film 20c

fall 2004

actor-network analysis

submit electronically to your TA by Friday, 12 Nov. at 14:00

bring a hard copy to lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 16

length: 1000-1500 words (typed, double-spaced, stapled)

Instructions

examine a specific technologically-mediated social network, such as:

• a multi-player (or massively multiplayer) online role-playing game
• live journal (or other similar grouping of sites)
• friendster (or other similar online social networking/self presentation sites)
• buddy lists
• others like this

Analyze one of these as an actor-network. Focus on how your object of analysis involves networked actors [or subjects], rather than just individual users. Look at the kinds of interactions and performances that are facilitated & allowed by the architecture [rules, choices allowed, applications, habits/practices, etc.]. address specific features of architecture/environment that do this.

Develop and support an argument about how the actor-network facilitates particular types of social relations and performances. Again, the emphasis is on how not why. Do not attribute psychological motives to actors. Do not use the word "addiction." Do not make evaluative comparisons between the online and offline worlds [that is, do not argue that the online world is worse than the real world].

Some approaches and strategies:

· think about the actor-network in terms of nodes & links

· map it out, and perhaps use that in your analysis

· treat objects, applications, players, as actors & networks [don’t give humans priority]

· address critical rearticulations, reappropriations, recombinations [or lack thereof]

Some background ideas: think about how lambdamoo [in Dibbell, Nakamura, or Blankenship] operates as an actor-network. Think of the objects in object-oriented programming as actors.

sample arguments

“Myspace.com makes meeting people easy.” This argument is too general. It should be

expanded into something like this:

"Architectural and self-representational elements in myspace.com encourage specific types of interactions between actors." In developing this argument in your paper, you should address these points:

• specify types of actors
• discuss types of interactions
• focus on specific elements of the architecture and self rep that encourage this

Here is a sample argument based on Julian Dibbell's essay:

"Emotions are an important element in the networked interactions between actors in Lambdamoo, especially for intersecting aspects of “rl” and “vr” experience. "