scholarly journals Digitale forbindelser og nye fornemmelser. Et etnografisk studie af Facebook

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Nina Charlotte Schiøtz ◽  
Sophie Bo Schmidt

Artiklen bygger på en undersøgelse af den sociale netværkstjeneste Facebook, som vi foretog i efteråret 2008 i forbindelse med specialeskrivning på Sociologisk Institut, KU. I nærværende artikel argumenterer vi først og fremmest for, at Aktør-Netværk-Teorien kan være et givtigt sted at starte, når vi skal forstå menneskets samspil med digitale teknologier, og vi vil fremlægge de metodiske udfordringer og muligheder, som et felt som Facebook byder på. Dernæst vil vi give en karakteristik af de nye tekno-sociale praksisser, som vi ser opstå med unges hverdagsbrug af Facebook og vise, hvordan disse praksisser betyder, at mennesker i stigende grad knyttes sammen via fornemmelsen for hinanden. Søgeord: Sociale netværkstjenester, ANT, sociologi, Facebook, digital etnografi. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Nina Charlotte Schiøtz and Sophie Bo Schmidt: Digital Connections and New Awareness: An Ethnograhpic Study of Facebook This article explores the characteristics of the new kinds of social ties between people that are emerging with the use of Social Network Sites. The article builds on the results of an ethnographic study of young Danish Facebook users in late 2008. First we argue that Actor Network Theory is a useful strand of theory for studying technological phenomena. Then we describe two general techno-social practices that emerge from users’ engagement with Facebook. Finally, we argue that the substance of the social relations that emerges with the use of Social Network Sites is relations of awareness. This form of connectedness does not replace traditional social relations, but is rather a new dimension in the way people relate and make ties in society today. Key words: Social Network Sites, SNS, Facebook, ANT, sociology, digital ethnography.

Author(s):  
Nisrine Zammar

This article examines the role of actors in a Social Network Sites and also the triggers and challenges they represent to social networking between today’s communities and businesses. A Social Network Sites is the product of the evolution of social liaisons and the emergence of online communities of people who are interested in exploring the concerns and activities of others. A social network is the assembly of direct or indirect contacts; a network is the product of interactions with the actors (individuals, families, enterprises, etc.) enabled by means of the structural design of web 2.0. Social Network Sites bring people together to interact through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools. This article is intended to be a trigger to deeply and more intensely explore potential roles of actor-network theory in the Social Network Sites context, in today’s and tomorrow’s world.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2300-2309
Author(s):  
Nisrine Zammar

This article examines the role of actors in a Social Network Sites and also the triggers and challenges they represent to social networking between today’s communities and businesses. A Social Network Sites is the product of the evolution of social liaisons and the emergence of online communities of people who are interested in exploring the concerns and activities of others. A social network is the assembly of direct or indirect contacts; a network is the product of interactions with the actors (individuals, families, enterprises, etc.) enabled by means of the structural design of web 2.0. Social Network Sites bring people together to interact through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools. This article is intended to be a trigger to deeply and more intensely explore potential roles of actor-network theory in the Social Network Sites context, in today’s and tomorrow’s world.


Author(s):  
Nisrine Zammar

This article examines the role of actors in a Social Network Sites and also the triggers and challenges they represent to social networking between today’s communities and businesses. A Social Network Sites is the product of the evolution of social liaisons and the emergence of online communities of people who are interested in exploring the concerns and activities of others. A social network is the assembly of direct or indirect contacts; a network is the product of interactions with the actors (individuals, families, enterprises, etc.) enabled by means of the structural design of web 2.0. Social Network Sites bring people together to interact through chat rooms, and share personal information and ideas around any topics via personal homepage publishing tools. This article is intended to be a trigger to deeply and more intensely explore potential roles of actor-network theory in the Social Network Sites context, in today’s and tomorrow’s world.


Author(s):  
Diane Harris Cline

This chapter views the “Periclean Building Program” through the lens of Actor Network Theory, in order to explore the ways in which the construction of these buildings transformed Athenian society and politics in the fifth century BC. It begins by applying some Actor Network Theory concepts to the process that was involved in getting approval for the building program as described by Thucydides and Plutarch in his Life of Pericles. Actor Network Theory blends entanglement (human-material thing interdependence) with network thinking, so it allows us to reframe our views to include social networks when we think about the political debate and social tensions in Athens that arose from Pericles’s proposal to construct the Parthenon and Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis, the Telesterion at Eleusis, the Odeon at the base of the South slope of the Acropolis, and the long wall to Peiraeus. Social Network Analysis can model the social networks, and the clusters within them, that existed in mid-fifth century Athens. By using Social Network Analysis we can then show how the construction work itself transformed a fractious city into a harmonious one through sustained, collective efforts that engaged large numbers of lower class citizens, all responding to each other’s needs in a chaine operatoire..


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Till Jansen

Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) offers an ‘infra-language’ of the social that allows one to trace social relations very dynamically, while at the same time dissolving human agency, thus providing a flat and de-centred way into sociology. However, ANT struggles with its theoretical design that may lead us to reduce agency to causation and to conceptualize actor-networks as homogeneous ontologies of force. This article proposes to regard ANT’s inability to conceptualize reflexivity and the interrelatedness of different ontologies as the fundamental problem of the theory. Drawing on Günther, it offers an ‘infra-language’ of reflexive relations while maintaining ANT’s de-centred approach. This would enable us to conceptualize actor-networks as non-homogeneous, dynamic and connecting different societal rationales while maintaining the main strengths of ANT.


Author(s):  
Weiyu Zhang ◽  
Rong Wang

This paper examines interest-oriented vs. relationship-oriented social network sites in China and their different implications for collective action. By utilizing a structural analysis of the design features and a survey of members of the social networks, this paper shows that the way a social network site is designed strongly suggests the formation and maintenance of different types of social ties. The social networks formed among strangers who share common interests imply different types of collective action, compared to the social networks that aim at the replication and strengthening of off-line relationships.


Author(s):  
Sonda Bouattour Fakhfakh

The huge popularity of social network sites like Facebook gave rise to numerous studies exploring the prerequisites and consequences of FB use. This article does not deviate from this direction. It offers a theoretic attempt to analyze the reasons of attachment to FB but through another perspective: the disengagement phenomenon. The theoretical framework is based on the Attachment Theory and the Actor Network Theory. Assuming that FB allows the satisfaction of the innate attachment need and that there is a social and technical interaction between users and the FB structure, the present analysis investigates the relations between user attachment style and FB use and between FB user and the FB platform (hardware and software). The aim here is not to reject (or not) some formulated hypothesis, but to develop a theoretical frame from the existing theories. The argument is that human/human and human/non-human attachment could explain why users find it very difficult to disengage even though they are willing to do so and suffering from being invaded by FB.


Management ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sana Ansari ◽  
Dalhia Mani

The field of social networks focuses on the relationships among social actors, and on patterns that emerge from the structure of the social network and its implications (Wasserman and Faust’s Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications). Social network research argues that actors (e.g., individuals or firms) are embedded within a network of relations, and that their behavior and choices cannot be studied independent of the social relations that shape and structure behavior. Social network perspective views relations among the social actors as ties and regular patterns in relationship as structure. Ties are the relational linkages that allow flow of resources between the actors, both tangible and intangible. Multiple actors form a web of relational ties, which can be either economic, social, or political. Networks can be of different types based on the content of the relational tie between the actors. For instance, collaboration ties between actors make a collaboration network or a co-author relation between actors makes a co-authorship network. Networks can also be at different levels of analysis—for instance, an intraorganizational friendship network is at the level of individuals while a network of intercountry trade relations is at the level of country. Ties between actors can be of different strengths (for instance, friends who meet daily versus once a year) and can also be negative or positive ties (e.g., competition networks versus collaboration networks). This article summarizes the latest research on social ties and network structure by focusing on the main thematic discussions in the field: (1) networks and strategic, governance behavior; (2) workplace networks; (3) collaboration and knowledge networks; (4) networks, personality, and individual differences; (5) entrepreneurial and family business networks; and (6) networks and social media. To ensure a comprehensive review of the topic, the article used search keywords, “networks,” or “network structure,” or “social networks,” or “social ties,” and was limited to articles in the top fourteen management journals, namely: Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. The search was further limited to the six-year period from 2014–2019, since previous articles on organizational networks and brokerage in Oxford Bibliographies have summarized the research in this domain prior to 2014.


Author(s):  
Dag Øystein Nome

Artikkelen presenterer en mikro-etnografisk undersøkelse av barns forhold til tingene i to småbarnsavdelinger i norske barnehager. Hensikten er å forstå hvordan barns relasjoner til ting virker inn på deres mulighet til deltagelse og sosial posisjonering i gruppen. Undersøkelsen er basert på Aktør-Nettverk-Teori som vektlegger tingenes betydning som agens i sosiale nettverk og tingenes funksjon som forlengelse av barnas kropper. Undersøkelsen viser at tingene har betydning som legitim inngangsbillett til deltagelse i lekegrupper og at tingenes innbyrdes hierarkiske orden bidrar i å uttrykke den sosiale orden mellom barna som inngår i relasjon med dem. The article presents a micro-ethnographic study on toddlers’ relationship to the material artefacts in two Norwegian kindergarten groups. The purpose of the study is to understand how their relationship with objects influences their possibilities for participation in peer groups. The study is based on Actor-Network-Theory. A main point is that material artefacts have agency in social networks surrounding us and function as extensions of our bodies. The study indicates that material artefacts serve as entrance tickets for participation in group activities and that the hierarchic order between the objects in the room, influences the social order among the children using them.  


2001 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Laurier ◽  
Angus Whyte

How do emotions move and how do emotions move us? How are feelings and recognitions distributed socio-materially? Based on a multi-site ethnographic study of a ëromanticí correspondance system, this article explores the themes of love, privacy, identity and public displays. Informed by ethnomethodology and actor- network theory its investigations into these ëinformalí affairs are somewhat unusual in that much of the research carried out by those bodies of work concentrates on ëinstitutionalí settings such as laboratories, offices and courtrooms. In common with ethnomethodology it attempts to re-specify some topics of interest in the social sciences and humanities; in this case, documents and practices of writing and reading those documents. A key element of the approach taken is restoring to reading and writing their situated nature as observable, knowable, distributed community practices. Re- specifying topics for the social sciences involves the detailed description of several situated ways in which the ëromanticí correspondence system is used. Detailing the translations, transformations and transportations of documents as ‘quasi- objects’ through several orderings, the article suggests that documents have no essential meaning and that making them meaningful is part of the work of those settings.


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