For the final project, our group was interested in Twitter so we decided to research ambient awareness in Twitter. Ambient awareness (or intimacy) is ”up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing…It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye” (Thompson 2008: 1). In order to completely immerse ourselves in the Twitter culture, those of use who didn’t already have a Twitter account created one and did fieldwork as often as we could, some of us everyday. We broke down our research and looked into an array of themes we found on Twitter that was tied to ambient awareness. These topics include, ambient intimacy within our own group, celebrity culture, political activism, race, trending topics, regions, identifying personality through one’s Twitter profile, and re-tweeting. This essay is thus a collection of every individual’s research and what we concluded from our fieldwork.
(Aamir) After constantly logging into my twitter account to check the trending topics in Los Angeles and Seattle, I discovered how ambient intimacy intertwines with trending topics and connects with Twitter users. Although Los Angeles and Seattle would generally have common trending topics in the morning, towards the end of the day these topics would be completely different. For example, on May 7, 2009 I observed that the two cities had the topics Times Square Evacuated, Mothers, Betty White, and #ifihadyou in common. Then checking for general trends again later that night, I only found one trending topic in common: “Betty White.” These trending topics are a representation of what is happening at the moment and allowed Twitter users to share “ambient intimacy” with those who are thinking about the similar topics. There are definitely news headlines that make it to the top trending topics, like the major oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico (#Gulf or #OilSpill), there are also trends that are associated with the entertainment (#welovebieber or #firstdatethoughts).
After looking over the log of twitter, I realized that the majority trending twitter topics tend to be amusing or entertainment related rather than serious. I checked trending topics during the NBA playoffs as well, and every time the Lakers were playing, LA’s trending topics definitely had either #Kobe, #basketball, or #Lakers in support of the city’s basketball team. It was clear that Lakers fans had a sense of unity in cyberspace where they could show their support. Since Seattle does not have a basketball team, I wasn’t surprised to discover #Mariners as a trending topic for that city. Twitter users were able to have access to other opinions, facts, and trivia about the trending topics that they are involved in. Much of what is stated through these trending topics may be useless or uninteresting for someone in another part of the country or the world, but in a city such as Los Angeles, Twitter users may feel that being able to contribute their opinion about a Laker game or another subject makes them feel “heard”. They essentially able to put in their “two cents” while they intimately discuss topics and trends with other users. Anything that captures the interest of a user can be located and researched using trending topics.
In Clive Thompson’s article “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” we can see how the idea of tweeting about your thoughts on a particular topic may seem ridiculous and irrelevant. At one point Thompson says that the “growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme- the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world” (Thompson 2008:2) It can make sense why this may be the initial reaction to this type of blogging, but later Thompson goes on to show support that indicates that these constant updates can almost serve as a sort of therapy through constant reflection or thought. Not only does this allow you to express your feelings but it also gives you the opportunity to receive feedback or advice from other people. Whether it be strangers or your peers, receiving information and guidance from others is itself a type of therapy. This is because others are analyzing the comments that are being made and are able to express how they feel about a topic, or maybe it could be solely empathizing or relating to a comment. Adding the “#” symbol to your thought, or tweet, allows you to see other tweets that may be thinking about the same concept with various interpretations, and it is this phenomenon that allows “ambient intimacy” to successfully exist in a virtual world.
(Jessica ) Aside from following celebrities, friends, family, and other famous figures on twitter there is another useful reason people use twitter that can lead to direct action in the physical world. This is through following politicians or political/social activists and humanitarian accounts. The ambient awareness that one gets from following these kinds of twitters is that of finding out about the various protests as well as problems and issues going on worldwide that you otherwise wouldn't know about from mainstream U.S. media. It gives people a sense of knowledge about a certain region and the current events that are happening there at that moment, as well as ways to help out in humanitarian issues or domestic protests to show solidarity.
A few examples of such activism and humanitarian ambient intimacy is through following the account twitter.com/studentactivism. Although you may not be involved in the actual protests, boycotts, and strikes that they post about, by following the account one will know about all the different protests across the country because of the tuition fee increases, hate crimes, department cuts, etc.. A follower will know exactly when and where these protests will be at campuses they've never even been too, as well as the information of people involved in it, how to contact them, how to get involved, and a stream of the events happening in real-time. They will also post links to articles and blogs related to a specific student cause in which you can read and discuss the issue with other people. This kind of intimacy would be much harder to attain without twitter, as most people do not use sites like facebook to have live updates of events that are happening. The same goes for many other activist twitter accounts, such as @BorderAction (an organization for human rights at the Arizona-Mexico Border) and @DemocracyNow (an independent progressive themed news program) to name a few. Activist twitters are constantly updating about events and issues that are happening in various regions and what their followers can do to contribute to their causes.
Through following humanitarian twitter blogs such as @Savethechildren or @Redcross you subscribe to a constant feed of ways in which to help disasters and less fortunate people throughout the globe on crises you might not know about. Such awareness is critical in trying to receive funds and donations to support disasters like the Haitian or Mexicali Earthquakes, giving links to various organizations to donate to that would help in different ways. You can also activively participate in spreading awareness of a cause or fundraiser by retweeting about it, which would than spread it to the people who are following you who may not be following the humanitarian twitters, and therefore linking them to knowledge about an unknown issue and ways to help as well (to which they may also retweet it, potentionally giving it an exponential growth of viewers). This can be extremely helpful for these organizations.
In the article Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter (boyd, danah, Scott Golder, and Gilad Lotan. 2010), the authors explain how retweeting for a certain social action can reach hundreds of people. Also, many people ask for their followers to keep retweeting a particular tweet, whether humanitarian, activist, or otherwise, in order to make the tweet popular enough to make it to trending topics. Making it to trending topics would leave the topic visible to millions of people instantly. However, a quick look into trending topics on a daily basis reveals that most of them are juvenile and pointless, and generally have to do with celebrities or other trivial topics (such as the newest video game release, celebrity gossip, or a famous person's death) and very rarely have to do with humanitarian issues.
Twitter in regards to social action, activism, and humanitarianism, has been very useful and important in their causes. It's the perfect online medium to spread awareness about issues and seek further help and volunteer work. Although the majority of the Twitter world seemingly uses it for arbitrary tweets about their day to day lives and jokes between friends and sometimes strangers (as well as following famous people who do the same), it can also be used to obtain that ambient awareness about the world in general. By following various humanitarian or activist twitters throughout the different regions of the world, a twitter user is able to understand the conflicts throughout the globe in real-time and what can be done to help, something that, without microblogging like Twitter, would not be a reality.
(Trina) Re-tweeting in the world of Twitter can be used for many different reasons. Twitter is a social networking or microblogging site that allows users to view and send messages that contain up to 140 characters. By re-tweeting, users “post messages originally posted by others” (Boyd, 1). Ambient intimacy is what comes from these constant messages about people’s lives which “is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible” (http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/). However, with sites such as Twitter and Facebook, constant updates by friends and family members about what they’re eating for lunch or what their plans are for that night make it possible to be intimate on a level that you wouldn’t normally be if you just communicated through phone, e-mail, or regular visits without actually coming in contact with them. This is called ambient intimacy which has become more and more common in today’s society.
People re-tweet messages or other peoples’ tweets for many different reasons and in many ways. For example, if someone finds what someone else has to say interesting or worth sharing, then they will copy the message and post it on their page. Re-tweeting can also be used to “validate and engage with others” (Boyd, 1). The article, Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter claims people often re-tweet breaking news which is linked to the trending topics of Twitter, or the current most popular tweets of the day. People re-tweet to agree with someone, entertain their Twitter “followers”, help or support a group or content, or start a conversation about the tweet. These are all purposes why people re-tweet and the majority include breaking news topics, but include tweets about peoples’ daily lives and facts that people choose to share. Another reason why people retweet is to build trust. The essay How to Retweet: A Simple Guide claims that re-tweeting will most likely build your personal brand as well as your follower’s loyalty. If you point a reader to an external source that is truly relevant and beneficial to them, the amount of trust that individual has in you will increase (http://ir.uiowa.edu/context/polisci_nmp/article/1010/type/native/viewcontent/).
(Marisela) For my section of our group paper I chose to look at the picture icons that people chose to use and the background of their page; to see how they chose to represent themselves to the world. Ultimately “online users can organize the information flow and enhance self-image by strategically selecting how and what to convey to the receiver” (Tong et al 2008:5). I want to figure out how much can a complete stranger possibly learn from just looking at these two simple components.
First I began my research by looking at trendy topics within the U.K. and London. During the first stages of my research I began to make the assumption that when it came to the London and the U.K. in general their trendy topics were politically influenced. As I visited twitter more and more I began to realize that that was not so. In fact their trendy topics were just as pointless sometimes as those in the U.S. Sometimes they were even the same exact trendy topics.
Going in further into my research topic, I began to randomly pick people from the trendy topics and looking at their page, and their icon pick. Trying to get a sense as to who they are or who they want to portray themselves as by the information they provided. I chose four people to follow and try to learn as much as possible by the visual information that I have to work with.
The first person I chose to look closer at their page was someone that calls themselves (Anon)osenbaum. The page itself is the basic format that twitter offers. I could not figure out why this person had so many followers if his page was simple and to be honest didn’t really offer any information about him. So I decided to go a step further. I began to look at what this person twitted about. (Anon)osenbaum kept talking about the show called “V,” and the way he spoke about it was like if he was part of it. From what I got from his twits I decided to Google his name; Anonymous Rosenbaum. And to my surprise He actually turned out to be a cast member; who would have known. I learned all of this from just looking at what his page gave me and Google; the power of the internet, amazing.
The second person I decided to look at was Michael Ausiello. His page background looks to be like a comic book cover of the Smurfs and he photo shopped his face on one of the character’s body. His icon picture that he has is a cartoon version of himself. From what I can see visually he seems to be a very goofy person. Maybe somewhat childish or has a good sense of humor. I decided to look at his twits to learn a little more about him. He talks about numerous different TV shows. From what I found out about (Anon)osenbaum I decided to Google this person too, since they have a similar theme going on in their twits. To my surprise he turned out to be in the entertainment business too, being a journalist and actor.
The third person that I took a look at their page was AnonymousB. AnonymousB actually chooses a real picture of himself as his icon. From this alone I learn a lot about him. He is a male around his mid to late thirties. He seems to be very calm and patient. His fashion style one could call it “nerdy”. The background in his picture seems to be from another country. Later on I come to find out that he is from India; after analyzing his picture I went to see what location he listed. As far as his background goes he has a Vango panting, and there is a picture of someone but I cannot tell who it is his face is cut off. I do see a trumpet. His background reinforces the assumptions that I made from his picture. He seems to be a calm and patient individual, most likely quite intelligent.
The fourth person I randomly chose form trendy topics was Anonymous_iRap. From her icon picture, which is actually her, I can see that she is outgoing by the pose that she is in. She is flirtatious, and perhaps likes to be in the spotlight. When looking at the background of her page it is another picture of her holding a microphone and is in a place that looks like a radio station. From this I’m guessing she does work in the entertainment industry. She is most likely a rapper, indicated by her name, or a singer. But from the quality of her pictures I can tell she is still trying to make it, or become famous.
From observing these people I do feel that there is definitely a sense of ambient intimacy. These couple of people that I randomly chose from different parts of the world, I feel that I have gotten to know them a little. At least know their personalities. What they chose to use to represent their selves painted a picture in my mind of who they are as a person. I feel that I may even know more about these people than some of my co-workers.
The visual information that is provided on twitter is defiantly enough to give you a sense of what the individual that controls a page is like. Although Twitter offers less visual information than other networking sites like MySpace and Facebook it is enough to get a good idea of who the person is. And weirdly end up feeling somewhat close to that person like one knows them on a personal level.
(Raquel) Twitter is a great way for people to learn about what other people are doing during their day. Twitter allows their users 145 characters to briefly describe their activity, talk about their eating experience, or just comment on something funny they have seen. Many celebrities use Twitter to develop their fan base by allowing fans to get a bit of information on their daily lives; information that has never really been accessible easily until now. Celebrities will discuss their favorite restaurants or promote an event that they are part of. Ambient awareness is the term that best describes the attainment of knowledge about a person through the minimized ‘tweets’ of a user. As I was thinking about which area I would like to explore with this topic, the idea of the celebrity on Twitter caught my attention.
As I said previously, celebrities use Twitter to talk about their day and they also use it to talk to their celebrity friends. Now one might be skeptical as to whether the account is really that of a celebrity. Twitter has this icon on the account of celebrities that states it has been verified. So now when users are unsure if the account is real, they can simply check their page and look for the icon. Being able to access one’s favorite celebrity or band gives them a sense of connection to them they never had before. This is where ambient awareness comes into play. In Thompson’s article “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy”, he talks about the paradox of ambient awareness. He says that every little update has no value but the all the updates as a whole can paint a picture of the user, in this case of the celebrity. So even though a celebrity might post stuff that seem common and typical, it adds to the celebrity’s image. For instance, I follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter, and she’s always tweeting with her brother and sisters. The fact that I can see their conversations makes it easier to identify with her because she has normal conversations with her siblings just like me.
Now many fans will get on Twitter to follow their favorite celebrity but that doesn’t mean that the celebrity will follow the fan. This means that the fan will be able to see the tweets of the celebrity but the celebrity will not see the fan’s tweets. On one hand, the fan feels an instant connection to their favorite celebrity because they have an opportunity to see their daily activities. On the other hand, there is a disconnection at the same time because that insight is not reciprocal. Although the fan is able to write to the celebrity, chances are slim for a reply.
This brings me to the research my group and I conducted on Twitter. We posted a survey online asking various questions about Twitter. One question asked why the person got a Twitter, and four out of the 19 that answered it said because of a celebrity; this almost a third of the population who took the survey. I also briefly called friends and asked a couple people why they got a Twitter and about half said initially it was to follow celebs and then more people started using it so now it became another way to keep in touch with friends. I would have to be included in that half because that was my main reason for opening a Twitter account, I was curious about what celebs tweeted about.
(Esther) Through trending topics, it is easy to observe the different interest between different regions, also to observe how twitter contributes to ambient intimacy within these different regions. The two regions discussed in this section are Ireland and Chicago. One of the main differences that can be seen in these two regions reflect upon the interests of each region. Chicago's trending topics usually focuses around TV shows, current events, or sports, whereas Ireland's trending topics focus on World politics and also regional interests. For example, on May 9, 2010, the trending topics revolved around the popular Saturday Night Live show that starred Betty White. UFC Heavy Weight Championship was also a popular topic on that day. Many people tweeted about how hilarious Betty White was on the show, or about the victory of Shogun at UFC. Many people used their twitter account to share their opinions or to express their feelings about these events such as "Betty White is the most hilarious woman ever!" and "The UFC championship was AWESOME!!" On May 10, many people in Chicago commented on the Laker's game that took place. One of the trending topics was about Gasol and his tribute to winning victory. On the other hand, the Irish uses Twitter differently. Rather than posting opinions or expressing feelings, the trending topics reflect upon current events and the tweets are not opinionated but objective. For instance, while the people in Chicago were tweeting about SNL and various sports game, on the same day the Irish were generally tweeting about the Taliban, Gulf oil spill, the Spanish Grand Prix, and also Betty White. The Spanish Grand Prix definitely indicates regional interest, nonetheless, the Taliban and the Gulf oil spill are topics concerning what is going on in the world. The tweets about these topics were very straightforward on what is happening. For instance, the Taliban topic showed results of "Pakistan Taliban behind the NY Time Square bombing" with a link to an online article regarding the subject. On other days, too, their trending topics revolved around what was happening in the world. Some examples were about Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court, Prime Minister Brown's resignation, and the financial crisis in Greece. The Irish were using Twitter as a tool to inform people of what is going on in the world more than a personal device to share information about oneself. Therefore, the degree of ambient intimacy is different in every region. This may be because of the size of the region. While Chicago is a city, Ireland is a region. Adding on, for the trending locations, there are not many European countries on the list that may be a factor to a broader and wider audience. As mentioned above, the Spanish Grand Prix resulted with more Spanish tweets than English ones. Apparently, the people living in Chicago are a lot more comfortable sharing information about themselves and are more open to express oneself, which allows more people to get to know eachother through twitter which is contributed by a smaller concentration of region. However, for the Irish trending topics, one can see what someone is interested in, but one cannot see what the other person is thinking or what the other person's personality is since his or her tweet is objective rather than personal.
(Raisa) Another element of ambient intimacy we explored in Twitter was race. This was a topic we chose to explore because issues of race and stereotyping became apparent through re-tweets and trending topics. Trending topics are like a sub-community within the Twitter community where people can collectively share their thoughts on a certain topic that is sometimes signified with a hash tag. So how were we able to identify race through trending examples? During our fieldwork, I took notice everyday of the trending topics and would click on those topics to see what people were talking about. For instance, on Tuesday May 4, the first and second trending topics (meaning the most tweeted about topics) were #LiesNiggasTell and #LiesBitchesTell. This was the most perfect example I found in my fieldwork for discovering race and stereotyping in Twitter.
Before clicking on these trending topics, I expected an array of people to contribute different types of limericks, funny jokes, statements, or examples of “lies” in their tweets. However, I discovered that all the people who contributed tweets to this trending topic were black. Merely by skimming through users’ profile pictures, I noticed everyone was black, not one person who contributed to these topics was of another race. Why was this so? Well similar to the racial segregation that we often find in schools and urban communities, online communities such as Twitter are the same. “Like the school yard, online environments are often organized by identity and social categories…Most participants self-segregate when connecting with their pre-existing networks without been fully aware of the social divisions that unfold” (Boyd 2009: 16). This became more apparent when I took note of the race my friends and own followers followed. It’s no surprise that my Filipino friends followed mostly other Filipinos, my white friends followed mostly white people, Indian twitter users followed other Indians who were most likely there friends, etc. My fieldwork brought to light that it is impossible to escape the issues of race. Identifying by race and stereotyping others is inevitable. As we pick up social cues through the people around us, similarly, we pick up social and racial cues on Twitter through ambient awareness.
Jessica Banda, Marisela Castellanos, Aamir Hussain, Raisa Ma, Trina Polkinhorn, Raquel Reynaga, Esther Yoon
Bibliography
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Danah Boyd, Scott Golder, and Gilad Lotan, Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter. HICSS-43. IEEE: Kauai, HI, January 6, 2010.
Danah Boyd, White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with Myspace and Facebook, 2009.
Yee, Nick and Bailenson, Jeremey. The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-
Representation on Behavior . Human Communication Research 33(3): 271–90, 2007.
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