Yesterday at Rezonance, Yves Cretigny explained how social media substantially transforms an event like Lift by the virtue of creating a community : this Lift-community of around 7000 people (compared to the 1000 people physically present for example at the last Geneva Lift event) influences the topics, program and logistics before the event ; during the event, it also influences what the speakers say because the speakers know that the community will have access to the Internet and check and comment real time the content of the talks ; the questions and comments of the community (via Twitter walls, or blogs for example) also add value to the global content ; after the event, the video recordings allow a lot of people to access to enriched contents (talks plus discussions) and to comment and prepare the next event. Alltogether, social media change the power balance between the scene and the audience.
Similarly we mentioned in the same meeting the case of Jule, a honey producer, who works and lives in Berlin. Jule adopted a social media strategy to sell her honey and this strategy may well change the way honey is produced and distributed in Berlin area in the near future. Jule uses social media to identify key players in her business in Berlin, in particular famous cooks. She then contacts them to discuss new recipes with honey. In parallel she checks the online identity of her best customers and if she founds one with an important online presence, she keeps contact with them. Her idea is to create a data base of supporters to whom she can partly delegate the marketing and sales of her products. Being aware of the latest online discussions between opinion leaders in the food industry enables her to identify trends and opportunities to improve her products. Therefore her R&D is partly done thanks to social media, all the more as she can test very quickly her ideas and get feedback and support. Her objective is also to engage other local honey producers in this dynamic. If Jule manages to build and manage this "Berlin honey" community, which will not be a restricted group of either producers or customers but include producers, key customers, key restaurants, journalists... acting and interacting together, it may well change the way honey is produced and distributed in this area - this means, her social media strategy may change fully the future power balance between producers and distributors in the local honey business.
Back to the 80' : Ron and Suzie Scollon's experiments on social tech and power
In January 1981 Ron and Suzie Scollon began to experiment with email conferencing on the ARPANET structure to teach to students distributed in whole Alaska. They reported their pioneer experiment and formulated an innovative theory on ethnography, social action and discourse analysis in books and papers, like Nexus Analysis.
In the first chapter of Nexus Analysis, they reported three cases where "a form of social interaction - a business meeting, a university seminar, and a legislative hearing with regular and well-understood and well-habituated practices - was restructured through good intentions and for good purposes by using the very new technologies of the video conference, email, and the audio conference. In each case the social relationships, forms of power, and accessibility of some individuals was significantly altered in relationship to others within the same situation." (Ron & Suzie Scollon, 2004, p.2). They concluded that "discourse (understood in a broad sense of the use of language in social interaction) and technology are intimately related to each other". They highlighted that all forms of discourse (even face-to-face interaction) are supported by specific technologies, for example the regular conversational practices (for the exchange of turns, introduction of new topics, repair of misunderstandings, speech acts, etc.) or the structure of the physical and symbolic environment :
"Why is it difficult to hold a clinical consultation in a classroom ? Why is it a problem to hold a business meeting in an airport lounge ?" Specific genres of discourse are best supported by generic or specific technologies.
Let's conclude shortly this entry, which I will develop later by presenting R. and S. Scollon's theoretical and methodological model : In their pioneering work, R. and S. Scollon showed that analyzing technology or discourse means conducting a nexus analysis in which power relationships can not be ignored - and in which the ethnographer himself is fully integrated by the virtue of his analysis work. Ron and Suzie Scollon thus remind us that ethnography, as well as discourse analysis, are fully linked to social action and transformation.
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