting off ‘automatic text generation’? Secondly, to what degree are Fb members in command of the contextualization and sharing of their texts when triggering ‘automatic text distribution’? Thirdly, in what ways do Fb members hold/evade responsibility for their actions? In view of these questions, we need to develop a conceptual framework that enables us to assess a Fb member’s participation in the performance of Fb-bound text actions. Insights from the pragmatic concepts of ‘intentionality’ and ‘action’ have created awareness of the complexity of Fb-bound text actions. Doing things with Fb involves a multifaceted interplay among a Fb member’s individual intentions and a large array of semiotic forms that are more or less pre-arranged by the software service. This gradual transfer of (text) actions to electronic agents can be specified by discussing different levels of creative operations for Fb-bound texts. As Searle (1969) has shown, when people employ semiotic forms to attain individual communicative aims, they commonly perform four interrelated layers of action. Accordingly, he divided a speech act into (1) the utterance act that refers to the uttering (animation) of the semiotic forms (2) the propositional act that refers to the selection of a text’s proposition (3) the illocutionary act that alludes to the individual communicative aims (4) the perlocutionary act that involves the consequential effects of the speech act (text action) upon feelings, thoughts or actions of the participants. I have revealed throughout this book that Fb members may delegate some of these actions to abstract electronic agents, i.e. the software service. This relates to selecting propositions (propositional act) as well as to the action of converting propositions into semiotic forms (utterance act). However, when reflecting text creation actions in Fb, we can assume that – in the most cases – the software supports Fb members in performing individual illocutionary acts: With reference to Figure 1.16 in Chapter 1 Mike initiated knowingly and deliberately the software-generated text ‘Mike likes this’ in response to Caitlynn’s post. Nevertheless, the automatic generation and distribution of texts may also effect in Fb members performing more or less non-intentional text actions. Caitlynn did not intend to distribute the information ‘Caitlynn



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is now single’ among the Home Pages of her network friends. A methodological framework that wants to provide access to Fb’s impact on user text actions has therefore to create distinct categories that give information on a member’s gradual participation in and varying intentionality of performing an action.

Patterns of actions in Facebook-bound texts When asking in what sense the software supports and/or replaces (formerly exclusively) human text creation practices, we can principally distinguish ‘Creative Text Actions’ from ‘Automated Text Actions’. While Creative Text Actions (CTAs) involve a human agent (user) who selects individual propositions, Automated Text Actions (ATAs) stand out through electronic agents that generate standardized propositions when activated. More directly, CTAs are user-authored; here the performance of the propositional act and (to some degree) also the performance of the utterance act is controlled by a human agent. In contrast, ATAs are software-authored, as the performance of the utterance act, as well as the performance of the propositional act, is largely controlled by the software service. From a practical point of view, CTAs are supported through ‘blank text templates’ – these are empty text boxes such as the ‘Status Update box’, the ‘comment box’ or other templates that can be filled in individually and support the display, dispersion and performance of individual text actions. In contrast, ATAs are based on pre-set propositions that can be activated by clicking links (such as the Like, the Poke or the Add Friend Button). As such, they set up more or less distinct actions in advance for the users to perform. However, when it comes to the display of the text material, both CTAs and ATAs are largely predetermined by the software. Though members may create and/or upload individual propositions (CTAs), they have no or only minor control over questions of design and the arrangement of their texts: Profile Wall entries are, for example, always presented in reverse Table 4.2: A classification of Facebook-bound Text Actions Creative Text Actions (CTA)

Automated Text Actions (ATA)

•  user-authored: •  selection and alignment of text propositions mastered by a human agent

•  machine-authored: •  selection and alignment of text propositions mastered by the software service

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chronological order. Likewise, profile pictures appear, by design, in the upperleft corner and fonts, background colours and text arrangement are largely pre-set. While in non-electronic texts as well as in first-generation hypertexts, decisions concerning the text display, the text propositions and the text distribution were exclusively made by ‘human agents’, in Web 2.0 based software services, such as Fb, users gradually delegate such creative choices to ‘electronic agents’. Having a closer look at CTAs, we find that a Fb member’s participation can be further specified by means of two subcategories, Genuine Creative Text Actions (Genuine-CTAs) and Quoted Creative Text Actions (Quoted-CTAs). In Genuine-CTAs, a Fb member is in charge of the utterance act when employing semiotic units of expression. She/he performs the propositional act when choosing a text’s propositions that refer to something and/or express a predication about something. Moreover, the Fb member is the one who performs the illocutionary act, as she/he has a particular communicative purpose in mind. Genuine-CTAs are based on blank text templates and include written Status Updates, comments or Wall posts, etc. As opposed to Genuine-CTAs, in Quoted-CTAs the utterance act is outsourced to the software service. More precisely, when performing a Quoted-CTA, a member deliberately chooses texts she/he intends to quote and thus performs the propositional act. The member is in command of the illocutionary act as she/he attaches a particular communicative aim to her/his text creation practice. However, the manual labour of generating the quote’s text material is not accomplished by the Fb member but by an abstract electronic agent carrying out a kind of ‘midwife function’. As opposed to traditional media where the person who quotes is required to carry out the labour of animating (i.e. uttering, writing, typing) the quotation, Table 4.3: A classification of Creative Text Actions Genuine Creative Text Action (Genuine-CTA)

Quoted Creative Text Action (Quoted-CTA)

Human agent performs: •  utterance act •  propositional act •  illocutionary act

Human agent performs: •  propositional act •  illocutionary act

Software performs:

Software performs: •  utterance act

Examples: writing individual Status Updates, comments or Wall entries

Examples: mash-ups, like incorporated YouTube films, songs and hyperlinks



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in Quoted-CTAs, members may shift a source text from its original context to a new context (see Bublitz and Hoffmann 2011) with the help of software-based quote utilities. Fb’s quote utilities include the Share Button that enables the straightforward integration of other member’s contents into one’s own profile as well as the Publisher template that permits the incorporation of contents from external Websites. Examples for Quoted-CTAs are incorporated YouTube films, integrated SoundCloud songs or any other ‘mash-ups’ that recombine existing digital texts and other semiotic artefacts into one’s Personal Profile. In ATAs, the agentic shift from the Fb member to the software is even more significant. The question of how electronic agents gradually replace human agents can be methodologically approached by means of three subcategories, i.e. Transparent Automated Text Actions (Transparent-ATAs), Opaque Automated Text Actions (Opaque-ATAs) and Non-Intended Automated Text Actions (Non-Intended ATAs). In Transparent-ATAs, the performance of the utterance act as well as the performance of the propositional act is delegated to the software system. Thereby, the text automation process is always transparent to users. This means that users employ Transparent-ATAs knowingly and deliberately for reaching conventional and/or individual communicative aims. Typical Transparent-ATAs include clicking the Like Button or clicking the Add Friend Button, as their involved text creation mechanisms are typically expected by an average Fb member. In Opaque-ATAs, however, members only have a vague idea about the actions they perform. In the more moderate cases, members still bear in mind that their Table 4.4: A classification of Automated Text Actions Transparent Automated Text Actions (Transparent-ATA)

Opaque Automated Text Action (Opaque-ATA)

Non-Intended Automated Text Action (Non-Intended-ATA)

Human agent performs: •  illocutionary act

Human agent performs: •  uncertain illocutionary act

Human agent performs:

Software performs: •  propositional act •  utterance act

Software performs: •  propositional act •  utterance act

Software performs: •  propositional act •  illocutionary act •  utterance act

Examples: clicking the Like Examples: any opaque Button, clicking the Add action depending on Friend Button individual knowledge

Examples: any involuntary performed action depending on individual knowledge

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operations involve automatic text creation, but they are uncertain about the generated propositional contents. Members perform moderate Opaque-ATAs, for example, when they become familiar with the Fb environment and have a go at its functional properties. In the more extreme cases, members are not even aware that their platform operations initiated an action. The text generation processes are accomplished completely involuntarily and it is Fb (and not the member) that performs the utterance, the propositional and also the illocutionary act. We can hence speak here of software-performed actions or Non-Intended-ATAs. Unlike Transparent-ATAs, where the software supports Fb members in performing individual illocutionary acts, Non-Intended ATAs have no bearing on a member’s individual communicative aims. Though the member initiated the action, she/he is neither in control of nor responsible for its communicative outcome. An example of a non-intended Opaque-ATA could be Fb’s ‘find your friend’ function: After having created a Fb account, Fb newbies are frequently asked to connect their e-mail accounts to their Fb data in order to find the profiles of known members. As a result – and what many new Fb members are not aware of – the service spams all e-mail contacts with invites to join Fb. During my research I received the following e-mail message from someone who had just become a Fb member: ‘Sorry for sending annoying invites to some stupid social network. Apparently, this THING automatically sends e-mails to everyone in my address book.’ However, ATAs are not inherently Transparent, Opaque or Non-Intended. Depending on one’s individual Fb experience, a particular member may deliberately initiate the software-based creation and distribution of a text, while another member may stimulate the same automation process involuntarily. In order to evaluate a member’s individual intentionality concerning the creation of a text and the anticipated state of the world to be changed, we need to fall back on more qualitative background information. Comparing the developed categories in relation to a member’s active participation in text creation, the application of speech act theory disclosed a gradual agentic shift from the Fb member to the software. The extent to which members participate actively in the performance of the action can best be described along a continuum. Table 4.5: A continuum of user control in Fb-bound text actions Genuine-CTA

Qouted-CTA

Transparent-ATA

Opaque-ATA

Non-intended-ATA

High user

Low/no user

control

control



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At the one extreme, when performing Genuine-CTAs, users are in control of their utterance acts and their propositional acts as well as their illocutionary acts. At the other extreme, when initiating Non-Intended-ATAs, the software is in charge of the performance of the utterance and the propositional act. Moreover, the involved illocutionary acts are not anticipated by the user in whose name the action is performed. In between, members gradually transfer their semiotic choices and text animation processes to the software and bear at least some responsibility over the actions carried out. However, in Non-Intended ATAs, it is not the member but Fb that is responsible for the textual performance and the text participants’ affected mental states. The outsourcing of members’ control over their actions is further intensified by Fb’s automatic text distribution processes. Due to the service’s default dispersion of user data among different environments, Fb replicates primary user text actions and shifts them to new contexts. In the case of Caitlynn, such an emulation and re-contextualization of user actions may result in a change of meaning (see also Chapter 1). Caitlynn’s Primary Text Action of changing her relationship status on her Info layer was aimed at keeping her personal information up to date. However, as an effect of replicating her textual performance on the Home Pages of members befriended by her, the software performed a second text action that was interpreted as an ‘approach me’ signal which was not intended by Caitlynn. According to my framework, Caitlynn originally performed a Transparent-ATA: When she activated a pre-set relationship status text on her personal data page, she outsourced the utterance act and the propositional act in order to keep her profile data up to date (illocutionary act). However, by doing so, she also evoked the software to perform a Secondary Text Action that she had not intended. In

Figure 4.1: The re-contextualization of user actions

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other words, the software replicated her primary utterance and propositional act in new environments and – as a result of such a shift of context – attached a new illocution to the text material. In this sense, Caitlynn triggered the performance of a text action against her will, though she originally activated the involved text material. To address the complexity of doing things with Fb, I propose, therefore, to model Fb-bound text actions in two interrelated strata, i.e. Primary Text Actions and Secondary Text Actions. ‘Primary Text Actions’ are a member’s original textual performances, such as writing Status Updates, quoting a YouTube film or pressing the Like Button. As I have shown, the creation of the text material may be outsourced to varying degrees to the software and members initiate these texts more or less knowingly and deliberately. In the most cases, they attach particular communicative aims to their individual performances. For example, members may alter their personal data in order to keep a profile up to date, they may press the Add Friend Button to set up a new network connection or they may write a Status Update in order to express their attitudes and emotions. In ‘Secondary Text Actions’, the software service shifts the propositions of a primary action (or parts thereof) to a new context. The shift of context along with the gradual modification of the original text material results in the software performing a new illocutionary act that may conflict with a member’s original communicative aims. Fb-savvy members commonly bear the automatic re-contextualiztion of their primary texts in mind. However, Fb’s status as a ‘Meso Medium’ makes it difficult for users to estimate who and/or how many other members will ascribe meaning to their textual performances. Secondary Text Actions are therefore prone to carry out text actions against a user’s will. Comparable to Non-Intended ATAs, in unwillingly set off Secondary Text Actions a Fb member is neither in command of the replication of his Primary Text Action, nor does she/he take the responsibility for the proposed communicative aims. In fact, it is the software service that controls the utterance, the propositional, as well as the illocutionary act of an action that is nevertheless ascribed to a particular member. A Fb excerpt will help to illuminate the interlaced strata of Fb-bound actions. The Primary Text Action displayed in Figure 4.2, here Kurt Schwartz writing a post on a befriended member’s profile Wall (‘the world is an orange’, see 1), corresponds to a Genuine-CTA. Simultaneously, Fb performs two Secondary Text Actions: First, it replicates the original text material within the News Feed stream on befriended members’ Home Pages (see 2) and, secondly, it reports on Kurt’s Primary Text Action on his profile Wall by means of a software-generated text, i.e. ‘Kurt wrote on Sonja Sydow’s Wall’ (see 3).



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Figure 4.2: Interlaced Primary and Secondary Text Actions

However, we need to keep in mind that the automatic replication of text material within the Fb environment may be applied strategically to perform indirect text actions. In this sense, Kurt’s primary illocutionary act (see Searle 1969) could have been the dispersion of his post in befriended member’s News Feed streams. As opposed to Searle (1969) who defined indirect speech act as being not literally performed, indirect Fb-bound text actions purposefully exploit the software-induced re-contextualization and/or modification of members’ primary utterances. The table below summarizes the depicted patterns of Fb actions and specifies the software-based replication of Primary Text Actions. In relation to Primary Text Actions, Fb members gradually participate in the creation of text material. The transfer of the labour of and control over text creation can be described along the five categories, Genuine-CTA, Quoted-CTA, Transparent-ATA, Opaque-ATA and Non-Intended-ATA. By default, Fb performs Secondary Text Actions that involve the emulation and/or modification of member’s Primary Text Actions.4 In replicated Secondary Text Actions, primary propositions remain in large part unchanged and are simply shifted to and/or reproduced in new Note that in some cases the context in which a displayed text action was originally performed remains unclear. This obscures the identification of original and replicated text actions.

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Table 4.6: An analytical framework for Fb’s impact on user text actions PRIMARY TEXT ACTION Creative Text Actions (CTA) GenuineCTA

QuotedCTA

Automated Text Actions (ATA) GenuineATA

OpaqueATA

NonIntended-ATA

SECONDARY TEXT ACTION •  replicates or restates a member’s Primary Text Action •  may be anticpated or set off unwillingly by members

contexts, see ‘Kurt Schwartz → Sonja Sydow: the world is an orange’. In restated Secondary Text Actions, Fb generates a new proposition that informs about a member’s Primary Text Action, as in ‘Kurt wrote on Sonja Sydow’s Wall’. Just like in primary Non-Intended-ATAs, the performance of Secondary Text Actions may be anticpated by Fb members or may be triggered unwillingly. While in Non-Intended ATAs members are not aware that their platform operations result in the software generating a text that presents their position in some way, in terms of Non-Intended Secondary Text Actions, members do not anticipate the replication and distribution of their Primary Text Actions. However, the identification of unwillingly performed actions depends on information gained through qualitative data collection, as the individual communicative goals of Fb-bound text actions elude a strictly formal analysis. Nevertheless, the categories introduced grant us methodological access to Fb’s gradual impact on user text actions. Empirical evidence on the degree members are involved in the creation of text material can be collected by applying the developed categories to actual Fb data.

Outsourced identities Obviously, the members’ outsourcing of text generation and text distribution to the software service is not sought for its own sake. Individuals operate the platform to reach versatile communicative aims, out of which ‘self-presentation’ and ‘contact management/friendship maintenance’ were disclosed as Fb’s key functions (see Chapter 1). To investigate how sample members are biased when performing identity and/or friendship actions, the following discussion presents previous findings on ‘language and (Fb) identity’ and relates them to the developed model of Fb-bound text actions.



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Auer (2007) provides a compact synopsis of sociolinguistic research into ‘identity’ and highlights two approaches in particular: first, studies that limit their focus to identity-related lexical terms (i.e. ‘male’, ‘upper class’, ‘Jewish’) and secondly, approaches that investigate how motivated choices on all levels of linguistic systems (i.e. grammar, phonology and lexicon) relate to identity construction. Corresponding to the second line of research, Le Page (1978, 1984 in Auer 2007) introduces the idea of ‘acts of identity’ that become manifest in the socio-stylistic choices an individual makes ‘in order to conform to the behavior of those social groups [she/he] wish[es] to be identified with’ (Auer 2007: 4). As opposed to traditional concepts of identity that relate individuals to multiple memberships in social categories, such as class, gender or age, Le Page’s (1978, 1984 in Auer 2007) model highlights identities as being projected by individuals. In this sense, individual acts of identity precondition the features and categories that individuals ascribe to themselves and to their conversational partners. Similar to Le Page (1978, 1984 in Auer 2007), Claire Kramsch (2001) introduces the concept of ‘voice’ that captures how social actors construct, maintain or modify institutional roles and/or identities through the discursive choices they make.5 In this sense, a linguistic ‘act of identity’ or an individual’s ‘voice’ can be described as a motivated choice of semiotic signs that index an individual’s affiliation (or disaffiliation) to particular social groups (see also Auer 2007). Turning back to Fb, we find that the array of potential semiotic signs which members can choose from is gradually controlled by the software. In particular, ATAs cut an individual member short and reduce the individual freedom of semiotic choice to a binary decision: When Fb members perform ATAs, such as ‘member A likes this’, they can, at most, decide to delete the text and/or not initiate the action at all – they have no possibility of modulating the individual wording. It follows that not only Fb members’ texts but also their individual voices and thus their identities are to some degree standardized and pre-set by Fb. On the other hand, Fb members always have the possibility of commenting on pre-set software-generated texts and thus may give information on how their textual performance ought to be read. Moreover, due to Fb’s status as Social Software (see Chapter 1), the platform is built, to a high degree, on user feedback – this means that members have the chance to contribute to and/or modify the software’s paradigms of semiotic options. Bakhtin also defines ‘voice’ as ‘an identifiable social role or position that a character enacts’ (Wortham and Locher 1996: 557).

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Closely connected to the discursive construction of identity is the sociolinguistic concept of ‘style’ that ‘mediates between linguistic variability and practices of social categorization of self or other’ (Auer 2007: 13). At the core of this concept are processes of opposition-building that mark a particular style – in the sense of habitual linguistic choices – from other styles. As such, linguistic style is always interrelated with social meaning and/or social positioning. This means that clusters of semiotic choices are favoured over other possible styles and thus index particular social affiliations. As Eckert (1996) postulates, the manifestation of a certain style always involves ‘bricolage’, i.e. the incorporation and/or transformation of pre-existing styles into a new style combined with a change of meaning. In fact, ‘bricolage’, or making choices by using what is at hand, is also a key principle of Fb-specific text creation processes: Fb’s quote utilities, such as the hyperlink template, trigger members to choose from all kinds of pre-existing content, such as films, songs and Websites, and incorporate them into their profiles. Likewise, Fb’s ATAs provide various pre-set propositions that may be assembled to enforce individual acts of identity. As the re-construction of existing materials is at least partially outsourced to an abstract and computer-simulated ‘third author’, members have no means of transforming the actual text material. The change in meaning arises primarily from the contextual shift, but may also be reinforced through individual comments. In line with the view that identities are communicatively produced, the social psychologists Davies and Harré (1990) emphasize the discursive and negotiable nature of selves and others. Accordingly, the authors introduce the model of ‘positioning’ and define it as […] the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself. Davies and Harré 1990: 48

Positioning acts are observable as they become manifest in social interactions. Moreover, they are jointly produced or co-constructed, which means that they depend on mutual understanding (Georgakopoulou 2007). Neither ‘interactive’ nor ‘reflexive positioning’ are necessarily strategically planned or intended but commonly evolve as a side effect of higher-ranking communicative performances (Lucius-Hoene and Deppermann 2004). The theory of positioning has received considerable attention and forms the theoretical basis of a wide range



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of research on narrative and identity construction. Departing from an interactional view of identity construction, recent studies investigate the dialectical relationship and discursive practice of positioning oneself and being positioned. In line with Davies and Harré (1990), Lucius-Hoene and Deppermann (2000) delineate ‘positioning’ as those parts of speech acts that identify conversational partners as persons by providing information on their individual attributes. The authors distinguish between ‘self-positioning’ and ‘other-positioning’. The former relates to conversational acts that indicate how a speaker would like to be seen by others; the latter gives information on how a speaker sees her/his conversational partners. In fact, discursive acts of self- and other-positioning are heavily interrelated: By speakers claiming particular aspects of identity for themselves, they inevitably assign particular attributes to their conversational partners. According to Lucius-Hoene and Deppermann (2000), a position that is invoked during a conversation may relate to MM

MM

MM

MM

personal attributes (psychological characteristics, such as ‘extroversion’, ‘creativity’ or ‘independence’) social identities (such as ‘teacher’, ‘soccer fan’ or ‘suffragette’) role-related rights and responsibilities (such as ‘authority’, ‘competence’ or ‘concernment’) moral attributes and claims (such as ‘sincerity’, ‘victimhood’ or ‘accussant’).

Acts of positioning cannot be reduced to distinct speech act categories (cf. Searle 1969) and may be performed directly or indirectly. In other words, personal characteristics, social identities or moral attributes may be ascribed explicitly to selves and others, as in ‘I’m a fan of FC Bayern’, or may evolve rather implicitly and depend more on the interpretation of the conversational partners, as in ‘FC Bayern has won 47 national and 8 international titles’. Straightforward acts of positioning always run the risk of threatening the interlocutors’ individual face wants (see Brown and Levinson 1987), while overly vague identity claims might not be recognized as such by conversational partners. As Lucius-Hoene and Deppermann (2000) show, when positioning self and other, it is a matter of rhetorical knowledge to evoke the desired attributes without being accused of self-praise or blunt critique. In their recent study, Bolander and Locher (2010) apply positioning theory to investigate identity acts performed by ten Swiss Facebookers. More precisely, the authors focus on two types of self-presentation actions in detail: First, on self-presentation practices evolving from the information categories of a Personal Profile and, secondly, on identity actions that are performed via Status

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Updates. As they show, Fb’s profile categories elicit a range of identity claims that stretch from indirect self-presentation through ‘Enumeratives’ to explicit identity actions via ‘Self-labelling’. ‘Enumeratives’ foreground information on members’ activities, hobbies and interests and are thus only indirectly connected to identity construction. In contrast, [s]elf-labelling can be seen to constitute a relatively explicit form of identity construction […] since individuals choose labels to describe themselves, thereby straightforwardly and unambiguously placing themselves in categories (e.g., the category of sex/gender) and positioning (Davies and Harré) themselves within the categories (e.g., by selecting from the options ‘man’ or ‘woman’ within this category). Bolander and Locher 2010: 166

While previous findings (Zhao et al. 2008) highlight ‘Enumeratives’ as a frequently employed means for implicit identity creation, in their sample Bolander and Locher (2010) found a relative lack of information on members’ interests and activities. On the other hand, their data provides evidence for explicit identity construction, as the majority of their sample members openly disclosed information concerning their date of birth and their relationship status. In relation to identity construction via Status Updates, the authors establish a frequency list of prototypical contents that their sample members shared with their friends: The most prominent contents comprise references to members’ state of mind and information on what they are doing. In the authors’ view, such information effects in implicit acts of positioning that ascribe certain attributes to profile owners and their friends. In sum, Bolander and Locher (2010) provide evidence that Fb-bound identities are, in particular, invoked through implicit identity claims as opposed to explicit ones. While they open up a range of different strategies that aid members in ascribing attributes to themselves and others, the authors neglect to question in what sense Fb biases members in their discursive acts of identity. When asking how the categories of a Personal Profile interrelate with identity construction, we have to remember that these categories are, by design, pre-set by the software service and involve lists of key words that have great impact on the members’ semiotic choices. Likewise, Fb’s automatic text generation limits members’ individual sociostylistic choices, while automatic text distribution intervenes in the contexts in which members’ acts of identities are performed. The focus of my work is less directed at gaining insight into the identities of individual Fb members and more on how acts of identity construction are biased by the options that are pre-set by the software service. Hence, the text



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analysis will, in particular, discuss in what sense individual members lose and/or maintain their individual ‘voices’ or in what sense they employ new and ‘Fb-specific voices’ for constructing identities. Closely connected to this is how the software service’s inherent ‘bricolage tools’ (i.e. Fb’s quote and text automation utilities) result in the evolution of individual styles, or to put it differently, in the manifestation/systemization of using Fb-specific resources in new ways. The text analysis will therefore account for identity construction only insofar as the discursive construction of self and others mirrors the impact of the software service. In order to unveil the media bias of presenting self and others with Fb, this book will focus on six particular members. While the data interpretation will also touch upon individual social meanings and groups that sample members affiliate with, the primary focus is on the individual employment of Fb’s text automation tools for identity work. To this end, the text data will not only be searched for the habitual outsourcing of text creation processes, but also for how users compensate for the lack of individual ‘voices’. Moreover, the data will be discussed in terms of metapragmatic comments that reflect the media-dependent conditioning of what they do with and within Fb.

Limitations and implications for data collection methods The application of speech act theory to Fb-bound actions has brought forward a set of categories that account for the service’s gradual impact on the performance of user text actions. Moreover, a review of research on language and (Fb) identities sheds light on the question of how the outsourcing of text actions interrelates with the discursive construction of Fb-related identities. Out of this arise various implications for the data collection methods that can be summarized in the following way: (1) In relation to the two readings of intentionality, we have no access to a Fb member’s mental world when performing an action. His/her intended effects can only be elicited qualitatively, i.e. through retrospective accounts. Hence, I designed and implemented questionnaires that are directed at acquiring information on members’ intentions for using Fb. On a more general level, some questions focus on the overall purpose of members using Fb, while others elicit, on a more specific level, the communicative aims of Fb members’ individual text actions. Additionally, the results of the questionnaires will be discussed individually in personal interviews.

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(2) Accounting for the concept of text action as a complex and multi-layered phenomenon, this chapter developed categories that disclose Fb-specific action patterns. Applying this model to a critical discussion of practical data enables us to distinguish and quantify the relative impact Fb has on individual members’ text actions. However, insights from such a textual analysis have to be backed by qualitative information concerning the members’ perception of being in control of and/or outsourcing layers of Fb-bound text actions. (3) When challenging identity actions on Fb, we need to consider how its semiotic resources interrelate with and/or bias the discursive presentation of self and others. From a broader perspective, ‘Fb-biased identities’ will be considered by disclosing patterns of text actions that were performed by six Fb sample members over a period of four months. A more narrow analysis will then discuss how the sample members employ Fb-specific resources for discursive self-presentation and in what sense they are aware of being conditioned by the software service they use. Though the methodological approach developed promises to deliver a rich and comprehensive portrait of how actual members are biased by the electronic environment when performing text actions, certain limitations need to be acknowledged: Principally, the proposed categories assume more or less prototypical actions and do not account for individual variations. In this sense, blank text templates prototypically prompt users to perform Genuine-CTAs. However, Fb members may fill in the templates by using the copy and paste function and thus reproduce a text from a source within the Fb environment without performing the utterance act, which would correspond to a Quoted-CTA. Likewise, hyperlink templates typically involve members performing a Quoted-CTA. The incorporated text, picture, video or audio files may be, however, captured by individual personal comments that correspond to Genuine-CTAs. It follows that the developed categories are to be treated as reference points that still leave room for a critical evaluation and interpretation of individual user text actions. Moreover, the question of whether the performance of a text action was actually planned and intended by members (as in the case of Transparent-ATAs) or was performed involuntarily (as in Opaque-ATAs) cannot be assessed solely from text data, but calls for an integration of qualitative information. We also have to keep in mind that members have the possibility of adjusting personal privacy settings in order to prevent certain texts from being automatically replicated and dispersed throughout the Fb environment.



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Data collection: Sampling user groups and text actions In the following discussion I will draw attention to the practical implications of my findings and discuss how Fb biases actual member actions. To this end, I assembled a carefully chosen corpus of Fb-bound texts. With over one billion Fb members worldwide sampling members of the target population is no easy undertaking. Obviously, the data quantity had to be manageable within the scope of this book and the sample had to be representative in relation to demographic patterns. Because I wanted to be able to interview the profile owners in person, I added a social filter to my scope that limited the range to members based in Germany. According to the Internet market research company ‘socialbakers’, with 25.2 million members, Germany currently holds the tenth position of the top Fb countries. There are slightly more male (51.2 per cent) than female (48.8 per cent) Facebookers and the most active members are between 26 and 34 years old (26.1 per cent), followed by the 18 to 25 age group (25.8 per cent) and the 13 to 17 year olds (20.1 per cent).6 Following Prensky (2001), the majority of these age groups belong to the generation of ‘digital natives’ for whom digital media technologies already existed when they were born. In this sense, the generation born roughly between 1980 and 1994 (see Benett, Maton and Kervin 2008) is ascribed a high familiarity with and strong reliance on information technologies. In Prensky’s (2001) view, digital natives have ‘spent their entire lives surrounded by and using […] tools of the digital age’7 and are ‘all native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet’ (2001: 1). However, the sophisticated technical skills that distinguish one generation from the next are of less interest here. By asking in what sense electronic media bias user practices, this book is instead concerned with a critical and reflective application of information technologies. Of course such a focus also involves a member’s specific knowledge concerning de-coding and encoding Fb-bound meaning (in the sense of ‘coding competence’ as proposed by Luke 1992), but is principally directed at the users’ critical stances towards their Fb operations. The latter resembles what Luke (1992) has referred to as a reader’s ‘critical competence’ in perusing traditional texts, i.e. the knowledge of ‘how texts code cultural ideologies, and how they position readers in subtle and often quite exploitative ways’ (Luke 1992: 10). In the context of my work, a ‘critical competence’ in the software service Fb Source: http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/germany Such as computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams or cell phones.

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involves the reflection that the pre-set templates and text automation properties are neither natural nor neutral, but are highly influential in the presentation of self and others. Regarding my data collection, I selected Fb members who were ‘native speakers of Fb’, but who differed in terms of their critical stances towards Fb. Drawing on insights from literacy research that proposes different levels of literacy skills for different age groups and/or education levels,8 I developed the hypothesis that older and/or more highly educated Facebookers displayed more awareness of their texts being ‘software-directed’ than younger and less educated Fb members. With this in mind, I contacted colleagues, my students and school teachers and thus gained access to two groups of Facebookers with three members each. The first group is referred to as Technophile Students and is comprised of one female and two male Facebookers, aged 25 to 29, who know each other from ‘offline contexts’. They are based in Augsburg and Hamburg, spend much of their leisure time online and indicated a particular interest in digital media.9 All of them passed their German Abitur (A-levels) and were at the time of data collection enrolled in university with two majoring in the arts and one member majoring in information science. From their sociolinguistic profiles and/or educational backgrounds, it seems reasonable to argue that all sample members belonging to the group of Technophile Students, have high literacy proficiency and the ability to assess texts critically, for example by discussing the ideological motivations of proposed meanings. From their shared interest in digital cultures, we can expect a deep understanding of electronic media that goes beyond a basic ability to operate software environments and/or utilize electronic devices. The second sample group is referred to as Digital Pupils and consists of two female teenagers (ages 15 and 16) and one 17–year-old male teenager. The befriended female teenagers, both based in Munich, are classmates and share various friends in offline as well as in Fb contexts. They have no connections to the male pupil, who is based in Essen. Concerning their social and educational backgrounds, all sample members come from upper working-class to middle-class backgrounds. One of the female teenagers has a Turkish background and came to Germany at the age of four. At the time of data PISA evaluated levels of students’ proficiency by drawing on three different ‘scales’: ‘A “retrieving information” scale reports on students’ ability to locate information in a text. An “interpreting texts” scale reports on the ability to construct meaning and draw inferences from written information. A “reflection and evaluation” scale reports on students’ ability to relate text to their knowledge, ideas and experiences” (OECD 2003: 38).  9 One member belonging to the Technophile Students kept a personal Weblog that addressed contemporary issues relating to the interrelation between digital media and culture.  8



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collection, the two female teenagers were in grade nine of a private commercial school that qualifies students for apprenticeship in mid-level service vocations (i.e. German ‘Realschule’), while the male teenager was in the tenth grade of a German Gymnasium (high school). In terms of critical competence, I expected the Digital Pupils to have a significantly lower level of literacy proficiency compared to the Technophile Students. With the male teenager being one year older and attending a more academic school than the girls, I estimated his ability to critically engage with texts to be more developed than the girls but lower than the university students. General information regarding the sample members’ online practices and Fb experience was gathered with the help of a questionnaire and is presented in the table below. I replaced the sample members’ real names with pseudonyms for privacy protection. As indicated in Table 4.7, all of the sample members met the requirement of being ‘Fb natives’ as they have been maintaining a Fb account for at least one year and rated their Fb proficiency at seven out of ten or higher. The Technophile Students spend more than twice as much time online than the group of Digital Pupils, while the pupils spend slightly more time using Fb than the students. It is interesting to note that all members of the Digital Pupils’ group spend as much time online as they spend on Fb. In a personal interview they indicated that every time they log onto the Internet they also access their Fb accounts and stay logged on while surfing the Internet. Taking a look at the estimated number of times they accessed their Fb accounts and created texts in Fb, the quantity varies greatly within both groups. However, on average, the pupils’ self-assessment positions them as being a little more active than the student members. Some sample members applied individual privacy settings, while others did not make use of this option. In order to assess the impact of Fb on the sample members’ text actions and/ or to determine in what sense differences in critical literacy skills are mirrored in the sample members’ text practices, I compiled a corpus of Fb-bound text actions. When presenting themselves and interacting with others on Fb, the sample members used predominately German language. To enhance the comprehensibility, I translated the examples that are discussed in my analysis into English. The sampling of text actions performed by the two user groups were drawn exclusively from the actions displayed on the Fb members’ profile Walls. As a characteristic feature, the profile Wall presents most of the activities an individual member has performed over longer periods of time. Such a standardized recording of network activities facilitates the compilation of a sample of text actions. However, collecting data this way involves certain restrictions,

164

Group

Name

Age

Techn. Students

Paul Max Gretel Jacob Sophia Mary

25 28 25 17 16 15

Digital Pupils

Fb member Time spent Time spent for online daily using Fb daily 21 months 2 years 2 years 1 year 2 years 1 year

6–9 h 9–12 h 6–9 h 1–3 h 3–6 h 1–3 h

less than 1 h 1–3 h 1–3 h 1–3 h 3–6 h 1–3 h

Estimated No of times Fb accessed daily

Estimated No of texts created in Fb

Privacy settings

Fb proficiency on a scale of 1 to 10

20 to 35 6 to 10 10 to 20 20 to 35 35 to 50 1 to 3

4 to 8 daily 4 to 6 weekly 4 to 6 weekly 4 to 6 weekly 12 to 16 daily 4 to 6 weekly

Yes No No Yes No Yes

9 7 7 8 8 8

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Table 4.7: Background information on the sample members’ online practices



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as not all text actions a user performed are necessarily displayed as entries: Principally, the presentation of member text actions on profile Walls is subject to individual privacy settings.10 We must also keep in mind that members may delete individual entries and that there are some actions which are, by design, not documented as Wall entries.11 Though an individual member’s Wall data omits certain user text actions, the profile Wall provides a rich and authentic source for compiling a corpus of Fb text actions. While more comprehensive methods of data collection would inevitably involve an artificial research setting in which participants would be required to continually record and reflect on what they do while using Fb, Wall entries evolve more or less naturally as a side effect of a member’s network activities. Principally, we can distinguish three different types of content on user Walls: MM

MM

MM

First, entries created by the profile owner Secondly, entries created by befriended members Thirdly, entries generated by the software service.

Corresponding to the book’s focus, I was primarily interested in the textual performance of selected sample members. Hence, I paid particular attention to the first and third Wall entry types. More precisely, I accounted for Wall entries authored by the profile owner as well as for software-authored entries that were initiated by the profile owner. Wall entries of befriended members were only included for interpreting the sample members’ texts, for example to explain the communicative intent of her/his Fb-bound acts. Table 4.8 provides an overview of the most common Wall entry types, describes its prototypical contents and discloses its underlying actions according to categories developed in this chapter. In order to label individual user text actions in the analysis, I abbreviated the Wall entry types through acronyms. Note that I do not claim these categories to be exhaustive. As shown for the category of software-authored Wall entries, not all software-generated texts are necessarily based on users having outsourced the propositional acts of Fb performance. In fact, software-authored entry types, such as ‘Post’ and ‘Personal Data Action’, may also result from a profile owner’s

Members of my sample groups who adjusted their privacy settings limited their changes to settings concerning the profile access but did not alter the Wall display settings. These include, among others, sending private messages, deleting content and pressing the Poke button.

10

11

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Table 4.8: A categorization of Fb’s most common Wall entry types Authorship

Entry Type

Content

Underlying action

User –authored Wall entries

Status Update [SU] Comment [C]

Individual texts of limited length triggered by the question “What’s on your mind?” Individual responses to previous text actions

Genuine Creative Text Action Genuine Creative Text Action Quoted Creative Text Action Automated Text Action

Multimodal Post [MP] Software –authored Wall entries

Incorporated multimodal texts that were originally stored outside Fb including photos, Websites, audio and video files Friend Standardized text informing of a new Action [FA] network connection, i.e. Kurt and Sonja are now friends Like Action Standardized evaluation of a previous [LA] text action, i.e. Kurt likes this Post [P] Standardized text informing of text posted to a befriended member’s Wall, including written posts, comments and multimodal texts, i.e. Kurt wrote on Sonja’s Wall Personal Standardized text informing of a Data Action change of personal data, i.e. Kurt is [PA] now single Group Action [GA] Event Action [EA] Application Action [APP]

Standardized text informing of inclusion in a Fb group, i.e. Kurt has joined the sausage dog group Standardized text informing of attendance at an event, i.e. Kurt is attending Sonja’s party Quiz-like games that generate/elicit all kinds of information on a profile owner and her/his network friends i.e. Dirty secrets of your friends Kurt…. farts while singing

Automated Text Action Genuine or Quoted Creative Text Action Genuine Creative Text Action or Automated Text Actions Automated Text Action Automated Text Action Automated Text Action

Genuine- or Quoted-CTAs. Generally, software-generated posts evolve from and/or report on all kinds of member Primary Text Actions, such as: MM

MM

clicking the Add Friend, Like, Join Group or other Buttons posting or commenting on entries that are displayed on befriended members’ Walls



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MM

MM

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changing personal information operating the Fb platform

As we can see, a sample member’s active participation in the creation of a software-authored Wall entry extends from the general actions of operating the Fb environment (e.g. modifying the language settings) to specific performances that are directed at some type of automatic text creation, e.g. clicking the Like Button. However, we can never be sure about the context a member intended when performing a primary action: While in some cases an action, such as changing one’s personal information, may be primarily directed at one’s personal data page, in other cases the same action’s aim may be the generation and distribution of a software-generated text. Hence, when sampling and segmenting user text action, I accounted for the introduced division in Primary Text Actions that account for a member’s original textual performances and Secondary Text Actions that evolve as an after-effect of Primary Text Actions. The raw data used for the compilation of a text action corpus was excerpted from the sample members’ profile Walls within three fixed time frames, each comprising a period of four months: Between 2 July and 2 November 2010, I collected the text actions performed by two female teenage Facebookers (i.e. Sophia and Mary) and two male student Facebookers (i.e. Paul and Max). During the process of data collection, I realized that I needed to enhance my sample in relation to gender issues and thus included the text actions of a male teenage Facebooker (i.e. Franz) as well as those of a female student Facebooker (i.e. Gretel) that were performed between 5 September 2010 and 5 January 2011. However, Franz failed to produce a letter of permission signed by his parents. Therefore, I decided to focus on the actions performed by a different male teenager (i.e. Jacob) and collected his Fb-bound actions between 1 December 2010 and 1 April 2011. When compiling the raw data into a corpus, I segmented and edited the text actions for manual analysis in several methodological steps: After having obtained permission from the profile owners12 to use their data in my work, I set up a Fb research account and befriended all sample members. This enabled me to call up each member’s profile Wall and to download excerpts of what they did with and within Fb. The data was then converted to pdf format and printed out in order to get a general idea of the quantity and type of actions the sample members performed. Following this, I grouped each data transcript according to the member’s participation in the generation of the text entry. As In the case of the under-aged Digital Pupils, I requested the parents sign a letter of consent.

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a first step, I categorized a member’s CTAs or ‘user-authored texts’ displayed on her/his profile Wall as Status Updates, Comments and Multimodal Posts (see Table 4.8). As a second step, I browsed the ‘software-authored texts’ on the member’s Wall and classified them according to the action that initiated their display. Some software-generated Wall entries gave evidence of underlying userauthored Primary Text Actions, such as posting Wall entries, posting comments or attaching multimodal content onto befriended members’ profile Walls. They were thus added to the category of CTAs and further distinguished in Hint to Wall Post, Hint to Comment and Hint to Multimodal Post. Other softwaregenerated Wall entries resulted from software-based Primary Text Actions: By operating the Fb environment, such as changing the language settings, clicking the Like Button or ticking boxes, members triggered the creation and dispersion of software-based propositions and thus performed ATAs. Table 4.9 illustrates the categories in which I segmented the sample members’ text actions and presents a prototypical example of each type. While the transfer of the labour of text creation to the software can be investigated formally, the text material gives no information on how Fb supports and/or interferes with the Fb members’ individual communicative aims. When segmenting and classifying the sample members’ Fb-bound actions, I therefore included displayed comments and reactions of befriended members to the Wall entries. This enabled me to evaluate a sample member’s texts in terms of its communicative functions and/or the group(s) she/he had in mind when performing the action. Moreover, I looked for peculiarities and irregularities, for example ATAs that were performed with great frequency and/or only once, and discussed supposed cases of ‘Opaque’ and/or ‘Non-Intentional Text Actions’ with each sample member individually. However, the majority of unintentionally performed actions cannot be identified formally: As shown, Fb members may not even be aware of having activated an automatic creation and/ or distribution of textual propositions. Therefore, I designed and implemented a questionnaire that aimed at providing insights into the sample members’ individual experiences and perceptions when using Fb.13 Each question was More precisely, the questionnaire consisted of 15 central questions and aimed in particular at three types of information: First, bio data and information regarding the user’s general Internet and/or Fb experience; secondly, data on the sample members’ overall purpose for using Fb, and, thirdly, information on their individual experience and impression of being other-directed when using Fb. When designing and compiling the questions I paid particular attention to the wording of questions as it could influence people’s answers (see Brown 2009 in Heighham and Croker 2009). Moreover, I piloted the questionnaire by asking friends and colleagues to give their feedback. After I adopted slight changes, I compiled the final questions into a digital questionnaire that was presented to the sample users. The questionnaire was generated and distributed with the help of the Web-based survey tool SurveyMonkey.

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Table 4.9: Text action categorization scheme for the analysis Creative Text Action

Automated Text Action

Entry type

Example

Entry type

Example

Status Update [SU]

Kurt is having lunch Kurt wrote a post on Sonja’s Wall

Friend [FA]

just wrote this Wall entry to say hello That’s very nice Kurt commented on Sonja’s Status Update vimeo.com Little bit of Soul (music video) Kurt posted a link on Sonja’s Wall

Event [EA]

Kurt and Sonja are now friends Kurt likes Phillip Lahm (soccer player) Kurt attended Sonja’s Party

Hint to Wall post [C] Comment [C]

Hint to Comment [C] Multimodal Post [MP] Hint to Multimodal Post [MP]

Like [LA]

Group [GA]

Kurt joined the sausage dog group

Personal [PA]

Kurt is now single

Application [APP]

The omniscient zombie has told Kurt a secret about Sonja “Sonja loves flowers”

introduced with a prototypical example of an imaginative Fb user experiencing communicative clashes. A short description explicated how the illustrated text actions interfered with the member’s communicative aims, before the survey participants were asked about similar situations they experienced on Fb. The first question addressed individual experiences with Non-Intended ATAs. Related to this, survey participants were presented with a screenshot of a discussion board entry14 in which a Fb member asked for advice on how to reverse software-generated friend requests that he initiated unintentionally (see Figure 4.3). With reference to the illustrated example, survey participants were asked if they dealt with similar situations in which they accidentally generated friend requests, Wall posts or other texts. The second question related to unintentionally performed actions that result from Fb’s automatic text distribution properties. As shown, by design, Source: http://www.turkish-talk.com/computerfragen/43526-hilfe-kann-man-das-rueckgaengigmachen.html

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Figure 4.3: Non-Intended Automated Text Action

Fb disperses user-generated texts among networks of befriended members. Particular members with large and divergent lists of friends have great difficulties anticipating the diverse social contexts to which their data is automatically distributed. Accordingly, the second question used a screenshot of two posts whose automatic distribution yielded a clash of social contexts: In a Status Update the imaginative member ‘Kerstin S.’ reported her feelings toward her new colleague and was apparently not aware that her post was distributed to the News Feed stream of her mother. Likewise, her second post – a softwaregenerated text reporting her recent activities on Farmville – could be read by her boss, who commented, complaining about her playing games during working hours. From these examples, survey participants were prompted to report similar experiences. The third question also addressed the unintentional contextualization of user data. However, here the focus was not on a member’s thoughtless use of Fb’s automatic text distribution properties, but on her/his befriended members who uploaded information on a member against her/his wishes. To this end, a prototypical example illustrated a situation in which a member was tagged in a picture against her wishes. As a result of the tagging action of a befriended member, a photo of her was dispersed to her Fb network. Accordingly, survey participants were asked about undesired tagging actions by befriended members.



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Figure. 4.4: Unintentional contextualization of user data15

Figure 4.5: Non-Intended tagging action16

The introduction of a questionnaire into the study elicited information about the sample members’ Fb experiences as well as their individual perceptions and attitudes when using Fb. Following the design of my research project, the Photo copyrights: © Benjamin Thorn / PIXELIO’, © Erich Westendarp / PIXELIO’ Photo copyrights: © Benjamin Thorn / PIXELIO’, © Erich Westendarp / PIXELIO’

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findings from the questionnaire-based survey were correlated with the results from my formal analysis and further enhanced through personal interviews. The combination of multiple data gathering techniques along with the application of different theories revealed different perspectives on how Fb affects members in the performance of text actions. The clustering of types of Wall entries together with the sampling of qualitative data was intended to disclose the interrelation between individual member intentions and the members’ deployment of Fb’s text automation properties. Such a focus aimed not only to investigate how the software service resulted in members involuntarily creating and/or dispersing texts, but also accounted for the members’ purposeful outsourcing of their text actions. In relation to the latter, the data sample was searched for individual acts of positioning self and others. Acknowledging Fb’s role in the reduction and standardization of semiotic resources, I was particularly interested in how the sample members compensated for their lack of individual ‘voices’, i.e. through comments or the creation of a subtle and individual style. Such a focus also included an investigation of the sample members’ ‘critical competence’ by searching for user-generated texts that questioned and reflected on the mediadependent conditioning of doing things with Fb.

Data analysis Corresponding to the issues under focus and the developed methodological framework, the data analysis comprises the following steps: First I will provide a quantification and categorization of Fb-bound text actions and give insight into the sample groups ‘text outsourcing practices’ from an empirical point of view. Following this, I shall deliver a fine-grained discussion of each member’s ‘software-directedness’ by integrating disclosed action patterns as displayed on the profile Wall with more qualitative information elicited in interviews and the questionnaire. Finally, I will summarize the most important findings and discuss them in relation to previous research as well as in relation to the sample members’ critical stances toward Fb. My data sample comprises a total of 2,441 text actions, 2,213 text actions performed by the group of Digital Pupils and 228 text actions carried out by the group of Technophile Students. This means that, within the four-month period, the group of Digital Pupils performed almost ten times more Fb-bound actions than the Technophile Students. The pie chart below depicts the compilation of my corpus in percentages.



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Chart 4.1: Compilation of corpus in percentages

We can see that the sample member Sophia generated more than half of the text actions, followed by Mary, who created almost one-third of the texts. The total number of actions carried out by the group of Technophile Students (Paul, Max and Gretel) makes up less than 10 per cent of all actions, which is still lower than the number of actions performed by Jacob. When comparing the frequency of text actions within the sample groups, we find that the quantitative distribution within the Technophile Student group is much more even than in the group of Digital Pupils: Sophia performed more than five times more actions than Jacob, while Paul carried out less than twice as many actions as Gretel. In terms of the amount of time the sample members spent on Fb, the Digital Pupils only slightly exceeded the Technophile Students (see Table 4.7). However, in relation to the quantity of performed text actions, the two sample groups differed vastly. The drastic difference may, among other reasons, be due to an increased utilization of software-based texts. The generation and display of software-based texts is much less time-consuming than the creation of user-authored texts: Facebookers have no need to choose and/or to animate individual semiotic signs, since a simple mouse click or other platform operation activates software-authored propositions. As evidenced in Chart 4.2 and 4.3, differing amounts of Fb activity among the two sample groups correlate with different levels of participation when performing Fb-bound text actions among users. Chart 4.2 illustrates in percentages the share of text actions performed by the group of Digital Pupils. In almost two-thirds of their actions, the sample group outsourced the performance of their locutionary acts to the software service.

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Chart 4.2: The share of actions performed by the Digital Pupils

The most prominent action type was the Like ATA followed by the Friend ATA. It is noteworthy that Comments, which correspond to the category of CTA, were the third most frequent action type. The high quantity of Like, Friend and Comments actions highlights the interactional character of Fb discourse, which is, besides self-presentation, directed at establishing and maintaining online communities. However, the Digital Pupils commonly outsourced the individual wordings that signify ‘friendship maintenance’ to pre-set and standardized software-based texts. Significantly, fewer software-authored texts were activated by the Technophile Students. As we can see, less than one-third of the actions the Technophile Students performed involved the employment of software-authored texts (ATAs), while they selected and/or animated individual texts in more than 70 per cent of the actions (CTAs). Like the Digital Pupils, the Technophile Students stand out through the frequent creation of comments. Unlike the teenage Facebookers,

Chart 4.3: The share of actions performed by the Technophile Students



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the students frequently incorporated Multimodal Posts into their profile Walls. Another significant difference can be seen in the utilization of Fb applications: While none of the Technophile Students made use of them, Fb applications accounted for 18.7 per cent of the actions carried out by the Digital Pupils. As these group-specific usage patterns show, the teenagers delegated their text creation processes to the software service twice as often as the university students and performed almost ten times more actions than the students. We can therefore deduce an overall correlation between the quantity of Fb-bound actions and the utilization of software-authored texts. Moreover, it has been shown that frequently applied action types, i.e. Comments and Like ATAs, connect with identified key features of SNS. However, such a quantification and categorization of text actions accounts for the impact of Fb on user text actions only in a one dimensional and superficial way. In this sense, we can establish that the teenagers employ software-generated texts more frequently than the group of university students, but we still have no information on how this correlates with the sample members’ individual communicative aims. For an understanding of how the electronic environment supports, biases and/or interferes with discursive self-presentation, I conducted a fine-grained analysis of each sample member’s profile Wall. The quantitative discussion of Fb-bound text actions developed broad patterns in relation to how different user groups utilize the software service. In the following I will discuss these findings by looking at each sample member’s text actions individually. This will integrate the qualitative information on the sample member’s individual perceptions when using Fb with findings that evolved from the text analysis.

The Digital Pupils: Sophia, Mary and Jacob The Digital Pupils performed manifold text actions and to a relatively large extent, outsourced their text creation processes. Acknowledging that the quantity of performed actions varied drastically among group members, we have to keep in mind that the depicted patterns, with the Digital Pupil group outsourcing two-thirds of the text creation processes (see Chart 4.2), do not necessarily apply to all the sample members equally. However, as evidenced below, all Digital Pupils outsourced at least 60 per cent of their text creation actions. For insight into how a high quantity of outsourced text creation practices intervenes in the communicative flow between the sample members (i.e. the Digital Pupils) and befriended Facebookers, I will now turn to a more detailed

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Chart 4.4: The share of actions performed by each Digital Pupil member

discussion of each member’s profile Wall. The main question is to what degree members maintain or lose control over the actions they perform. In addition, I will discuss how discursive acts of presenting self and others are biased by the software service and if, and in what sense, members address ‘being softwaredirected’ meta-communicatively.

Sophia The 1,263 actions performed by Sophia include 405 CTAs and 858 ATAs. Such a quantification exposes Sophia’s text creation practices as being highly affected by the software service, but entails no information on the extent to which Sophia was in command of her textual performances. From her questionnaire responses, Sophia reported no instances of involuntarily distributed information, although she indicated that Fb applications would occasionally create Wall entries against her will. Moreover, Sophia pointed out that she sometimes felt uncomfortable with befriended members uploading and tagging photos



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of her. The text analysis disclosed that this sample member’s Non-Intended Text Actions resulted not only from the Fb applications, but also from her misjudgement of Fb’s automatic re-contextualization of texts: While browsing through her profile data, I noticed the reappearance of a sequence of comments that evolved initially in response to a photo album showing a picture of Sophia’s boyfriend. Example 1: [MP] stuff [title of the photo album] [C] i love you i love you too ^^ haha little cousin who do you love ^^ xD my boyfriend you buffoon xD blondie xD ya…i love you too she loves it when unknown people approach her to confess their love     *laugther* =)

Every time Sophia added a new photo to the album, the picture was not only displayed as a Wall entry but also annotated with previous comments. Within the period of investigation, the above quoted sequence of comments was in seven cases automatically incorporated into her profile Wall and, simultaneously, distributed among Sophia’s network of friends. In one case the automatic re-contextualization of Sophia’s previous comments conflicted specifically with Sophia’s individual communicative aims: After having generated a post which indicated that Sophia is having trouble in her relationship, she added a photo to her album and thus initiated the replication of a previously uttered confession of love to her boyfriend: Example 2: [PA] Sophia is in a relationship with Erik and it’s complicated [MP] stuff [title of the photo album] [C] i love you i love you too ^^ haha little cousin who do you love ^^ xD my boyfriend you buffoon xD blondie xD ya…i love you too she loves it when unknown people approach her to confess their love    *laugther* =)

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In a personal interview, Sophia pointed out that she did not anticipate the re-contextualization of comments and that all she wanted was to add a new picture to her album. We can therefore consider it a Non-Intended Text Action. A similar case of a Non-Intended Text Action evolved from her Status Updates: When examining her text action transcript, I came across two different Status Updates that Sophia appeared to have written twice. At a second glance, I noticed that the log dates of the recycled posts where identical to those of the original Status Updates. In the interview Sophia reported that sometimes when she accessed Fb from her mobile phone to write Status Updates, her posts showed up twice. As she had no explanation for the automatic duplication of her posts, I conducted an Internet search on this issue and found out that ‘double posts’ is a known problem on Fb and that the company is looking at ways to work around it.17 Regarding Sophia’s utilization of Fb applications, I wondered why she would post the results of the ‘what’s your ideal weight’ application on an almost daily basis. Between mid-September, when Sophia started using the application and the beginning of November, there are 24 software-authored posts on Sophia’s ideal weight. In the personal interview, Sophia said that she had absolutely no clue why the software repeatedly generated these posts: On days when I’m not online things are reported on my Wall that I have supposedly done – though I have not. (translated from personal interview held on 18 November 2010)

A closer investigation of the Fb application ‘calculate your ideal weight’ revealed that Sophia had to give data-access permission rights prior to using the software. These included not only permission to access her personal information and her approval to let the software post on her profile Wall, but also her agreement that the software may access her data at any time, even when she is not online. In 45 Wall entries I found evidence of Sophia having performed ‘Opaque-ATAs’. All of them evolved from Sophia having used external Websites that incorporate the Fb Like Button.18 Though she intended the reproduction of particular propositions within Fb, the software failed to replicate the text and generated instead the proposition ‘Sophia likes My-Likes.de on www.My-Likes. de’ (see Figure 4.7). In this sense, Sophia anticipated the creation of a softwarebased text, but expected different propositions to be displayed. See ‘double post’ on Fb’s discussion board http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2411052087and topic=3134 Among them Gefaellt-mir.com or My-Likes.de, which entail lists of preset propositions next to Fb’s like button.

17

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Figure 4.6: The ‘Calculate Your Ideal Weight’ application

Figure 4.7: Failed incorporation of an external Like action

Concerning the question to what degree Sophia lost and/or maintained control over her actions, the text analysis disclosed a total of 33 Non-Intended Text Actions. In 24 cases Sophia lost control over the automatic text generation and in nine cases Sophia was no longer in command over the distribution (or re-contextualization) of texts. This contrasts with Sophia’s self-assessment as someone highly familiar with the Fb platform as well as with the answers she provided in the questionnaire. With more than two-thirds of her actions involving software-generated texts, Fb had a great impact on how Sophia presented herself and others. Sophia performed 381 expressive text actions with the help of the Like Button. It is interesting to note that there were only ten Like actions in response to texts that were generated by befriended members. It follows that Sophia performed Like actions primarily to position herself rather than her network friends. When doing so, she frequently utilized external Like Websites, such as My-Likes.de, and incorporated all kinds of texts into her profile Wall ranging from jokes, via made-up sayings to her specific taste in men: Example 3: [LA] Sophia likes boys with long hair [LA] Sophia likes ‘hey can I get your MSN addy? Cuty? – [email protected]’. [LA] Sophia likes men in army uniforms are extremely sexy

By using external Like Websites Sophia ascribed all kinds of personal attributes to herself, i.e. being a funny person with a specific taste in men. Nevertheless,

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none of these positioning acts were acknowledged by her befriended members, i.e. through Comments or Like actions. Sophia indicated in the personal interview that she utilized external Like Websites to share funny and exciting stuff with her friends. Contrary to the meanings deriving from the pre-set wording ‘Sophia likes …’, she emphasized that the texts would not necessarily express her positive evaluation of the individual content. In relation to the software-based text ‘Sophia likes if you break my heart, I break your legs’, she pointed out that she would never do this to someone, but simply found the text amusing and worth sharing among her friends. As opposed to Like actions, Sophia’s Personal Data actions elicited various responses from several Fb friends. In particular, her text actions relating her relationship status elicited many comments from befriended Facebookers. Example 4: [PA] Sophia is in a relationship with Erik and it’s complicated [C] oO I have the same problem :’( =( oh sweetie ♥ I’ll know more within three days everything will turn out all right ♥ oh darling why is it complicated?? LU darling let’s catch up ♥ heyy yeah it will be fine, i hope, your’ re right we need to catch up =)

By changing her personal data settings, Sophia triggered the generation of a software-authored text that contributes to the construction of her social identity, namely being in a complicated relationship with the identifiable Fb member ‘Erik’. Her befriended members acknowledged her social identity through comments expressing their compassion for Sophia’s situation. One of her friends admits that she is in the same situation. She expresses not only solidarity with Sophia but also implicitly creates the social identity of someone in a relationship herself. In the interview Sophia pointed out that she anticipated the initiation of a software-based text and performed the action less to keep her profile data up to date than to let her friends know how she felt. Similar to software-authored texts, Sophia also employed self-authored Status Updates to position herself indirectly as being in a relationship with someone. Most notably, some of these Status Updates communicated her current emotional state and lacked explicit addressees, while others entailed her love declaration directed at her boyfriend.



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Example 5: [SU] misses her darling and hopes that the week goes by quickly [SU] finally you are back my darling I love you soo much

Though Sophia’s text actions are, by design, contextualized in a (semi-)public space, as they are automatically distributed in the News Feed streams of all of her 368 Fb friends, Sophia repeatedly addressed her boyfriend on a lexicogrammatical level. Within the examination period, I found seven Status Updates in which Sophia declared her love to her boyfriend. When asked why she did not choose more private means of communication,19 Sophia responded that she wanted to let her friends participate in her emotional world. By deliberately contextualizing her love declarations in a (semi-)public space, Sophia indirectly invoked the social identity of ‘being in love with someone’ among her friends. Moreover, with her Fb friends witnessing her declaration of love, Sophia’s action gained credibility. Sophia’s construction of a social identity as a sexually mature person attracted by the opposite gender was also supported by various application-based texts. In some cases, Sophia’s employment of Fb applications even resulted in her disclosing highly intimate details about herself. Example 6: [APP] What will happen in 2 hours? You will start your period [C] it started already on Saturday =)

In response to Sophia having used the application ‘what will happen in 2 hours’ the software produced a text that predicted that ‘she will start her period’. From an identity perspective, the software ascribed certain physiological attributes to Sophia that identified her as having reached womanhood. Sophia took on the software-based positioning act and modified the assertion by writing a personal comment. Likewise, Sophia generated the information that she and her boyfriend will get married by utilizing the application ‘what will happen in 10 years’ and thus informed not only her boyfriend about the seriousness of their relationship, but also implicitly claimed a social identity of being a couple for her and her boyfriend. Example 7: [APP] What will happen in 10 years? Erik and you will get married [C] ♥

Such as private messages or posts on the individual member’s profile Wall.

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From an identity theory perspective, Sophia utilized Fb’s automatic text generation and distribution properties to mitigate her discursive acts of selfpositioning. Whereas Status Updates and other self-authored texts on physical attributes and/or individual likes would always run the risk of being interpreted as rather straightforward and blunt identity performances, the employment of software-generated texts enabled Sophia to claim various identity aspects in a more indirect way: On a lexico-grammatical level, abstract electronic agents, such as the ‘what is your ideal weight’ or the ‘what will happen in 2 hours’ application, disclosed all kinds of information on Sophia and thus performed acts which ‘other-positioned’ her. Accounting for the medial conditioning of these texts, we find that it was Sophia who initiated the identity claims. In other words, ostensible acts of ‘other-positioning’ were originally triggered by Sophia and thus correspond to acts of ‘self-positioning’. However, Sophia employed the outsourcing of discursive positioning acts not only to ‘other position’ herself, but also to perform actions of mocking and/or offending befriended members: Example 8: [APP] Who do your friends think of when they masturbate? Rachel thinks of you [C] I knew it

Using the Fb application ‘sex thoughts’ Sophia triggered the generation of a software-authored text that positioned one of her friends as being homosexual as well as being attracted to Sophia. Though the texts were generated by the software, it was Sophia who deliberately shared them among her network. Of course, Sophia may have assumed that this proposition was so outlandish that it would be interpreted as a playful and pro-social teasing act among friends. However, due to Fb’s automatic text distribution, the assertion that Rachel is sexually attracted to Sophia was dispersed among a large number of less familiar members and thus effected in villainizing Rachel. When questioned about her motivation for generating and sharing intimate and embarrassing details on befriended members, Sophia pointed out that these are things you just do on Fb and that she meant no offense. Regarding the concept of ‘voice’ that relates acts of identity to a member’s individual semiotic choices, we can establish that, to a large extent, Sophia transferred her discursive choices to text automation properties. Although Sophia and her friends frequently commented on software-authored texts, I found no evidence of cases where she engaged critically with the softwaregenerated propositions, i.e. through questioning the authorship and/or validity of the texts. On the other hand, her action transcripts entailed three cases where



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Sophia incorporated software-authored texts in her own Status Updates without highlighting the texts as quotations. Example 9: [LA] Sophia likes ‘hey can I get your MSN addy? Cuty? – [email protected] [SU] ‘hey can I get your MSN addy? Cuty? – [email protected]

As illustrated in Example 9, Sophia performed a Like action in response to a question–answer sequence. A few hours later, she pasted the software-authored text in her Status Update template and thus attributed the text materials underlying semiotic choices to herself. In other words, when quoting the software-based text, Sophia did not dwell on the loss of her voice, but adorned herself with borrowed plumage: She replicated the question–answer sequence without adding any changes. When asked for her motivation, Sophia responded that she found the text funny and that she wanted to share it with her friends. Sophia’s data transcript entailed only one metapragmatic act where she reflected on Fb’s distinct author/recipient configurations: A comment in which she proposed discussing a rather private topic in Fb’s Chat channel.

Mary Within the period of examination, Mary carried out 707 Fb-bound actions that comprise 254 CTAs and 453 ATAs. In response to the questionnaire, Mary pointed out that she had no experience with involuntarily generated texts and that she was never being tagged in photos against her wish. However, Mary indicated that she frequently shared information against her will, as she failed to remember that her posts could be read by her older sister. When categorizing Mary’s text actions, I came across three Wall entries that I assumed evolved involuntarily. I confronted Mary with these texts in a personal interview and she confirmed that she did not intend the performance of these actions. In relation to non-intended text generation, I noticed a Wall entry with information about her mobile phone operations. Example 10: [PA] Mary installed the Android application on her phone.

Knowing that Mary did not own a web-enabled cell phone, I questioned her about the post. She responded that she did not notice the Wall entry and assumed that it was generated when she accessed her Fb account from her cousin’s mobile phone. Two Non-Intended Text Actions evolved in relation to her misjudgement of Fb’s automatic text distribution.

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Example 11: [PA] Mary is in a relationship with Sam. [C] what is this shit?!!??? Congrats I hope you will get happy Congratulations Ooh, all the best, luv.

Though Mary intended the creation of a software-authored text on her relationship status, she did not anticipate that this post would also be read by her older sister, who does not like Mary seeing boys. In another case Mary published a Status Update that simply said ‘miss you’ and was directed at a particular boy. Due to Fb’s automatic text distribution, Mary’s text action was presented to her older sister, who ‘dug deeper’ in the form of a comment. Example 12: [SU] …miss you… [C] who do you miss?!

Besides the three cases of Non-Intended Text Actions that were disclosed in the text analysis, it is most likely that there were several other text actions that were not intended by Mary but that remained unmarked on a lexico-grammatical level. However, in comparison to Sophia whose text action transcripts showed evidence of 33 Non-Intended Text Actions, Mary’s data gave evidence of a relatively small number of Non-Intended Text Actions. The answers Mary provided in response to the questionnaire, i.e. that she had had the experience of losing control over who reads her texts, broadly confirmed the findings from the text analysis. Concerning the question of how Fb influences Mary’s discursive practices of presenting self and others, the quantitative analysis disclosed that two-thirds of Mary’s text creation processes were being performed by the software. Mary carried out a large quantity of Like actions and thus ascribed all kinds of attributes to herself. As opposed to Sophia, she rarely made use of external Like Websites, but rather evaluated Fb internal group and community sites, such as musician and sport star sites or sites on television shows and fashion brands. In the personal interview, Mary indicated that she primarily employs the Like Button to express her individual taste in relation to all sorts of things. This sample member authored and distributed individual Status Updates to construct her social identity as a pupil, as being friends with someone and as being Turkish. While the majority of Mary’s self-authored texts were written in German, Mary posted occasionally in Turkish – most commonly in relation to



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subjects on Turkish culture and current events in Turkey. The sample member’s Status Updates and Like actions orbited around rather general teenage topics, i.e. going to school, holidays, listening to music and watching TV shows. In contrast, various Fb application-based texts revealed more specific and intimate information on her emotions. Fb applications that Mary frequently employed include the ‘Love calculator’, the ‘You and him’ or the ‘Find out what he thinks’ application. Example 13: [APP] Find out what he thinks! He means it seriously. You can trust him… [C] I can’t …

Through her employment of love-related Fb applications, Mary indirectly constructed a social identity as a teenager who has a crush on someone. More precisely, she deliberately incorporated software-authored texts to reveal various aspects of her deeper emotional world. In contrast to Sophia, who openly named her partner when using such applications, Mary did not reveal the person she is attracted to. Mary utilized Fb applications not only for ‘other-positioning’ herself but also to perform acts of mocking and/or offending befriended members. Example 14: [APP] Mary asked the disguised penis. Michael likes gay love [C] omg I always knew it

In comparison to Sophia, Mary generated a much larger quantity of application-based entries that made fun of befriended Facebookers. When browsing through her application-based actions, I even came across one example where Mary accused a befriended member of telling lies, when the particular member questioned the validity of the software-generated statements about her. Example 15: [APP] Mary asked the disguised penis: Dalia grows a bush of pubic hair [C] hahaha what’s this can’t you afford a lady shaver???? [C] hahahhahahahhahah bullshit :D:D yeah, yeah don’t tell lies ♥ :P :P DON’T LIE But I don’t LIE xD whatever..then you don’t lie

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xDDD xO

Teasing each other is an unkind but common discursive practice we find among school pupils (see Aho 1998). However, as we can see in Mary’s example, Fb’s text automation properties may support members teasing and/or offending others, while evading responsibility: At the lexico-grammatical level, Mary was given intimate information on Dalia by an abstract third author (i.e. the ‘disguised penis’), though it is Mary who was responsible for the generation and the distribution of the text. While within a particular social frame such a discursive interaction may be regarded as mocking among friends, Fb contextualizes, by design, texts among large varieties of different social settings. It follows that Fb’s semi-public frame increased the offending character of Mary’s text action. In accordance with postmodern identity concepts, Mary employed Fb to construct a versatile and heterogenic image of herself, encompassing different social identities and personal attributes, i.e. being a pupil, a music lover, a teenager and Turkish. In contrast to Sophia who spread recurrent identity aspects, i.e. having a boyfriend, over a large variety of self and software-authored texts, Mary appeared to separate her identity performances thematically: While self-authored text actions ascribed more general identity aspects to her, Fb application texts were employed to reveal love-related information and/or to tease friends. Through the partial outsourcing of text generation, Mary implicitly constructs a social identity as a ‘teenager who is in love with someone’. It is interesting to note that software-based, love-related texts on Mary did not elicit comments by her older sister. Concerning Mary’s textual reflection on the loss of her individual ‘voice’, the data gave no evidence for metapragmatic comments on the medial conditioning of her actions.

Jacob With 243 text actions, Jacob performed five times fewer actions than Sophia and almost two times fewer actions than Mary. In percentage terms, he outsourced the authorship of his actions to a similar extent. The questionnaire elicited that Jacob had some experience with involuntarily-performed Fb actions: The sample member pointed out that one of the Fb applications he employed would occasionally create Wall posts through no fault of his own. Regarding involuntarily distributed information, Jacob emphasized that he had known



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about Fb’s public character from the beginning and that he did not experience situations in which he unwillingly dispersed information. Jacob indicated that he once felt uncomfortable by being tagged in a photo. The tagging action was not performed by a befriended member, but was carried out by an automation process of a Fb application.20 The categorization and analysis of Jacob’s text action transcripts disclosed various software-authored texts that appeared a little odd: One Wall entry announced that Jacob started to use a new profile banner and invited recipients to also incorporate banners into their profiles. In the personal interview, Jacob pointed out that he did not intend the generation of this post and that he assumes the entry occurred as a side effect when he copied pictures from an image database into his profile. Another software-authored text announced that Jacob listed a particular member as his cousin. Moreover, the entry included pictures from Jacob’s photo album that showed him with his cousin. In the interview Jacob remarked that he deliberately listed the member as his cousin and that he anticipated the creation of a software-based text which would distribute this information. However, he did not intend the automatic attachment of photos to his profile Wall. When I went through Jacob’s application-based posts, I found evidence of 16 entries about his daily horoscope. From various other text actions Jacob performed, such as providing information on his notion of ‘mateship’ or commenting on a befriended member’s sports car, I created a mental picture of Jacob’s personality that did not include the belief in horoscopes. When I questioned him for the motivation behind recurrently posting his horoscope, Jacob responded that he had nothing to do with it: He tried out the horoscope application only once, but the software kept generating and distributing horoscope posts on a daily basis. On a formal level, Jacob’s data transcript provided evidence of a total of 19 Non-Intended Text Actions that were confirmed as such in personal interviews. However, unwillingly generated and/or distributed texts are not necessarily identifiable at a formal level. We can thus assume that Jacob, just as all other sample members, triggered various Non-Intended Text Actions that we have no access to. The quantification and categorization of Jacob’s Fb-bound actions revealed that in almost two-thirds of his actions he outsourced the text creation to the software. We can therefore expect the software service to have a large impact on his discursive acts of self-presentation. However, at second glance, we find that i.e. the ‘Fb stalker application’ that automatically displays and tags the top visitors of an indivudal member’s profile.

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the most prominent action type Jacob performed was the setting up of network connections (i.e. Friend actions with 42.8 per cent). Due to the platform’s design, Fb leaves members no options other than carrying out ATAs when establishing new connections.21 Apart from Friend actions, Jacob employed Status Updates, Comments, Multimodal Posts and Application-based texts to present various aspects of his identity. Most notably, Jacob spread acts of self-positioning that presented him as an adult man who believes in ‘mateship’. He practices ‘mateship’ through software-authored applications as well as selfauthored texts such as Status Updates, Comments and Multimodal Posts. Example 16: [SU] Men turn 12, after that they just become bigger ;) :D [APP] Bro-Codex. Jacob is a true Bro. Are you also a Bro?: Paragraph 14: If a girl asks you about the sexual life of another bro, you have to take a vow of silence

As we can see in Example 16, both posts – the Status Update quoting a saying about what men are like as well as the application-based entry on the ‘Bro-Codex’ – touch upon stereotypical characteristics of men. Correspondingly, Jacob’s data transcript provided evidence of Comments on classic male subjects, such as cars, girls and going to the gym, and his Multimodal Posts portrayed him in particularly masculine ways, i.e. showing him topless. In other words, the sample member activates recurrent semantic patterns on maleness by employing self-authored as well as software-authored texts. This effects in the construction of a consistent image of himself that orbits around his interests in girls, cars and being loyal to his ‘mates’. As opposed to the large quantity of text actions by the teenage girls, which positioned them in relation to a variety of subjects, Jacob performed far fewer actions and limited them to a steady set of subjects.22 Jacob’s CTAs stand out through his frequent incorporation of music video files that he commented on and/or were commented on by his network friends. It is of particular interest that he embedded particular rap songs whose lyrics and staging themes matched the concepts of maleness that Jacob activated in other text actions. Besides, Jacob also selected and embedded more emotional songs that were mostly connected to his social identity as a boyfriend and lover. Jacob’s motivation for establishing new network connections is to keep in touch with and gain access to members he knows from offline contexts. 22 In this sense, Jacob employed six different Fb applications that predominately touched on topics such as cars and male friendship, while both girls utilized over 30 different applications opening up various aspects of their identities. 21



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Example 17: [APP] Nek – Laura Non Ce (1997 Original Video).flv www.YouTube.com [LA] Laura likes this.

As I knew from other text actions that Jacob was attracted to a girl named Laura, I interpreted his embedding of the song ‘Laura Non Ce’ (meaning ‘Laura is not there’) as a subtle act of revealing his feelings towards a girl. This was confirmed in a personal interview, where Jacob pointed out that Laura is his girlfriend. Though he outsourced the animation of the multimodal text to the software service, his act of choosing the individual propositions proves to be highly individual and creative: In contrast to Sophia, who recurrently addressed her boyfriend directly and did not hesitate to reveal his name, Jacob performed a more indirect love declaration. By drawing on in-group knowledge, he contextualized the disclosure of his feelings in such a way that his closer friends who know about him and Laura would interpret his action in a different way than his larger network of friends who lack this information. While Jacob refrained from employing Fb applications in order to mock and/ or offend befriended members, he made fun of one of his peers in an even more direct way: One of his Multimodal Posts entailed a mobile phone video that was filmed by Jacob and showed a boy who is forced to dance in front of Jacob and his friends before they would give him a drink. From an identity point of view, Jacob other-positioned the boy as someone who obeyed the orders of Jacob and his friends, while positioning himself as someone who has the power to give orders to someone else. The recording and re-contextualiztion within Fb shifted the event/incident into a semi-public frame and thus amplified the insult. When questioned about the video, Jacob indicated that this was just a game among friends and that he deliberately refrained from naming or tagging anyone who is shown in the video. Jacob constructed a rather stable image of himself by employing selected Fb-specific modes. His ‘secret’ messages to his girlfriend testify that he is aware of Fb as a semi-public space and highlight him as being in charge of the discursive choices. Likewise, his utilization of software-authored texts generally mirror identity claims that he performed with the help of self-authored texts or quoted texts. Though he appears to be largely in control of his identity performances, we also have to keep in mind that his data gave evidence of various Non-Intended Text Actions. Jacob did not explicitly reflect on the medial conditioning of his actions in the form of metapragmatic comments.

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The Technophile Students: Paul, Max and Gretel On average the Technophile Students outsourced less than one-third of their actions in text creation processes to Fb. However, as indicated below, the employment of ATAs varied drastically among the individual members: While one-third of Paul’s actions are supported by automatic text creation, Max outsourced text creation processes in only 10 per cent of his actions, whereas Gretel utilized ATAs in more than half of her activities. A narrow discussion of the action patterns that were disclosed for each sample member will help to specify the impact of Fb on the Technophile Students’ textual performances. Just as in the analysis of the Digital Pupils, the students’ actions will be discussed in terms of software bias and potential Non-Intended Text Actions. Moreover, I will address the question of how Fb affects the discursive presentation of each Technophile Student and investigate the data transcripts for metapragmatic acts that were performed by students to reflect the medial conditioning of their textual performances.

Chart 4.5: The share of actions performed by each Technophile Student member



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Paul Within the period of examination, Paul performed 97 text actions, comprised of 65 CTAs and 32 ATAs. The questionnaire elicited that Paul has had some experience with involuntarily-performed actions: When providing his Fb details to a music event Website in order to get free entrance to a concert, Paul involuntarily generated a post on his profile Wall that announced the event. Paul did not come across the non-deliberate distribution of texts, but indicated that he had the experience of befriended Facebookers uploading and tagging photos of him against his will. On the text surface level, I found no evidence of Paul having involuntarilyperformed text actions. However, this does not mean that he was necessarily always in full control of his Fb operations. As shown, the text analysis accounted for only those cases that were somehow marked as having evolved involuntarily, i.e. infrequent and unusual software-authored posts or Wall entries that were highlighted with comments containing implicit references to some sort of communicative clash. It is possible that Paul may also have set off Non-Intended Text Actions that went unnoticed on a formal level. Assessing how Paul employed Fb’s templates in presenting himself and others revealed the following: Unlike the Digital Pupils, whose self-authored posts reflected prototypical characteristics of spoken language, i.e. simple, short and fragmentary sentences evolving from rather unplanned and casual discourse, Paul’s self-authored texts excelled through a more elaborated and lexically dense structure. The majority of his Status Updates entailed small narrations on things that recently happened to him: Example 18: [SU] New GUI [graphical user interface] on the train ticket machines! Shitstorm incoming! The grey-haired mob is angry, sandwiches and apples get thrown. It must have been just like that at court during the French revolution. I hope they won’t behead any yormas employees.

Corresponding to the two key functions of personal narratives (Labov and Waletzky 1967), Paul’s Status Update fulfills a referential function as well as an evaluative function: The referential function relates to Paul reporting on a particular event, i.e. ‘New GUI on the train ticket machines’, while the evaluative function is carried out through his meta-communicative reflection on the recounted events, i.e. ‘shitstorm incoming’ or ‘it must have been just like that at court during the French revolution’. Similar to this account of Paul’s experience

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travelling by train, Paul presented short stories on various other subjects, i.e. work-related narratives or things that happened to him when shopping/buying his groceries. By doing so, Paul implicitly claimed various social identities for himself (i.e. employee, train commuter, consumer), and, moreover, positioned himself as a creative and skilled narrator who has the ability to describe ordinary things and events in unique and entertaining ways. More detailed information on Paul’s personal interests and on his group affiliations was disclosed with the help of Multimodal Posts: By embedding external Websites, films, songs, events and photos, Paul indirectly presented himself as a lover of electronic music, a person who is interested in contemporary arts and philosophy, and as someone who attends parties and concerts with a bunch of friends. While the majority of Paul’s actions corresponded to representative text actions that gave accounts of actual facts and events, Paul also carried out directive text actions with the help of Fb’s event templates: Example 19: [EA] DUBSTEPPER XXXI: L.D, SILKIE, TOMM! and GRINGO Location: Rote Sonne Time: 11:00PM Saturday, July 24th [C] Thought about Saturday scenarios. Anyone interested?

As shown in Example 19, Paul embedded an event into his profile Wall that gives information on the time and place of a particular party. Moreover, Paul enhanced the quoted event with an individual caption that elucidated his text action as an invitation for befriended members to join him in attending the party. From an identity point of view, Paul’s directive text action assigned specific attributes both to himself and to his Fb network. The embedding of the event implicitly presented him as someone who knows about dub-music parties and who is in a position to make proposals to his friends. Likewise, his text actions assigned attributes such as partygoer or dub-music lover to his Fb friends. In relation to Paul’s awareness of Fb as a more or less standardized set of pre-given options, I noticed two Wall entries that reflected the medial conditioning of his Fb-bound actions in more or less direct ways. While challenging the ideological bias and/or the medial predisposition of acting with(in) Fb, these metapragmatic texts also presented Paul as a creative and subtle individual. The first text action involved a Status Update that drew intertextual connections between Fb posts and the Japanese poem genre Haiku.



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Example 20: [SU] in order to enhance the cultural value of my social network postings (finally), I would like to express myself from now on only in Haiku-form:  At six out of bed, Took the train to slog (slave) away, You can kiss my ass

Paul’s self-directed obligation to design his posts in Haiku-form23 implicitly mirrors the limitations imposed by the software service: By design, Fb’s Status Update templates are limited to 420 signs and thus force members to express themselves within a restricted frame. Moreover, the platform’s pre-set and standardized text automation processes often result in uniform texts lacking cultural significance and/or individual voices. By referring to and applying the Haiku-form to his Status Update, Paul emphasized specific structural similarities between an electronic form of communication and an old and rich-in-tradition poetry genre, i.e. the need to express oneself in a condensed form. Thus he positioned himself as someone who critically engages with Fb and is aware of the medial impact on Fb-bound actions. Moreover, Paul developed a highly individual and alternative style of expression that incorporates and transforms the medial limitations into new habitual choices and that indexes particular social meaning and/or social affiliations. A similar case of incorporating and transforming Fb-specific modes of expressions into something new was put forward in one of Paul’s photo actions.

 

As illustrated in the photos, Paul transformed the Fb-specific Like action and incorporated it into new contexts. As shown, the Like action is typically based on software-authored texts and conveys particular associations, such as evaluating posts, Websites, comments, films and other contents within electronic environments. By employing a hardcopy and non-digital version of the Like Button in offline contexts, Paul not only replicated a Fb’ specific mode of expression, but also attached new meanings to a literacy practice that is commonly limited to electronic space. When asked for background information about the making of Typically involving three lines consisting of five, seven, and five syllables (Longman 2003).

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the photos, Paul pointed out that he found the sticker in the ‘De:Bug’ magazine, a journal concerned with the intersections of daily life and digital technology, and that they ‘used’ it, when he and his friends went for a hike. When ‘copying’ Fb’s Like Button and ‘pasting’ it into offline environments, Paul reflected on the constraints and options of the Fb environment. While in Fb contexts, using the Like Button is inevitably connected with the shortfall of one’s individual voice, Paul created a new and highly individual mode of expressing himself in offline environments. His creative application and combination of Fb-specific conventions in non-electronic contexts prove his attentiveness to the Fb-dependent conditions of communication. Paul’s text action patterns contribute to the creation of a ‘self ’ who grasps Fb’s specific semiotic resources but also challenges the Fb system by transforming established modes of expression into new and highly individual semiotic signs.

Max According to his profile Wall, Max performed a total of 78 text actions. Only eight Wall entries emerged from ATAs, while the remaining 70 Wall posts attest to Max having performed CTAs. Following his questionnaire responses, Max had the experience of involuntarily generated texts when producing and publishing spelling mistakes. In such cases, he would commonly delete and rewrite the text.24 Max did not come across cases where Fb effected in the involuntarily distribution of his data, but indicated that he had the experience of befriended members uploading and tagging a photo of him that he did not wish to be dispersed. When reflecting on his text action transcript for Non-Intended Text Actions, I noticed a Wall entry similar to Mary’s non-intended cell phone post. Just as in Mary’s case, the Wall entry occurred only once and provided information about Max’s cell phone usage. Example 22: [PA] Max installed the iPhone application on his phone

When shown the example, Max stated that he was completely unaware of having generated this text. As he neither owns an iPhone nor makes use of iPhone applications, he suspected that he triggered the text generation by logging on to his Fb account from a friend’s mobile phone. Obviously, here it was not Max but the software that was entirely in command of the performance of a However, as it is still Max who remains in charge of the creation and/or withdrawing of texts, this does not correspond to the concept of Non-Intended Text Actions.

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representative text action that reports about him. There was no evidence of further Non-Intended Text Actions on a formal level. When classifying his actions I noticed that some of the Status Updates had been written for his Twitter account and he triggered the automatic import of Twitter posts25 by adjusting his profile settings. In the personal interview Max indicated that he sometimes forgets about the automatic distribution within Fb. From an identity perspective, Max most frequently employed Multimodal Posts as a new mode for discursively presenting himself and others. More precisely, by handpicking and quoting songs, films and Websites, Max constructed implicit identity claims that are highly reflective of his thoughts, interests and group affiliations. Related to this, Max employed a music video to reveal rather subtle aspects of his personality. Example 23: [MP] YouTube: Paavoharju: Valo tihkuu kaiken läpi [music video] [C] there is an orange balloon stuck in the tree opposite (my window)

Both the music video and Max’s comment put forward rather dreamy scenarios and implicitly evoke the picture of Max being a sensitive and romantic person who finds beauty in simple things, such as a balloon being captured in a tree. The software-based change of context – from the YouTube environment into Max’s profile Wall – is enhanced by Max’s explicit reflections on the source text. In this way, more or less pre-designed acts of implicit self-ascription performed with the help of a software-animated quote (i.e. Max being into electronic music) are customized and specified by user-authored texts. In other words, the interplay of Quoted and Genuine-CTAs effected in software-supported, yet highly individual acts of positioning that give not only information on Max’s musical preferences, but also provide insights into his music-listening routines and his music-evoked feelings. Likewise, indirect acts of self-ascription were frequently found in Max’s comments on music videos that were attached to his profile Wall by his befriended members.26 Example 24: [MP] vimeo.com Ida Walked Away [music video] [C] is bon part of the band or does it only sound so (good)? Nice!

Twitter posts (tweets) are text-based posts of up to 140 characters that are generated and distributed with the help of the microblogging service Twitter. 26 Max’s network friends posted, in total, 34 songs, videos and Websites to his profile Wall – in 32 cases Max responded by writing individual comments. Again, the types of content he responded to most frequently were embedded songs or music videos, which totaled 18. 25

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By commenting on a video post of a befriended member, Max not only performed acts of self-positioning, but also assigned particular roles and social positions to his network friend, i.e. Franz. When Max asked if a particular musician (‘bon’) belongs to the band, he presented himself as someone who recognizes individual styles of music and connects them to individual artist. On the other hand, Max’s acts of self-attribution are heavily interwoven with indirect positioning of others: By asking an expert question, Max also ascribed specific knowledge of electronic music to Franz. Moreover, he approved of Franz’s musical taste by evaluating the song as ‘nice’. The interdependent depiction of self and others via the combination of Quoted-CTAs (incorporated Websites, songs, films, etc) with Genuine-CTAs (i.e. captions or comments) is even more pronounced in Example 25. Example 25: [MP] vimeo.com Lovely Bloodflow [music video] [C] to you emm!! super track+cool album! [C] between us music smart-arses: the album is played here of course over and over again. I didn’t know the video, but when I listened to the album I had always a kind of hayao-miyazaki-feeling. Super!

Franz posted a music video on Max’s profile Wall (Quoted-CTA). In his comment he explicitly highlighted Max as the intended recipient of the post, while also expressing his positive evaluation of the song. In doing so Franz claimed indirectly a fellowship with Max – as being someone who knows about Max’s music taste and who is in the position to call Max ‘emm’. Max responded by directly referring to Franz’s and his own expertise in electronic music while mitigating the identity claim through the use of irony, i.e. ‘between us music smart-arses’. He ascribed in-group knowledge to himself and his peers by stating ‘that the album is played here of course over and over’. Moreover, Max implicitly claimed an expert role for himself: Though he did not know the video that showed an injured Japanese warrior surrounded by mythical creatures in a forest, Max highlighted that he drew an intermedial reference to Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese Manga artist and film director, when listening to the song. While the majority of Max’s Status Updates were imported from his Twitter account, only two Status Updates were created within the Fb environment. However, just as in the incorporation of music videos and Twitter tweets, these self-authored posts excel through literacy practices that involve the repetition and reflection of a source text: Example 26: [SU] thank you for your attention. what i like is you.



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Example 26 illustrates an expressive text action that evolved in response to Max’s friends’ birthday wishes posts. By deliberately choosing and employing the proposition ‘what i like is you’, Max repeated and reflected on Fb’s Like Button and its involved discursive patterns. Similarly, the representative text action in Example 27 entails textual performances that are usually carried out with the help of Fb’s Like Button: Example 27: [SU] Many who like ‘Maximum Respect for the British Armed Forces supporting the RBL’ like ‘Cuddles in Bed’.

In a personal interview, Max indicated that after having clicked the Like Button on the Fb community page ‘Maximum Respect for the British Armed Forces supporting the RBL’, the software service proposed that he might also be interested in the community group ‘Cuddles in Bed’. He found this ostensible connection amusing and shared this thought in the form of a Status Update. While in automatic Like actions the wording is static and pre-set by the software, Max’s quotation of the software texts ‘individualized’ and/or ‘rehumanized’ the locutionary acts usually performed by the software. In this sense, both of Max’s genuine Status Updates can be considered metapragmatic acts of ‘reflection on the […] media-dependent conditions of communication’ (Eisenlauer and Hoffmann 2008: 3) that testify to his informed and critical stance towards the software service Fb. Likewise, the only Like action that Max performed within the period of examination was enhanced with a personal comment (see below): Example 28: [SU] vimeo.com Memoryhouse – Minor White (music video) [LA] Max likes this [C] that is strange. and nice. i’m confused. i like it.

When liking and commenting on a video post of a befriended member, Max implicitly reflected the loss of his individual discursive choice: Acknowledging the self as a discursive formation, Max addressed the shortfall of his individual ‘voice’. He quoted the usually software-enforced text ‘I/Max like(s) it’ and specified the individual reasons for his positive evaluation. In summary, the disclosed text action patterns attribute a high level of control to Max. His self-assessment in relation to the quantity of his text actions (four to six texts per week, see above) roughly applied to the total number of actions he performed (80). Max’s rare employment of automatic text creation processes as well as his metapragmatic comments give evidence of his understanding of

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the loss of his individual voice when using the platform to interact with others. From an identity point of view, Max employed Fb’s automatic quote utilities in skilful and creative ways to construct a Fb-related self image that presented him as an expert on electronic music and a member of a group of music lovers.

Gretel With only 53 text actions, Gretel is the least active member among both groups. From a quantitative perspective, her actions involved slightly more ATAs (28) than CTAs (25). Gretel indicated in response to the questionnaire that she had neither the experience of involuntarily generated texts nor of non-deliberately distributed texts. However, during her study-abroad year she experienced befriended Fb members uploading and tagging party pictures of her that she felt awkward about. Concerning Non-Intended Text Actions, her data transcript entailed a Wall entry informing that Gretel had changed her personal data. Example 29: [PA] Gretel edited their Hometown and About me

Drawing on lexical patterns, I observed in equivalent posts of other members, I wondered why Gretel’s software-authored text entailed the possessive form of the third person plural, i.e ‘their’. When confronted with the example, Gretel pointed out that she deliberately withheld information on her gender when setting up her account. The effect of this was that the software would use the plural form as a surrogate. It follows that Gretel anticipated the deceptive employment of the plural form. Gretel also pointed out that she knew about the standardized software-based reports on her altering the personal data templates. Hence, Example 29 cannot be counted as a case of Non-Intended Text Action. From a formal point of view, her text action transcripts showed no further evidence of Non-Intended Text Actions. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that Gretel was always in full command of her actions when using Fb. The distillation of Gretel’s Fb-bound performances into distinct text action patterns highlights various interrelations between Fb-specific semiotic resources and the discursive presentation of self and others. Though in comparison to the other sample members Gretel performed the fewest actions and she outsourced the text creation in more than half of her actions, she constructed a consistent image of herself. The latter emerged partly through the repetition and dispersion of similar acts of positioning via self-authored and software-authored texts. In



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this sense she spread the discursive construction of her social identity as ‘living in a shared house’ over Status Updates, Multimodal Posts and Like/Event actions. Example 30: [SU] pudel anyone tonight? I have my housemate staying [MP] WGZimmer Hamburg-St Pauli www.wg-gesucht.de liebe zimmersucherInnen,habe eine zwischenmiete in der supernetten karopassage mit balkon zu vergeben. die beiden (unmöblierten) zimmer sind ein traum… [C] Live for some time with Gretel? Please tell others [LA] Gretel likes Wohnung and WG vermitteln / Hamburg

All three posts of Gretel’s Status Update, her embedded and captioned Website as well as her Like action activate mind-frames associated with communal residence life: Gretel’s ‘liking’ of the Fb community site ‘Wohnung and WG vermitteln’ (finding apartments and shared houses) as well her incorporation of an ad she wrote for the Website wg-gesucht.de (looking for shared houses. de) highlighted the coming and going aspect of sharing a house with others. The Status Update emphasized the socializing part of communal residence, as it invites befriended members to join Gretel and her housemate at the ‘pudel’ nightclub. This way Gretel implicitly ascribed characteristics of living in a shared place to herself. Moreover, she presented herself indirectly as a partygoer. Acts of positioning herself as someone who enjoys nightlife and parties were also performed via a Multimodal Post and various Event actions: Gretel embedded a Website about a particular party and enhanced the post with a self-authored text inviting befriended Facebookers to join her in attending the event (see Example 32). Likewise, software-authored Event entries, such as ‘Gretel attended dj set – frau kraushaar and skipperrr’, highlighted her nightlife activities. In addition to her social identity as a ‘shared householder’ and as a partygoer, Gretel employed Fb’s semiotic resources in order to present her social identity as a journalist. Example 31: [LA] Gretel likes OPAK Magazin. [LA] Gretel likes Zündfunk.

On a broader level, the two software-authored Like actions indicate Gretel’s positive stance towards a magazine (OPAK) as well as towards a radio journal (Zündfunk) and thus characterized her as being generally interested in media

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journals. On a more specific level, Gretel’s Multimodal Posts implicitly invoked her social identity as working for a particular magazine: Example 32: [MP] Missy Magazine » Im Anflug: Missy 04/10 missy-magazine.de [C] whaaaa [MP] Missy Magazine » Missy Release-Party mit Forgotten Birds in Hamburg missy-magazine.de [C] who joins me?

Though Gretel refrained from explicitly announcing her job-related position, she embedded the Website of her employer into her profile Wall. In doing so, she implicitly invited befriended Facebookers to check out the Website, where one can find an article written by Gretel. Whereas in non-electronic contexts an individual’s discursive acts of self-positioning involve, at least to some degree, the utilization of individual semiotic signs, Gretel relinquished the production of signs that ascribe a work-related identity to her: The embedded Website of her magazine implicitly encouraged befriended members to call up the page and thus to generate texts that position Gretel. This way, Gretel mitigates straightforward and potentially face threatening acts of self-presentation, while simultaneously establishing a detailed and authenticated identity as a journalist. All in all, Gretel presented a rather stable image of herself by employing selfauthored as well as software-authored texts. Her individually enhanced Multimodal Posts give evidence for her skilful and self-directed usage of the Fb platform: Though she frequently outsourced the text creation processes of embedded Websites and other multimodal content, her text actions contributed to the creation of a subtle and individual Fb identity. As opposed to the female Digital Pupils who projected a kittenish or playful image when activating a large number of software-based texts, Gretel appeared to design her software-generated texts deliberately to reiterate and/or enhance self-authored identity claims. Software-authored texts particularly supported her in ascribing specific identity aspects to herself in an indirect way. While Gretel’s Fb practices prove her to be capable of the medial conditioning of her actions, she did not reflect on the Fb bias in the form of metapragmatic comments.

Summary In summary, my analysis gave insights into two sample groups’ ‘text outsourcing practices’ when doing things with and within Fb. It was shown that differing



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amounts of Fb activity among the two groups correlate with different rates of performing ATAs. Obviously, the generation and display of software-based texts is much less time-consuming than the creation of user-authored texts. It follows that the high quantity of actions performed by the Digital Pupils can at least partially be ascribed to their increased utilization of software-generated texts. Members of both groups have had some experience with the non-deliberate disclosure of personal information. As elicited by the questionnaire, the members’ perceptions of losing control over their textual self-presentation is often connected to Fb actions performed by befriended Facebookers: Out of six sample members, five reported that they experienced Fb friends uploading and tagging photos of them that they felt awkward about. Moreover, members of both sample groups experienced Non-Intended Text Actions that were grounded in the text automation processes of the software: Three members came across texts that the software created in their names through no fault of their own and one member indicated that she experienced her texts automatically being distributed among contexts that she did not account for. The analysis of the text surface level was directed at providing insights into losing control over Fb actions from an empirical point of view. Thereby identified cases of Non-Intended Text Actions had to be confirmed as such in personal interviews. A comparison of the two sample groups in relation to how they maintained and/or lost control of their actions revealed a significant level of softwaredirectedness among the Digital Pupils: On a formal level, I identified a total of 55 Non-Intended Text Actions for the Digital Pupils whereas I disclosed only one Non-Intended Text Action for the Technophile Students. A discussion of the groups’ broad action patterns proposes a link between a high number of Non-Intended Text Actions and the frequent performance of ATAs and/or high overall Fb activity. As shown, Non-Intended Text Actions can be distinguished in non-intended software-authored texts and involuntarily distributed texts. With regard to my sample data non-intended software-authored texts included (1) automatically duplicated posts (2) involuntarily incorporated photos (3) software-authored Wall entries that were not anticipated. Moreover, I found evidence of cases where Fb applications backfired on profile owners: Fb applications such as ‘calculate your ideal weight’ or ‘daily horoscope’ required members to provide data-access permission rights (see Sophia and Jacob). This lets the software generate posts on the members’ profile Walls at any time, even when they are not online. In relation to involuntarily distributed

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texts, the sample members misjudged the variety of contexts in which Fb reproduced their data. More precisely, sample members failed, not only in anticipating the replication of their texts beyond their profiles, but also within their own profile Walls. Concerning the former, Mary forgot that her change of relationship status was automatically reproduced within the News Feed stream of her older sister’s account. With regard to the involuntarily shared text within the profile Wall Sophia forgot about the standardized reproduction of earlier comments when she attached new photos to her album. An application of established models of ‘language and identity’ to the context of Fb proposed that the platform’s pre-set templates restrict members in their individual ‘voices’. This means that due to Fb’s standardized text generation processes members are gradually bereaved of their motivated choices of semiotic signs that index individual likings or affiliations to particular social groups. In relation to my data sample, the focused-on members employed softwareauthored acts of positioning to varying degrees and in rather different ways. The two female teenagers incorporated software-authored texts into their profile Walls most frequently. By doing so, they positioned themselves in particular as being in love with someone, but also gave information on their general likings and broader social affiliations, i.e. liking a particular fashion brand or being a fan of a particular musician.27 Moreover, both female pupils made repeated use of quiz-like Fb applications. By doing so, they generated more or less arbitrary texts that assigned a variety of characteristics, social identities and role-related rights to themselves and their fellow members. In some cases the girls even disclosed rather sensitive information about themselves and others. In this sense, Sophia revealed that she has reached womanhood (see Example 6) with the help of a Fb application, while Mary mocked befriended members by operating an application that generated and dispersed highly intimate and/or offending information on her friends. In relation to the impact of the software on discursive acts of identify as performed by the female pupils, we find that both sample members simply took on software-based positioning acts. Though in some cases the girls enhanced the standardized voice by adding personal comments, they neglected to challenge the software-based propositions, namely as virtual entities that are based on machine-based calculations as opposed to motivated semiotic choices performed by human beings. In terms of critical competence towards Fb, both female pupils projected an image of kittenish It is interesting to note that both girls employed the Like button primarily to position themselves rather than their network friends: Only a small share of Like actions were performed in response to texts that were generated by befriended members.

27



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and playful users who activate a large number of software-based texts in rather spontaneous and unplanned ways. In comparison to the female pupils, the male pupil performed far fewer actions and limited them to a steady set of subjects. Though Jacob did not explicitly reflect on Fb impinging on his discursive selfpresentation, his tentative employment of software-authored texts testify that he was at least partially aware of the potential loss of his individual ‘voice’: All of his software-authored acts of positioning mirror identity claims he also performed with the help of self-authored or quoted texts. In this sense, he deliberately employed Fb applications such as the ‘bro-codex’ to reiterate semantic patterns of ‘maleness’ that he originally activated in his comments and Multimodal Posts. As opposed to the female pupils who activated rather heterogenic subjects by triggering large numbers of Fb applications (stretching from the ‘love calculator’ to the ‘what’s your ideal weight’ application), Jacob made use of Fb applications in a more planned and determined way: For the majority of his ATAs he appeared to be in command of ‘Fb as a third author’ and let the software generate only texts that fit with previously established and self-authored identity claims. It follows that Jacob was not only cautious about the employment of software-authored texts, but, moreover, that he was largely in control of his identity performances. Jacob’s overall action patterns propose a more strongly developed critical competence in Fb when compared to the female pupils. Though he never addressed the medial conditioning of his performances in the form of metapragmatic comments, Jacob’s tentative incorporation of Fb applications, as well as his covert love declaration to his girlfriend (see Example 17), confirm his critical stance towards Fb and its automatic text generation and automatic text distribution features. Similar to Jacob, also Gretel, who belongs to the group of Technophile Students, projected a rather stable image of herself that orbits around her social identities of ‘living in a shared house’ and ‘working as a journalist’. It is particularly interesting to note that Gretel arrives at establishing a detailed image of her journalist identity while (partially) outsourcing the propositional act of her identity claim. Her Multimodal Posts give not only a preview of her employer’s Website, but also invite befriended members to check out the Website and/ or her articles. On the other hand, Gretel also reiterated and/or enhanced identity claims by integrating self-authored with software-authored texts. All in all, Gretel’s action patterns give evidence for the planned and purposeful employment of Fb-specific semiotic resources. The latter supported her particularly in ascribing specific identity aspects to herself in an indirect way. Gretel’s limited and well-designed textual practices attest to her critical competence

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concerning Fb-biased actions. Nevertheless, she did not explicitly reflect on how the software service conditions her actions, i.e. in the form of metapragmatic comments. In contrast, the two male Technophile Students, Paul and Max, repeatedly commented on the general impact of the electronic environment on their ‘doings’ in more or less explicit ways. In this sense, Paul emphasized the template restrictions concerning post length by drawing intertextual relations to the Japanese poem genre Haiku. Moreover, Paul mimicked Fb’s conventional Like action: One of his incorporated photos showed him and a couple of friends holding a homemade cardboard ‘Like Button’. Corresponding to the established concept of bricolage, Paul not only commented on the medial condition of his actions, but developed a new and alternative style of expression by incorporating and transforming conventional Fb resources into something new. All in all, Paul employed, reflected and transformed Fb resources to present himself as a highly creative person – as someone who grasped the medial bias and who is able to challenge the Fb system by transforming established modes of expression into new and highly individual semiotic signs. Similar to Paul, Max also reflected on the loss of his individual discursive choice: When performing a standardized and software-authored Like action, Max specified the individual reasons for his positive evaluation in the form of a comment. In other cases, Max quoted the usual software-authored text ‘member A likes this’ in personal Status Updates and thus ‘rehumanized’ a propositional act that is usually performed by an abstract algorithmic function. Whereas we find vast differences in the sample members’ competence in critically reflecting on the medial impact on their doings, the sample members displayed a common pattern of self-presentation: All members utilized Fb’s text automation properties in order to mitigate their discursive acts of selfpositioning. Whereas self-authored texts on physical attributes and/or individual likes run the risk of being interpreted as rather straightforward and blunt identity performances, the employment of software-generated texts enabled the sample members to claim various identity aspects in a more indirect way. These observed patterns of implicit self-presentation confirm results from previous research on identity construction on Fb. As Bolander and Locher (2010) have shown, user-authored Status Updates tend to provide rather indirect information on the profile members’ self concepts and group affiliations. However as my analysis has shown, the indirect construction of identities is not limited to what Bolander and Locher (2010) call ‘Creative Language Use’ (i.e. the unrestricted use of language by individuals). As a characteristic feature of Fb discourse, implicit identity claims are frequently constructed by the strategic employment of Fb’s text automation



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processes. When employing software-generated texts to perform identity claims, the performance of the ‘discursive explanation and attribution of agency within social interactions’ (Norris and Jones 2005:170) is at least partially transferred to Fb. To overcome this dilemma between a rather individual self-conception and more or less standardized software-generated texts, more Fb-savvy members (i.e. Paul and Max) reflected on the constriction of sign-related choices in metapragmatic posts and comments. As a general trend, the members under focus frequently complemented Quoted-CTAs with individual captions and comments. The alliance of Quoted-CTAs with Genuine-CTAs resulted in Fb-biased and yet highly individual acts of positioning self and others.

5

Conclusion

In this book I have investigated the multi-layered interrelations between Fb-bound discursive events and the software properties which frame them. While previous critical approaches to media communication disclosed the role of the media in distributing and reinforcing principal values in a given society, the present analysis concentrated on how media and/or software services affect the form and content of media messages. More precisely, I have approached this subject from two analytical planes: In the descriptive part of this book I mapped out Fb as a set of pre-given semiotic tools that standardize and intervene between the members and the message when they present themselves and connect with other members (see Chapters 1, 2 and 3). The book’s empirical part related the question of how Fb biases the presentation of self and others to a carefully chosen set of data (see Chapter 4). This final chapter summarizes my findings and highlights those observations that are new to the field of SNS and/or CMC research. It also includes a discussion of the broader implications of my analysis: In particular, the significance of my findings will be highlighted in relation to three interrelated areas of interest, namely the software service as an ideological tool, outsourced texts and new patterns of action, and Non-Intended Text Actions and discursive identity creation. Finally, I will discuss the book’s limitations and suggests how these issues might be addressed in future research.

The software service as an ideological tool Progress in technology is intertwined in various ways with innovations in people’s social and communicative practices. From the very beginning

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the Internet was perceived as a social space. In the 1990s, Internet users not only sought for information online, but chatted with people, met new friends or discussed whatever popped into their mind (Ebersbach et al. 2008). Further enhanced technologies correlated with an increase in the user’s active involvement in creating and distributing online texts, which marked the era of ‘Web 2.0’. However, the social spaces allocated by Internet and/or Web 2.0 technologies are by no means ‘neutral environments’, but are occupied with the ideas and visions of a given society. In this sense, Web 2.0–based software services are commonly associated with democracy and creativity as they provide not only access to information, but enable users, among others, to take part in policy-making discussions, elections or in the development of new online tools (Zimmer 2005). Despite their widespread status as creative and democratic media, software services result in a gradual equalization and conditioning of user-generated content. When creating traditional texts, authors habitually apply individual knowledge of text types, i.e. personal letters, diary entries, shopping lists, etc. Thereby, they favour certain prototypical formal and functional qualities, but have great freedom to give their texts a personal/ individual touch, i.e. through choices concerning a text’s length, its content and its overall layout. When generating texts within Web 2.0 environments, a user’s individual decisions concerning the arrangement, the fonts and the length of a text are largely pre-set by the individual templates of the service. In more elaborate software services, we even come across fixed textual contents that users may animate when operating the platform, i.e. by clicking Fb’s Like Button. Comparable to printed forms (blanks), software templates are designed to elicit certain information, while suppressing other choices. However, unlike their printed counterparts, software services also generate, present and distribute provided user information in public or semi-public contexts. It follows that software services, such as Fb, cannot be considered as mere transport media, but as technological tools that deprive text authors of their individual semiotic choices and intervene in the flow of discourse among users. We can see that Web 2.0 and its software services trigger not only text creation, collaboration and information sharing (Lewis, Pea and Rosen 2010), but also give shape and coherence to users’ text creation and processing practices. In the case of Fb, the software service enables the formation and maintenance of social relations among users, while at the same time standardizing the underlying communicative actions. As the platform is accessible 24 hours a day by computers or smart phones and connects people all over the world, Fb also has great impact on the members’ perception and conceptualization of time and space. If we define ideology as a set

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of beliefs ‘of which we are barely conscious, [as something that] instructs us about time, space, and number [and that] forms our ideas of how we stand in relation to nature and to each other’ (Postman 1992: 123), we can regard software services, such as Fb, as highly ideological tools. It is generally believed that ‘we cannot merely “use” technology without also, to some extent, being influenced or “used by” it’ (Chandler 1995: online) and a variety of scholars have reflected on the ideological bias of technology. Habermas (1989) has pointed out that technologies become ideological tools when entering the communicative sphere. Through the ‘technization of the lifeworld’ people recurrently experience that they are nonautonomous beings dependent on technological tools and their creators. Weizenbaum (1976) has shown that ‘a tool gains its power from the fact that it permits certain actions and not others’ (1976: 37). In his view, the power of tools emerges from simultaneously reducing and extending human action and experience. With the introduction of new technologies – or in our case software services – people acquire not only novel sets of practices, but also new perspectives on and new understandings of social reality. There are various approaches that reflect on such interrelations between progress in communication technologies and the emergence of new social practices on a theoretical level. I have outlined in Chapter 1 two central positions that researchers advocate in relation to questions of ‘cause and effect’ of social and technological changes. However, most of these approaches remain at a rather theoretical level and point to a somewhat macro-level interrelation between key characteristics of communicative technologies and systems of beliefs of certain societies and cultures. What is missing is the breakdown of these abstract findings into an exhaustive analysis of a distinct communicative tool/software service, in order to analyze the media bias of actual technology users. This book can fill the gap through the development of the CHTA framework and its application to a critical reflection of the software service Fb. As shown, the software environment displaces users by providing them with text generation and distribution tools that have great impact on how they choose, arrange and give coherence to their texts. The detailed description and disclosure of Fb as a tool that standardizes textual practices and promotes sets of certain beliefs has proven to be extremely insightful in finding out how a set of sample members is biased by the software service (Chapter 4). In the analysis, the identification of Fb as an ideological tool can be specified in the following way: When utilizing complex text automation tools, Fb members gradually hand over control of their actions to the software service. A systematic set of pre-given lexical chains (i.e. ‘friends’, ‘friend

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request’, ‘top friends’, ‘people you know from your hometown’) interrelates with certain friendship-related knowledge structures. At the same time, the software service’s structural and functional properties (i.e. frequent updates of personal information) promote ‘familiarity’, ‘affect’ and ‘solidarity’ among members. In this sense, the software service Fb promotes and/or allocates sets of discourses that reframe communicative patterns among Internet users and/or friends. To approach such a reinterpretation of linguistic and phenomenal reality methodologically, I saw the need to review and extend established models of ‘text’ and ‘action’.

Outsourced texts and new patterns of action In order to specify the impact of the software service on user-generated texts, this book developed the CHTA framework by reviewing and extending established key concepts in text linguistics. Borrowing from these theories that were originally designed to define ‘text’ and ‘hypertext’ as scientific units, my model developed a set of 13 vital questions that proved to be very helpful in approaching the software service Fb from a critical perspective (Chapter 2). Basically, the medial framing (and/or ideological conditioning) of usergenerated content can be accessed by evaluating the impact of the software service on the production and processing of the text material. Therefore, Chapter 2 first exposed prototypical characteristics that are assigned to texts and hypertexts in general. In a second step, Chapter 3 asked how these text characteristics are reproduced, modified or altered by the software when users operate the Fb platform in order to produce and/or process texts. In relation to characteristics that are prototypically assigned to hypertexts, the analysis revealed the following: MM

MM

MM

MM

the user-friendly design as well as the authentic presentation of real life personas result in a blurring of the software service’s binary constitution when creating or processing profile data, Fb participants have no alternative but to operate the platform’s interactive devices discursive acts of self-portrayal are inevitably bound to multi-sequential, fragmented and automatically linked pieces of text as a result of the software’s programmed generation of hyperlinks, participants’ textual identities are spread automatically throughout the Fb network

Conclusion MM

MM

211

the software service governs members when creating and aligning texts in multilinear ways, to favour a holistic, standardized and equalized production (and perception) of Fb discourse various possibilities for customizing a Personal Profile obscure the impact of the software service on the users’ discursive choices of self-presentation.

In contrast to a member’s complex and subtle comprehension of self, the individual texts building her/his Fb profile are bound to standardized templates, default options and a more or less fixed hierarchical structure. While in real life contexts discourse participants determine different things appropriate for different kinds of audiences, within Fb contexts users outsource the dispersion of their texts partially to the text automation properties of the software. Such a transfer of agency – from the text author to the software service – can be further examined by applying characteristics of traditional texts to a critical discussion of Fb. The analysis specifies the ways the software results in the simulation and calculation of text practices that have long been reserved for human agents. Even though previous researchers (such as Suchman 1997 or boyd 2006) have pointed out that values are built into software systems, such approaches neglect to reflect how computer technology takes over, i.e. when conditioning and/or replacing human agents in the negotiation of values and meanings. As it has been revealed, the medial conditioning of Fb members and, in this sense, the software service’s inherent values, can be related to various text-centred features of text (i.e. the production and reception of the text material) as well as to more user-centred features of text, i.e. the communicative context (Chapter 2). Related to this, I showed that MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

MM

the labour of creating surface relations is largely taken out of the users’ hands various structural, lexical and functional properties of the software service mirror and condition the cognitive concept of ‘friendship as process’ Fb-bound text actions experience an ‘agentic shift’, from the author to the software service the software service detects and distributes novel and recently updated contents by design with the incorporation of external content into the Fb environment, the division between text and context is blurred Fb generates new ways in which older services and online text types are produced, distributed and consumed.

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As a result, we can establish that within Fb any act of text creation and/or reception is bound to a pre-set system of paradigmatic relations that may support, delimit or even replace the user in her/his literacy practices (Chapter 3). Such a rigid and pre-established system of Fb-specific signs is characterized by deep-rooted text automation processes that challenge traditional notions of authorship. While authorship in non-electronic texts involves most likely one or more human text producers, who choose, create and align textual components to each other, text creation in Web 2.0 environments can – at least to some degree – be transferred to softwarebased text automation processes. Fb-specific text automation can be distinguished in ‘automatic text generation’ and ‘automatic text distribution’ (Chapter 1). Both have great impact on Fb members’ text practices. We can therefore establish that Fb acts as a kind of author: By facilitating and/or allocating distinct sets of discourse patterns Fb intervenes in the communication between profile owner (first author) and profile recipient (second author). As a third author, it shapes the structure and/ or contents of the respective discourses and, moreover, controls the contexts in which the texts are presented. As a consequence, Fb members experience a gradual loss of control over their texts: Due to automatic text generation, Fb members may set off software-generated texts against their will; likewise, as an effect of automatic text distribution, members may lose control over the context, in which their posts, comments or other personal data is presented. In order to identify the underlying mechanisms of the described agentic shift in greater detail, a methodological framework was developed to relate established key terms in pragmatics to the context of Fb, i.e. ‘intentionality’, ‘action’ and ‘speech act theory’. Drawing on these insights, Chapter 4 developed a theoretical framing of Fb member’s active participation in the text creation: Principally, we can distinguish Fb-bound text actions in CTAs and ATAs. CTAs, such as comments or Status Updates, involve a human author who selects individual propositions. In contrast, ATAs, such as clicking the Like Button, excel through electronic agents that generate pre-set texts when activated. When operating the Fb platform, members may set off texts against their will. Such non-intended actions encompass unwillingly generated texts (Non-Intended ATAs) as well as unwillingly distributed texts (Non-Intended Secondary Text Actions). In both cases, a member is neither in control of nor responsible for the communicative outcome of the action; the displayed and distributed texts bear no relation to her/his individual communicative aims. The disclosed Fb-specific action patterns proved to be very helpful in distinguishing and quantifying the relative impact of the software service on the individual actions performed by a carefully chosen sample of Fb members. Beyond that, the framework provided a vehicle for exploring how Fb-specific

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semiotic resources bias the discursive presentation of self and others, or alternatively, how Fb conditions the creation of online identities. The high relevance and timeliness of (semi-) automated text actions described throughout this book can be illustrated by looking at Fb’s most recent developments (see Figure 5.1). The market research company ‘Inside Network’ reports about Fb testing new options in the Publisher template that offer new possibilities for members’ Status Updates (Darwell 2013). When Fb members want to share information on ‘what they are doing’, there is no need anymore to select and type individual wordings. A drop down menu offers a set of predetermined options members can choose from and enhances the posts with corresponding emoticons. With the development and introduction of software-authored texts and pre-set actions like this, Fb is taking a further step into the standardization and software-directedness of members and their profiles.

Non-Intended Text Actions and discursive identity creation A close examination of actual Fb data confirmed the practical relevance of the models developed in the descriptive part of this book. The empirical

Figure 5.1: Pre-set actions of the Status Update template1 Source: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/01/30/facebook-introduces-new-structured-statusupdates-to-help-users-share-what-theyre-feeling-watching-eating-and-more/

1

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analysis gave an impression of how two different user samples, a group of three university students (ages 25 to 29) and a group of three pupils (ages 15 to 17), utilized the software service over a period of four months. A quantification and categorization of Fb-bound text actions showed that the pupils who made frequent use of software-generated texts (ATAs) performed significantly more text actions than the students who predominantly employed user-generated texts (CTAs). However, the amount of time spent on Fb did not differ significantly between the two groups. I argue therefore, that the drastic difference in text quantities is due to an increased utilization of ATAs (software-generated texts). The performance of ATAs is much less time-consuming than the performance of CTAs: Users have no need to choose individual semiotic signs, since a simple mouse click activates software-authored propositions. When looking at the specific types of applied actions, both user groups frequently employed Fb’s Like Button, added new friends and commented on their own and/or befriended members’ contents. This highlights the interactional character of Fb discourse and clearly connects with the key features of SNS identified in Chapter 1, i.e. self-presentation and establishing/maintaining online communities. While such a quantitative analysis showed that the group of pupils outsourced text generation processes more frequently when compared to the group of university students, it still gave no insights into how this supported and/ or conflicted with the sample members’ individual communicative aims. To understand how Fb’s automation properties affect the discursive performance of identity and friendship actions, I conducted a fine-grained analysis of each sample member’s profile Wall. During the analysis, I integrated text action patterns that evolved from the quantitative analysis with qualitative information on the sample member’s individual perceptions. By doing so, I investigated my data particularly in relation to three interrelated questions: (1) to what extent did the sample members generate and/or distribute texts against their will? (2) in what ways were discursive acts of identity creation conditioned by the text automation properties of the software service? (3) to what degree did the sample members reflect on the software service’s conditions in the form of metapragmatic comments? In order to identify cases of Non-Intended Text Actions, I classified each member’s text actions according to the disclosed patterns of Fb-bound actions and looked for peculiarities and irregularities, for example ATAs that were performed with great frequency and/or only once. Supposed cases

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of involuntarily-performed actions had to be confirmed as such in personal interviews. As the majority of unintentionally performed actions cannot be identified formally, I also designed a questionnaire that provided insights into the member’s individual experience with disclosing personal information against their will. Members of both groups indicated that they have had some experience with non-intended actions. However, the sample members connected the non-deliberate disclosure of information not only to text automation properties, but also to actions performed by befriended Fb members, such as being tagged in photos against their will or being named in awkward quiz applications. With 55 cases of non-intended actions for the pupils and only one non-intended action for the students, the text data provided evidence for a significant level of software-directedness among the pupils from an empirical point of view. As shown, the non-intended actions evolved from both automatic text generation and automatic text distribution and stretched from ‘automatically duplicated posts’, via ‘applications that backfired on profile owners’, to ‘involuntarily dispersed texts via the News Feed stream’. Chapter 4 presented established models of ‘language and identity’ and discussed how these connect to self-presentation and/or identity creation within Fb. It was shown that discursive identity construction via and within Fb may be significantly biased by the pre-set options of the software service. Such a conceptualization and theoretical description of Fb-bound identity construction served as a useful vehicle to examine the sample members’ profile data in terms of Fb-biased identity creation. It could be seen that all sample members employed ‘software-authored acts of positioning’. More precisely, members employed automatic text generation in order to ascribe all kinds of attributes to themselves and/or to befriended members. However, when performing software-authored positioning acts, the sample members utilized the pre-set options of the software in rather different ways and to varying degrees: The pupils activated software-authored acts of positioning much more frequently compared to the students. The female pupils in particualr appeared to initiate software-authored texts in rather unplanned and spontaneous ways, which resulted in the disclosure of rather personal information about themselves and others. In contrast, the software-authored acts of positioning performed by the male pupil mirrored identity claims he also performed with the help of selfauthored texts. Likewise, the group of students excelled through planned and purposeful employment of software-authored text. All three members utilized text automation tools to establish continuous, but limited identity claims, such as working as a journalist, being a partygoer or being a music lover. As a novel

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finding in the field of SNS research, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of actual Fb data could frame a new way of mitigating identity performances. Though previous research into ‘Fb identities’ (Zhao et al. 2008, Bolander and Locher 2010) have pointed to a frequent employment of implicit identity claims, as opposed to explicit ones, these studies neglected to investigate how new and Fb-specific semiotic resources interrelate with online identity construction. As shown, all members in this study utilized Fb’s text automation in order to ascribe various identity aspects to themselves (and others) in indirect ways. My analysis exposed that identity creation in Fb is characterized by a perpetual antagonism between the software’s standardized options and a member’s self-conception as a multidimensional construct. I was therefore interested in how the sample members overcame this dilemma and searched the data for individual means of customizing standardized and pre-set options. Some of the texts the pupils generated with the help of quiz-like applications2 were enhanced with individual captions or comments. Likewise, incorporated videos or other external data were often combined with individual self-authored texts. However, only two members, namely the male students, addressed the software inherent equalization of identity performances in the form of implicit or explicit metapragmatic posts and comments (see Paul and Max in Chapter 4).

Limitations and suggestions for future research Throughout my work I acknowledged significant limitations that emerged from the developed theoretical and methodological frameworks. At the end of this book I therefore address more general constraints regarding the validity and generalizability of my findings. Most obviously, I investigated the software-induced media bias of one particular service, i.e. the friendship SNS Fb. The described software-induced media bias applies exclusively to Fb discourse. Other forms of Social Media and/or SNS with other interactive properties and over-arching aims would have different effects on the generation and/or distribution of user content. The design of the business-oriented SNS Xing supports and/or delimits users in constructing job-related identities, while the properties of a dating SNS, such as Match.com, provides users with various means to present themselves as potential partners. However, at the very heart of all kinds of SNS are pre-set Such as the ‘what will happen in 2 hours’ application.

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templates that condition the allocation of user information. Moreover, SNS are based, at least to some degree, on software-induced text automation processes: Establishing contacts within all kinds of SNS types, from the business SNS Xing and the dating SNS Match.com to the travelling SNS Couchsurfing, by design involve users activating standardized contact request forms. Beyond such pre-defined ways of establishing network contacts, most SNS provide users with more individual pre-set actions that connect with the networks’ individual subjects and aims. In this sense, dating SNS entail automatic actions, such as ‘smiling at someone’, while business SNS let their members send ‘job recommendations’ without typing a single word. We can see that the developed notions of ‘outsourced text actions’ and/or the ‘software service as a third author’ not only apply to Fb in particular, but for SNS in general. Other software services, such as Twitter, YouTube or Blogster provide users not only with technological foundations to create and disperse individual texts, but gradually intervene in the production, dispersion and processing of user-generated texts. Though the CHTA framework was developed in order to critically reflect on Fb, the model is well-suited for investigating other kinds of software services as ideological settings. The developed and presented set of questions is directed at disclosing how prototypical features of text are reproduced, modified or altered by the software, when users operate the Fb environment. As the questions relate to general features of textuality, their focus is broad enough to evaluate the impact of any software service on users’ semiotic practices. Such methodological access to a reflective and critical evaluation of current Social Media texts gives weight to the larger theme of the software service as an ideological setting designed to calculate and standardize human behaviour. The present book has taken first steps towards developing a critical Social Media competence through a deep understanding of the interweaving between literacy practices, text properties and electronic media. This could be useful for media educators who are concerned with the creation or improvement of critical literacy skills among students. Other constrains of the present work relate to its strong focus on the impact of the software service on users and their (text) actions. Though I pointed to the mutual influence of technology and society (Chapter 1), I developed the methodological framework on the assumption that the technology – or more specifically the software service – biases users’ literacy practices. Obviously, software services did not appear from nowhere, but are the latest part of a long tradition of preceding literacy technologies. As such, SNS can be understood as socio-cultural phenomena that embody and mirror a society’s beliefs and values. When users employ the ‘socio-cultural tool Fb’, they do so to control

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and/or to adapt to new virtual environments. Thereby, the individual ways members use the platform are not only dependent on the individual properties of the communication tool, but moreover on the individual users’ background knowledge, goals and preferences. A goal for future researchers may be therefore to approach Fb from a more sociolinguistic viewpoint. Drawing on the present description of software conditioned acts of positioning, sociolinguistic approaches to Fb could, for example, reflect on how different social variables shape and are evoked through text automation properties. Other sociolinguistic research questions could be how the partial outsourcing of texts relates to the emergence of online communities or in what ways text automation can be utilized and/ or enhanced to develop individual discourse styles. This book investigated the relative impact of automatic text generation/distribution on two different user groups. It was shown that the group of pupils outsourced the creation of texts much more frequently than the students. Though it could be demonstrated that differences in control over text actions relate to different levels of education and literacy skills, these findings cannot be generalized, but have to be backed up by more qualitative and quantitative research on a diversified range of Fb users. The overall focus of this book was a reflective evaluation and critical understanding of ‘software-directedness’ in Fb discourse. However, some of its findings may also be related to more practical contexts, i.e. to research on cultural learning in language education settings. The software-induced standardization of cultural patterns, such as ‘adding friends’, could serve as a starting point for critically engaging with Fb and simultaneously teaching cultural knowledge. In this sense, language educators could discuss with their students in what ways the Fb-induced concepts of friendship differ from social thought/action patterns of friendship in source and target language contexts. Though researchers in language education (i.e. Hundsberger 2009, Hamilton-Hart 2010) have emphasized Social Media as a new resource for language educators, these approaches neglected the involved standardization of linguistic and cultural patterns. The oversimplification and shortening of socially and culturally evolved patterns of actions through algorithmic calculation of human behaviour has already been addressed by the computer pioneer and critic, Joseph Weizenbaum: However well software services and text automation processes imitate certain human literacy practices and/or action patterns, they will always lack the context-dependent aspects of meaning, as humans use language ‘in a context of experiences like love and trust that machines cannot [and will never] share’ (Weizenbaum 1976: 208–9).

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Index Bold page numbers indicate sections of the book where a term is formally or informally defined. acceptability 81–3, 96, 110, 122, 134 acts of self-portrayal 135, 210 advertisements 33, 129 agentic shift 120–2, 149, 150 Androutsopoulos, Jannis 55–6, 131 ATA see Automated Text Action Austin, John 79–80, 144 Automated Text Action 147, 148, 154, 166, 169 automatic activity records 39, 42 Barthes, Roland 77 Beaugrande, Robert 66–94 boyd, danah 6–8, 14–16, 22–4 Bublitz, Wolfram 56, 62–3, 76, 77, 81 business networking site 8, 26–30, 216, 217 coherence 71–8 cohesion 67–71 computer-mediated communication 43, 55, 56 contact creation 45, 47, 150, 154, 217 context 8, 10, 19, 22, 28, 36, 42–9 context of situation 37–9, 43, 48, 100 exophoric references 86, 125 control 42, 51, 120–2, 144–7 Creative Text Action 147, 148, 154, 166, 169 critical competence 161, 162, 172, 202, 203, 217 critical applied linguistics 47, 51, 52 Critical Discourse Analysis 47, 52 critical (media) literacy 52, 53 CTA see Creative Text Action cyberego 76, 77 digital literacy 141, 161 digital native 161

documenting social relations 101, 128 Dressler, Wolfgang 66–94 Eckkrammer, Eva 55, 56, 63, 65 electronic agent 44, 97, 120, 146–9, 212 electronic platform 99, 100 emic and etic perspective 141 E-text 62, 64 Facebook chapter 1 bias 39, 54–6, 121, 130, 154, 158–60 coherence 115–20 cohesion 110–15 identity 154–9, 202–5, 213–16 patterns of action 147–54, 207, 210, 218 as a real/ virtual object 101, 102, 110 structural features 32–9 system 136, 137 as a third author 39–43, 49, 156, 186, 212 field, tenor, mode 37, 38, 43, 100 see also context of situation fluidity 12, 19, 22, 31, 85, 87, 117, 124, 147 form of communication 48, 193 see also software service fragmentation 12, 64, 95, 105–8 friend networking site 24, 26, 29 friendship as a cognitive category 116–18 friendship maintenance 24, 28, 43, 67, 108 Goffman, Erving 18, 42, 43 Grice, Paul 90, 144 Habermas, Jürgen 209 Hall, Stuart 49 Halliday, Michael 37, 38, 52, 53, 86, 135

234 Index Haugh, Michael 144, 145 hypertext chapter 2 as a cognitive category 75–8, 86 and context 90, 92, 96, 126, 211 criteria 63–5, 94, 104–10 open and closed 62, 63, 102, 131, 135 qualities 61–3, 94, 101, 131 as a real/virtual object 61, 62 identity 4, 18, 19, 46, 154–9, 202–4, 213, 214 ideology 4, 52, 53, 56, 161, 208, 209 informativity 83–5, 96, 122–4 intention 143–7 intentionality 78–82, 96, 120–2 interactivity 3, 10, 63, 64, 75, 108, 109 intertextuality 69–71, 75, 76, 126–30 knowledge 71–8, 115–20 Kress, Gunther 38, 53 Landow, George 12, 60, 65, 132 Lanham, Richard 3, 47 layout 86, 91, 92, 102, 112, 129 literacy 53, 60, 85, 125, 161 mashup 4, 127, 130 McLuhan, Marshall 12, 48n. Mead, George 18, 46 media bias 39, 53, 54, 56, 97, 159, 111, 161, 204, 209 media determinism 11 medial conditioning 50, 51, 141, 182, 186, 189, 192, 203 meso medium 9, 10, 45, 152 mode 38, 53, 54, 65, 91, 95 multilinearity 62–4, 82, 94, 95, 103–5, 132 multimodal research 53, 54 multimodality 64, 65, 91, 95, 110, 134, 168, 169 narrative 49, 52, 89, 57, 191, 192 networking 14, 18 non-intended text actions 149–52, 169, 170, 213–15 non linearity 62 online community 14, 21, 22, 218 online dating site 30

ontology 63, 86, 94, 101, 131 other-directedness 132, 135, 138 other-positioning 157, 182, 185 see also positioning outsourced text action 143, 148, 151, 152, 156, 165, 174 persona 29, 43, 101, 210 personal profile 22, 32–5, 39, 40, 105, 108, 117 Personal Publishing 8–11, 101, 102, 131 positioning 156–8, 172, 202, 203, 215, 218 Postman, Neil 4, 105, 120, 209 privacy 17, 19, 20, 142 production role 43–5 reference frame 75–8, 96, 119, 120 remediation 92, 130 remix 110, 134 repurpose 92, 133, 134 self-positioning 157, 182, 188, 200, 204 see also positioning self-presentation 18, 19, 35, 36, 104, 108, 132, 157, 158, 204, 211, 214 semiotic choice 38, 43, 53, 54, 56, 99, 105, 123, 134, 136–8, 156, 182 semiotic practice chapter 2 CMC-specific 1, 110, 124 productive 109, 122, 123 receptive 109 situationality 85–8, 96, 124–6, 134 SNS see Social Network Site social constructionism 11–14 Social Media 6–8 see also Social Software Social Network Site chapter 1 categories 28–31 community 13, 17, 22, 27 key characteristics 14–22 offline anchorage 28–30 Social Networking Site 14, 19 social semiotics 53, 54 Social Software chapter 1 context awareness 8, 17 design and deployment 7 social organization 8 users participation 7, 8 social ties 14, 22, 28–31 software service 42, 48, 53–6, 99–101

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software-directedness 139, 162, 172, 212–18 software-generated text 42, 111, 128, 165, 204 speech act theory 79, 120, 146–51 standards of hypertextuality 96 Status Update 34, 35, 116 Storrer, Angelika 3, 55, 56, 59, 63, 75 subject-oriented networking site 29–31

automatic text generation 42–4, 67, 108, 122, 132, 158, 203, 212 text design 91, 92, 102

technological determinism 11–14 text action 44, 141, 143, 144, 160 text automation 42, 43, 46, 66, 82, 140, 149 automatic text distribution 42–4, 146, 151, 169, 170, 212

Web 2.0 3–6 application 6–8, 47 business revolution 4 genuine interactivity 3, 10 unintended consequences 4 Weizenbaum, Joseph 209, 218

user feedback 7, 19, 155 van Leeuwen, Theo 52–4 virtual context 125, 134 virtual environment 8, 120, 123–5, 138, 218