Facebook: Social network vs Audience-censored medium

Thursday, 21 April 2011 Posted by Vân Nguyễn



      [Just to get the thoughts off my chest so that I don’t have to constantly think about them. (Think about the thoughts? Sounds quite weird)]


            Facebook is increasingly becoming, to me, a form of social media rather than a social network. It means I use it less to connect with people than to keep track of what issues are talked about at any given moment. Every morning, instead of reading a daily newspaper like a traditional respectable intellectual would, I browse my facebook homepage. There, I find new music, often more than enough for the day, hot news both locally and globally, some of which are definitely not covered by the mainstream media. I also find thought-provoking videos and articles. People share links to all kinds of interesting and serious topics that I can find myself spend hours to absorb them all. I think it’s time to stop feeling guilty for spending time on facebook.


     Of course, for every type of media, it depends on the users’ preferences and purposes. The point is, with its very powerful aid in sharing, facebook acts more as a audience-censored medium than a mere tool for people to be in touch. This is rather significant in itself. The process is fueled by both spontaneous selection of “friends” and “pages” resulted from the social tendency to associate with similar others as well as facebook’s actively filtering to display only those you interact the most. Even if facebook plays no role, in theory, people can only handle about 15 “relationships” at a time, which means even if they have a thousand “friends” on their list, they only read, comment and send message to around 15 people. Humans are not extremely good at multi-tasking and diverting their attentions. We can deal with only such and such. The internet and its capacity to access indefinite information often overwhelm people. That’s why amazon and youtube record your preference to recommend videos and books. You are being censored, all the time, even when it’s based on your own like.


      Facebook, is multiple-layer when it comes to filtering. It is the freest, which precisely what makes it more necessary to filter through layers and layers before any feed get your attention. First, you choose the people you want to see. They come with their taste and opinions, most often implicit in what they choose to share. The third layer lies in facebook’s decision when it chooses to display only those you are most interested in. And the forth, probably not the last, is what you choose to read amidst of hundreds of feeds every day. For a piece of information to get to you, it must travel a long way. Both active and passive selections add on to filter what you read every day. It can be constraining, like I have worried before about surrounding myself with like-minded individuals. Im afraid I’ll end up listening to what I want to hear only and shut myself from diverse opinions because all my friends are somehow similar to me in education, social class, from one generation and very similar interest. But all things social have their dual faces of constraining and enabling. You can’t have just one. As soon as one artifact becomes social, it evolves both aspects.


      This brings me to my next point of facebook’s ability to connect people and foster common interest in a very remarkable way. I can get to one page of a group concerned about the same issue from a random comment on a random post in a random profile of a random person, as long as Im interested enough to follow through the steps of clicking. One page, such as the Doremon’s “creative dialogues” page, which becomes popular at a dazzling speed thanks to Doremon’s popularity among manyVietnamese generation, actually can address social problems in a critical way, if one just looks carefully. The ability to talk and make fun of social problems before they are shut down by “official” censorship on mainstream media is valuable, because as any sociology students know, power lies in the invisible, the things that people can’t talk about or even are not aware of, and to undermine issues, the first step is to talk about them. After a while, I have friends who are roughly on the same page with me, and “like” groups which constantly provide me with new thoughts, facts and laughs. I get annoyed easily at people who update their status above 5 times a day. Do they think they are so important that others want to know about every little single detail of their lives? If they are my friend, I mean real friend, I will just skip them. If they are not, I will unfriend them. On the other hand, I am led to and get connected with high value others, who act as my filtering in what I read every day. Facebook is amazing this way, while of course I value it as a tool to keep myself in tune with others, receive emotional support from them and maintain a quite stable social life despite the distance.

     What is the point here finally? Well, no more guilt for spending time on facebook. It is more than a social network and a place to procrastinate. As a user, I care less about people’s distress, their newly broken relationship, their pictures taken at last Friday’s party, their conversations with mutual friends of ours. I care about what they share, what they like, what they think. This way, facebook for me is extremely useful and amazing. Yep, it is.

Posted by Vân Nguyễn
  1. Giao 21 April 2011 at 18:54

    That's pretty much what's happening to me. As I cannot hold onto reading all kinds of news anymore, I chose to look at the links provided by my facebook friends. Facebook is doing good. Everything matters because of our purpose, regardless of the medium in use, though I have a bit of shame as I've come to think of everything and everyone as relational and, functional!

    Yes I think we're self-censoring ourselves. I'm one. But I actively tried to reduce that by adding people who have different points of view. I added people who write "Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam" under their political orientation too.

    I'm one of those bad persons you mentioned :D. I tend to think of Facebook for a quick outlet of thoughts and emotions these days. I update so many times a day then. But I base it on the fact that, on facebook, if you don't like it, you can ignore it.

    Miss you much, chi Van! Add me to your mailing list, please. I don't want to stalk your blogspot site all the time, seriously.

  1. seriwriting 21 April 2011 at 23:26

    This is good insight, em Van. Facebook definitely keeps getting better as a viral tool.

    It does so at the cost of getting less and less personal, supposedly because there are no features to facilitate multiple identities, something that people do in real life. Normally when you share anything more personal than a funny video in the Internet, you have in mind a target audience, which includes maybe only a handful of people. And its also very important for these chosen people to know that what you are sharing is dedicated to them. I hardly care when somebody updates a status that she is feeling sad on Facebook, but when she calls me to say so, now thats a totally different story.

    When I am bored (I always am), I often go around and friend cute girls on Facebook. I then realize a pattern. People who are still in highschool are less likely to accept friend requests from strangers. There is another notable pattern. Lots of people who have only around 100 friends in their list are curiously much more active than those with 2k friends.

    The explanation is clear. Highschool girls only interact with their classmates. They have only one identity and participate in only one social group. This fact makes it possible for them to use Facebook much more personally and naturally. Adults are different. Adults have co-workers, club friends, highschool friends, uni friends, and so on. Overseas students are even more complicated and have more such groups. Each of these groups perceive the adult in a slightly different way.

    Anyway, this trend means that Facebook will become a better platform than ever for businesses to execute their social media tactics. But it'll open a hole for other social networks to jump in and fill the gap. My guess is that anything that somehow encourages people to share more personal data will immediately attract a lot of users.

  1. Vân Nguyễn 22 April 2011 at 13:31

    I knew you two will comment on this post. In fact, you two are my most eager readers and Im motivated to write down random thoughts like this as long as you two still read and care. Just want to send a big “Thank you!”
    Giao: You’re probably my richest resource for links to other media. Im not sure what you mean by “functional”. Does that imply “everyone provides a certain advantage”? I don’t think people identifying themselves with the Communist Party seriously think about it. But ya, I have no prejudice against them. I have a very weak political consciousness.
    I won’t mind your rambling. I was thinking about people who inform me how fresh and cheap their groceries are, how full they get after a meal, stuff like that. It’s ok if it’s not too often, but great frequency of such expression annoys me. On my part, I usually hesitate to post things too, because I wonder whether my English-speaking friends would find it annoying to have a bunch of illegible words on their page and my Vietnamese-speaking friends would think Im showing off or have been removed from my roots (like a typical snobbish abroad-student). Great exposure really makes me reluctant to express myself.
    I already added you a while ago when you asked. You still don’t receive notification? I’ve added the “follow by email” box. Try and see if it works.
    @Seri: I get your point and agree with you. That’s why I retreat to google blogspot to let out my thoughts and feelings. Facebook’s great exposure and capacity for a social life makes me sometimes feel like Im naked. Once, my uncle somehow read a comment I posted on a friend’s wall and he responded by posting a note on his facebook about his disappointment in me. It drove me nuts. I notice, I think I’ve told you, how my friends here actually share very little about their personal feelings than friends back home. Their facebook is more a calm report of what they do than a fragmented yet emotional essay of how they feel. I think it has to do with being used to intense social connection. One can’t express much of oneself in front of many people (we only get naked when we’re alone or with one, probably two others). But do you think people may feel less the need to share personal stuff as time goes on? Thorough connection will lead us back to our own safe island of the self, that’s my theory.

  1. Giao 22 April 2011 at 14:56

    Let's see whether it will notify me when you've got a new post.

    I don't know why I've developed such a way of thinking - first relational and second functional. I've always seen connections, vague and clear, between people and things, since I was a kid. But just recently, whenever I see something/someone, a blink would strike my head, "What's that woman for? What can I use this thing for?" I don't have a conclusion if it's good or bad. But it's definitely stuck on my mind.

  1. seriwriting 22 April 2011 at 23:10

    "But do you think people may feel less the need to share personal stuff as time goes on? Thorough connection will lead us back to our own safe island of the self, that’s my theory."

    Absolutely. In my prev comment, "sharing personal data" does include but is not the same as sharing one's emotional feelings. When I hang out with my old classmates, we don't talk about anything too sensitive that we don't want other people to hear, certainly nothing too emotional, just funny highschool stuffs. But still, we wouldn't behave exactly the same way if there are a couple of outsiders in the room. At the moment, a Facebook wall is like one's public face, an identity that one is comfortable showing to everybody in the world, or at least all of their connections of any kind. That alone does hint some limitations.

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Search This Blog