Online spaces: technological, institutional, and social practices that foster connections through Instagram and Twitch
Date
2020
Authors
Weigel, Taylor, author
Elkins, Evan, advisor
Dickinson, Greg, committee member
Martey, Rosa, committee member
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Abstract
We are living in an increasingly digital world. In the past, critical scholars have focused on the inequality of access and unequal relationships between the elite, who controlled the media, and the masses, whose limited agency only allowed for alternate meanings of dominant discourse and media. With the rise of social networking services (SNSs) and user-generated content (UGC), critical work has shifted from relationships between the elite and the masses to questions of infrastructure, online governance, technological affordances, and cultural values and practices instilled in computer mediated communication (CMC). This thesis focuses specifically on technological and institutional practices of Instagram and Twitch and the social practices of users in these online spaces, using two case studies to explore the production of connection-oriented spaces through Instagram Stories and Twitch streams, which I argue are phenomenologically live media texts. In the following chapters, I answer two research questions. First, I explore the question, "Are Instagram Stories and Twitch streams fostering connections between users through institutional and technological practices of phenomenologically live texts?" and second, "If they are, how do users support and advance connections across individuals in dispersed geographies on Twitch streams and Instagram Stories?" As my analysis shows, Twitch streams and Instagram Stories are texts that present themselves as phenomenologically live—meaning that even if they are not live, they are meant to feel live to the viewers—due to the complex institutional and technological practices that often remain hidden to the user, as well as social practices of users. By looking specifically at the rhetoric of liveness, the public screen, the third place, embodiment, and platform affordances and governance, this thesis will uncover the modes of production and possibilities for connection in online, ephemeral spaces. Through a visual and textual analysis of phenomenologically live texts on Instagram and Twitch and a critical analysis of the temporal, social, technological, and institutional practices that engender the materialization and maintenance of these communities, this thesis seeks to understand how visual platforms structure particular experiences in online interactions, acting as informal public spaces that have the ability to foster connections between users.
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Subject
enclave
norms
third place
Linkus7
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
public screen