“Is Facebook Making us Lonely?”

1. Connecting or isolating? “Is Facebook Making us Lonely?”

2. Is social media bringing us closer together? Uniting us?

3. Or atomizing us?

4. Why do these questions matter? • Need for a critical agenda • Questions of control, power and commerce • Best understood within a dialectical framework • Let’s avoid the polarities of either utopian or dystopian views of the internet and SNPs like Facebook. • Be aware of technological determinism

5. Article: Is Facebook Making us Lonely (Stephen: 2012) Yvette Vickers died alone. ‘Her computer was on too, its glow permeating the empty space.’

6. 17 million selfies uploaded every week

7. Narcissism gone mad?

8. What are the consequences?

9. What does social media do to empathy, compassion and insight? • Is technology liberating, democratic, empowering? • What is wrong with being connected and informed?

10. Am I the only person who has started to think in emojies?!

11. Is FB creating FOMO?

12. Social media behaviours are not necessarily new…. • Baskin (2010, 10) suggests that despite the emerging technologies of social media, many of the behaviours occurring across these mediums have actually existed for thousands of years.

13. Don’t believe the hype! • Cover (2014, 1372) also says there has been an ‘exaggerated view’ of what is new about social media behaviours and ignores what is ‘continuous with existing, historically constituted cultural needs and desires.’

14. Individualism • Giddens, Beck and Lashs’ (1994) concept of reflexive modernity reminds us alongside, processes of globalization, there is arguably a hardening of the local and the rise of individualism.

15. Networked individualism • Rainie and Wellmans’ (2012) more positive concept of ‘networked individualism,’ and suggests emerging digital operating systems are creating new ‘new efficiencies and affordances in the way people solve problems and meet their social needs.’

16. Who cares about being lonely anyway… • Culture of the self • Curators of our own online identities • Celebrities in our own lives • Imaginary audiences • Extreme narcissism • A performance of selfhood / series of performative acts

17. Response to Modernity… • Contemporary late capitalism produces a ‘push-and-pull of multiple demands.’ • We attempt to be both rational, coherent selves yet exist as decentered and fragmented (multiple identities). • ‘Social networking sites are effective in answering the contemporary cultural anxiety between these competing demands.’ (Polettiand Rak: 2014).

18. Digital Capitalism • Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay are the "ruling class of the digital world" (NenadRomic). Not only are they among the wealthiest private companies, they also define via new business models, new organizational strategies and cultures of use, how digital Capitalism will evolve in the future.

19. One big happy Facebook family and world…. • Does Facebook promote debate or consensus? • Why are we only allowed to LIKE? • What versions of ourselves are we allowed to present? • Are these now dictated to us by the drop down menus created by FB?

20. Privacy…. • Facebook owns our private data and profits from selling it to advertisers • Our ‘private’ likes(and dislikes) have become commodities • Notions of privacy are relative • However, who is regulating what Facebook (and their advertisers) clients are doing with our personal data?

21. Self-surveillance … • FB profile management can be seen as an act of self-governance and an attempt to fit one’s identity into the framework provided. • It is a kind of self-governing or personal surveillance (Foucault: 1995).

22. What about the UAE? • 8,807,226 people in the UAE are Internet users. • 93.2% of the population • 6,300,000 people in the UAE are on Facebook • 66.7% of the population (Internetworldstats.com: 2016)

23. Social media and UAE businesses • The UAE’s top 100 most influential brands, individuals and events are measured through their presence on social media (Grafdom: 2011). • Facebook is by the most popular choice – 72%.

25. Emirati women and social media • 21st century female Emirati students have the opportunity of being university educated at rates unprecedented for women in the Middle East. (MFNCA: 2009). • Their prolific use of social media has also been widely documented (Khoori: 2014). Popular applications (apps) include: Instagram; Snapchat, WhatsAppand Facebook.

26. Lack of research into Facebook and uses of social media • Emerging technologies and systems of communication • Varying types of behaviours and uses that are not necessarily dictated by the designers

27. So…Is Facebook making us lonely? • Thesis • Antithesis • Synthesis TaimAlfalasi

28. Conclusions…. • The popularity of FB is not about ‘keeping in touch with friends…’ • It is an effect of the contemporary anxieties over identity and performance in contemporary late Capitalism (Poletti and Rak: 2014). • Let’s avoid new media panic and technological determinism.

29. Purposes of social networking… • Social networking sites should be viewed as: ‘a product of cultural desires, demands and needs that responds to specific social purposes and practices.’ (Williams: 1990). • Social networking sites serve the specific purpose of: ‘aiding our contemporary culture anxieties…’ over our identities. • Their popularity also serves the needs of FB as a corporation and their advertising clients.

30. References • Al, Jenaibi, B.N. A (2016) Use of Social Media in the United Arab Emirates: An Initial Study. Global Media Journal. Arabian Edition. Summer / Fall. Vol. 1, No.2, pp. 3 – 27. Retrieved January 18, 2016 from: http://www.gmj-me.com/gmj_custom_files/volume1_issue2/articles_in_english/volume1-issue2-article-3-27.pdf • Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline and Punishment. Vintage Books, New York • Poletti, A. and Rak, J. (2014) Identity Technologies. Constructing the Self Online. The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisconsin.