CS 371-Social Media and Social Life Fall 2022
Collaborative Class Blog Post Assignment #3
In Personal Connections in the Digital Age
(page 24), Nancy Baym takes the position that the widespread diffusion of
digital media forms and practices throughout our everyday lives is often the
source of individual and collective “anxiety”.
More specifically, she argues (page 24) that:
Most anxieties around both digital media and their historical
precursors stem from the fact that these
media are interactive. Especially in combination with sparse social cues, interactivity raises issues about
authenticity and well-being of people, interactions, and relationships that use
new media.
After
foregrounding the issue of personal and social anxieties produced by digital
media, Baym proceeds
to discusses four theoretical perspectives on the causal relationship between
technology and the social in order to help understand these anxieties: technological determinism; social construction of technology; social shaping of technology; and domestication of technology.
In your post, chose one of these perspectives to discuss how the anxiety about
the interactivity of new digital media is evidenced in one of the following:
1) 1) the experience of Kayla in the
portion of the film Eighth Grade that we watched in class last week; or
2) 2) the discussion on the effects
of social media use in the STATSCAN report, “Canadians’
assessments of social media in their lives” Canadians’ assessments of social media in
their lives (statcan.gc.ca) (also linked to in the “Resources for Unit I module of the
Content section of the MLS site); or
3) 3) the discussion of Facebook’s
suppression of its own research into the negative effects of Instagram on
teenage girls as reported in The Guardian (based upon the Wall
Street Journal reportage) Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful
effect on teenage girls, leak reveals | Instagram | The Guardian (also linked to in the
“Resources for Unit I module of the Content section of the MLS site)
The due dates for this assignment are Monday, October 24th, 6 PM
for your original posts and Friday,
October 28thth, 6 PM for your responses
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