Response to Donath’s Article: ‘Signals in Social Supernets’
Sunday, September 20, 2009 by Dominey Flores
Basically, Donath’s article discusses the significant impact CMC has had on human relationships and human interaction, particularly with regards to the impact of recent social networking sites such as, Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster. She examines some of the ways in which SNS has changed our definition of ‘friendship’ and ‘socialising’; and questions whether or not these changes are positive or negative. In her discussion, she draws on Signaling Theory to highlight the complications involved in computer-mediated ‘friendships’ and human interaction – how reliable is it? How can users of SNS be certain that others profiles are ‘genuine’ and reliable? How can SNS its users from negative aspects such as spammers, fraudsters, unwanted communication and/or ‘invasion of privacy’? She suggests that sites design and the barriers that are put in place to ensure reliability and ‘trustworthiness’ determine the kinds of networks and relationships that are forged on the site (i.e. aSmallWorld). I found this part quite interesting because it does have some truth in it. For instance, Youtube encourages users/viewers to create ‘channels’, build profiles, subscribe to other people’s channels, and become ‘friends’ with other Youtubers, as well as participate in commentary and responses. Although, one cannot simply add others as ‘friends’ without that persons consent, they can still subscribe to her/his channel and view that person’s profile and video uploads. Youtube encourages mass participation and mass networking. One of the main points of Youtube is to amass a network of subscribers. On the other hand, there are sites such as the one mentioned by Donath aSmallWorld that prohibit users from randomly adding friends or people she/he is not well acquainted with– and are penalised/kicked out from the site if she/he tries to do this too often. Donath seems to be placing some responsibility on the internet sites themselves – and the privacy barriers that they offer users. Reliability is not just on the shoulders of site users who are heavily prone to deception but also on the creators of sites themselves. I found this point interesting because it was the first time that I had read such an idea.