Mapping Facebook
Image retrieved from: http://www.
By Catherine Colgan.
The parallels between the wandering Flaneur and the closed in shopping arcades for the bourgeois and the online maps based on Facebook page links is massive. The idea of maps is to depict an area to people who are unfamiliar with it in order to help them navigate their way around said area. This from of description has been around for thousands of years and certainly since the advent of writing and even earlier than that in the form of stone carvings. Our patterns of activity on the internet has formed a similar map in a digital form of Quicklinks or hyperlinks, which help us to move between websites in a single click of the mouse in most cases once you have searched something once before, like in the search facility on Facebook, where all you have to do is type enough letters into the search area and the result you want will come up at the top of the list if you have visited the page more than once.
If someone is new to Facebook or any social media site, there is the quality of the flaneur about being able to wander throughout the site in question and look at your own leisure at the pages and groups they would like to associate themselves with, when they are not bombarded by 'suggested pages' that constantly pop up on my own Facebook page. Like the people wandering about the arcade and having to go in only one direction in the contrast to the flaneur, hyperlinks help you to move quickly between pages and social media sites where most internet pages now have hyperlinks to share what you are doing on those sites on Facebook, some try to make you share things on Facebook so that your friends and other contacts can see what you can do on those sites, making Facebook a hub like Google is for looking for information.
References
Hyperlink: http://www.
http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html
Kuttainen, V. (2015) BA1002: Our space: Networks, narrative and making of place.
Week 4 Lecture Notes. Retrieved from http://www.learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Wood, D., Kaiser, W.L & Abramms, B. (2006). The Multiple Truths of the Mappable World, In Seeing Through Maps: Many Ways to see the World. (p.p.1-12) Oxford, U.K.: The Internationalist.
“The urban masses provided camouflage for the flâneur. The anonymity of the masses freed him to move about without anyone paying any undue attention to him” (Prouty 2015) this is becoming harder achieve in the cyber world, with most social media sites demanding information from you as soon as you sign up.
ReplyDeleteWhen signing up for a Facebook account you are asked to provide personal information and also given the option to search for friends from your email address, thus making the anonymity of just being a passing face in the crowd without a name an impossibility, your actions are not only recorded but posted for all to see.
You talk about a new Facebook user having freedom from the ‘suggested pages’ but I disagree, by allowing Facebook to search and add friends from your email as soon as you enter the Facebook world you are greeted with suggestions due to what your friends like.
References:
Richard Prouty (2009 October 28) A turtle on a leash. Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html