Media Ethnography
Discourse analysis of MySpace
OK, I have a family blog. I write it about me and my husband and our kids for our out of town family members so they can see pictures of the kiddos and hear stupid stories about our house. I have thought aout MySpace/FaceBook only because my students talk about it a lot and I have been curious but I really haven’t wanted to go there too…plus a couple colleagues have run into trouble as teachers with having these spaces. So, I went to my life-long friend’s Molly’s house because I know she has a FaceBook account and uses it on a regular basis.
Molly uses this method because, as the oldest of about twenty cousins, all her younger family members have one and she feels she is missing out without one. She doesn’t post on hers as much as she lurks on theirs but in order to view theirs – she has to have one as well. It is this community I will use for this entry.
Practices observed:
In many ways the contributors in this community are sure to send out updates to everyone as no one is happy if they are left out. Each person seems to have an identity-one is big on posting pictures, another writes in depth about her only child, another is a creative writer who will go on walks and write stories about what she sees (which everyone tells her how wonderful she is and how she should publish but Molly admits she has really only read portions of most b/c they get too long), there is the social coordinator who reminds everyone of birthdays and such, there is the videographer who makes random obscure videos to funky/scary/crazy music as a hobby, and there is the entertainer – the one who sends funny clips from YouTube and other places for all to see and enjoy. Each has a set role and are kind of expected to follow that role. Molly is the receiver – they all “teach� her how to do the things they are doing if she ever wants to try and she plays clueless b/c then she won’t be expected to contribute as much.
It is really kind of funny how, as Molly explained these roles she was dead on and OK with the fact that they were so defined.
Shared social agenda:
Their social agenda is simple – here you have twenty cousins all within the ages of 36-18 staying in touch with each other. These are those people you use to run around in your skivvies with at the family gathering at the lake. They all grew up together and were so close and do not want to lose that closeness because they are no longer geographical neighbors.
How did this shape their responses:
Everyone was pleasant and playful and nice. No bitching or backstabbing occurred. A lot of encouragement and support together with just trying to maintain a fun relationship with each other was basically what they were all after and all wanted. Through this method they were able to hang on to the playfulness of their youthful relationships despite the craziness of their real worlds. Some innocence regained.
Interview with Molly:
In interviewing Molly she seemed so genuinely happy that this media was available to her. Growing up she had just her younger brother and her cousins. Her brother died 6 years ago, many divorces and family issues have risen up but the cousins remain intact and strong supporters of each other. She was practically giddy when a new post would appear and depending on who it was coming from – her response was different but still positive. She didn’t love that other friends – noncousins that is – were invited or allowed in their community but the bulk of the discussion was limited to cousins so only when an outsider sent something was she slightly bitter about it. She admitted to letting old friends on to her page but also said she really didn’t communicate with them but occasionally looked at their pictures and stuff simply out of boredom or curiosity. She envied some of the things other people sent her because they were so impressive but also admitted to not wanting to put that much of herself out there.
Conclusion:
First when I viewed these sights it was really fun to look at all their pictures and brief profiles. Most were individual shots of themselves or family photos with kids and/or spouses and/or pets. All were very nice pictures and all but three-four contributors were females(one husband didn’t have his own page but would add to his wife’s page). Some were really loud and overbearing…borderline obnoxious and I didn’t want to stay on those pages very long. Others were quite interesting and entertaining. None had inappropriate or risqué images – most likely because most have families and/or they know their moms and dads can see these.
After this I started looking more at individual pages. Mostly I found myself looking at their friends section to see if I knew anyone, anyone was especially nice or painful to look at and just entertained myself with these images. Molly had the least amount of friends on hers which she told me use to bother her but most of her friends are older and don’t have these. Several of her cousins had pages of friends but most of these were her college age or just out of college age cousins trying to keep in touch with old friends. Apparently when this first started a lot of people put/allowed random friends on their page just so it looked like they had a lot of friends – even if they didn’t actually communicate with these people. I thought this was kind of funny – back to high school perhaps?.
I didn’t look too deep into the about me section – mostly because of time, the fact we had 8 kids (4 each) running through the house under our feet, and I knew most of her cousins. I could see though where all this information and especially the pictures, could get a bit addicting.
Overall I actually enjoyed FaceBook and could see why people would be interested in using it. One thing I did notice though was an awful lot of drinking/partying pictures and I wonder if people realize just how many people can access these pages – especially the public pages. This is something I think more people need to consider when/if they create a page.