No matter how intrinsically appealing a theory may seem, ifit does not provide scientists with a way of predicting and ultimately control-ling destructive behavior, it is useless.
This poses a normative question for all CB research, but what about stepping stones for future theories? Does general knowledge not play a role in our understanding of other things?
adjust their thinking to the situa-tion they find themselves in.
What level of consciousness does this occur at? It's hard to imagine someone in a protest that turns to a riot actively thinking "everyone else is rioting so I should too", but perhaps such behavior could seem more reasonable for the example of buying hula-hoops.
However, only someone who does not under-stand the sociological perspective would then confer that same judgmentupon the participants themselves.
This has some dramatic ramifications for the social justice system and laws in the United States, or even reactions to protests that turn to riots and their associations with social movements (like Black Lives Matter). I think this is not a common understanding.
The partici-pants have deviated from the norms of the situation and engaged in behaviorthat is neither accepted nor expected under the circumstances
If collective behavior does not need to be coordinated or push for social change, or have any real goal in mind, how can it be a building block for the theory of social movements? I feel like this definition of collective behavior could form an additional "conceptual distinction" of social movements by Edwards.
in confrontation with elites, authorities andopponents
What about general dissatisfaction with social change? I'm thinking of conservative social movements, or social movements that want regression to past norms.
The wayin which collective efforts are actually organized, however, has been asource of debate (which we will look at throughout the book)
Has the vague language of social movement definitions hampered research on social movements in any way? It seems like social movements are a "I know it when I see it" situation and theorists are just trying to formalize the definition.
participatory culture is defined by Jenkinsas a new mode for cultural production
I feel that the influence of gig work and the monetization of random internet participation could be a factor here.
TheAPIsweredevelopedtobepowerfulgatekeepersof information flow and regulate to a large extent how open a system is and whatdata and functions can be embedded or shared
I wonder if the network analysis would care about the level of user interaction or appropriation, because some levels of appropriations, such as programming for applications using APIs are more involved than using a blog to post content, or simply posting your thoughts about a topic on a forum. The qualities of the interactions should be significantly different between people/entities.
OneexplicitassumptionmadebyANTistheincreasinglyevanescentdistinctionbetween culture and technology (e.g. Akrich 1992; Latour 1991; 1992), which affirms the heterogeneity of our Lebenswelt, and the hybrid alliances establishedwithinthatworld.
I was expecting the argument to be that our lived experiences are slowly becoming more homogeneous because of the increasing role of culturally hegemonic entities, like media companies and tech companies in the development and popular use of the internet. I had not considered the role of different "communities" and the specificity of their occupations.
Withinthesedomains,participationwillberevealedasalegend,asapoliticalclaim,asanactualmediapracticeandasadesignsolutionthateitherstimulatesand even channels certain uses or represses various practices.
In other words, participatory culture will be explained in the affordances of the tools that enable it, even if the meaning of participation to creators is inherently political or business like.
the often accidental collaboration orthe many conflicts caused by user activities lead to the collisions of old businessmodels with new practices.
Tying back to the reading about copyright, I think one of the common interactions between business and the "hackers" is copyright and software. I agree with the author that these interactions are small scale, and creators even utilize other web services, showing how the shape of the internet is identifiably corporate.
for example, invoking the term to describe Twitter’s 140-character limit or the ability to share alink using a tweet button. In a Gibsonian sense, technical features—understood as the furnitureof the digital landscape—afford certain actions such as clicking, sharing, or liking.
This reminds me of the phrase "restrictions breed creativity" and what the concept of affordances might mean for such an idea. Could affordances actually restrict behavior in a way that LOOKS like creativity but is in fact a cognitive reaction to a barrier?
In other words, what mobile media afford has nothing to do with a specificbutton, but rather with the kinds of communicative practices and habits they enable or constrain
This would mean that affordances stack on top of each other to affect your habits. Lower level affordances would surely combine to restrict behavior into higher level affordances. Could this relationship be assumed? Could it offer a way to think about individual features and their effects on higher level affordances?
AsNorman contends, ‘affordances provide strong clues to the operation of things [...] Knobs arefor turning [...] Balls are for throwing or bouncing.
This seems like a definition of affordances that is least centered on human behavior and instead relies on the innate features of physical objects.
His key insight was that we do not perceive the environment as such, but rather perceive itthrough its affordances, the possibilities for action it may provide.
This seems like the basis for the design of social media generally. If we perceive only what can be done on a social media site, would this supersede content and lead to participation for the sake of pushing buttons? That is my personal experience with social media, particularly TikTok.