3.7 Conclusion
4.1.2 Does Computer-Mediation Exclude Cues?
Additionally, I could question whether computer mediation does strip our relationships from intimate peeks into each others’ lives. Perhaps this was plausible when the mediated communication was infrequent and strictly segmented over different spaces — but nowadays, we are hyper- connected, and there are myriad ways in which we disclose ourselves that transcend the carefully crafted facade. boyd3speaks of “always-on intimate communities” (boyd, 2013, p. 114) on social media; indeed,
these do allow shaping of the perception to some extent, but at the same time social life (both the failures and successes) become consequential and persistent, available for scrutiny long after the fact; what in offline life might have escaped attention or would be lost to memory is now on permanent record for re-evaluation through the persistence, searchability and replicability that such spaces offer (boyd, 2012, p. 27). Meanwhile, the risk that users of CM platforms show only “partial selves” by tailoring their online persona should not be taken at face value. A limited study by Back et al. shows that “people are not using their OSN (on-line social networking sites) profiles to promote an idealized virtual identity. Instead, OSNs might be an efficient medium for expressing and communicating real personality, which may help explain their popularity” (Back et al., 2010, p. 374). These forms of communication may themselves be seen as personal idioms between friends, which allows friends to express themselves in ways that are unique to that friendship, and in that way can reinforce their relational identity (Chan & Cheng, 2004, p. 308). That still leaves wholly untouched that our contemporary relationship with technology seems to make non-voluntary disclosure the default in important ways. Rosen speaks of the unreflective way many Snapchat users document their lives for their friends (Rosen, 2016). Kiesler et al. describes the decreased inhibition that often accompanies CM com- munication (Kiesler et al., 1984, p. 1128), leading to “levels of verbal and self-disclosure which would be almost unthinkable in other types of communication among ‘strangers’” (Kim & Raja, 1991, p. 3). Such findings contradict the idea that the impersonality and anonymity of such media would make it natural to create a carefully crafted persona; in some cases, if differences are found, they show more frequent and explicit emotion communication in CM contexts than in face-to-face communi- cation (Derks, Fischer, & Bos, 2008). This open communication can be cultivated by reciprocal increasing self-disclosure with trustees “purpose- fully changing the context of their own actions by disclosing something personal, encouraging the other person in the exchange to say something personal, and so on . . . enabling a ‘leap of trust’ producing a favourable state of expectation regarding the actions of others” (Henderson & Gilding, 2004, pp. 501, 502). Yee (2006, p. 27) finds substantial portions of online contacts involved telling personal issues or secrets to their online friends which they have never told their offline friends4. Elder makes the point that by cross-referencing mediated sources you can get a decently accurate
4The research by Yee (2006) was done over a sizable sample of users, but could be
subject to selection bias, as all these users already voluntarily spent substantial time online in virtual worlds
picture of the other, perhaps even better than in “real-life”, now that the other cannot deflect from difficult topics, as “text-based conversations are, arguably, less susceptible to deception of this kind: one can evaluate the content and consistency of claims without the emotional overlay intro- duced by facial expressions and tone of voice. Online, conversations leave digital ‘paper trails’, making it easier to cross-check stories and consider a person’s comments in light of the overall picture of their character pre- sented by their online presence” (Elder, 2014, p. 292). This offers wholly new processes of interpretation in which I can be the mirror for friends. Even where people provide plainly false information online, this can be indicative of something other than the construction of a facade, i.e. show- ing playfulness to their friends. These friends will know the information is false by being able to cross-reference information from online and offline sources, and will know that “marking oneself as rich or from a foreign land is not about deception; it’s a simple way to provide entertaining signals to friends while ignoring a site’s expectations . . . they’re simply refusing to play by the rules of self-presentation as defined by these sites. They see no reason to provide accurate information, in part because they know that most people who are reading what they post already know who they are. . . . They see social media as a place to gather with friends while balancing privacy and safety with humor and image ” (boyd, 2014, pp. 46-47).
Self-disclosure can even be fully outside the awareness of the CM par- ticipant; recall the infamous big-data case where Target knew about the teenage pregnancy of one of their customers before her family did by ana- lyzing shopping habits (Duhigg, 2012) — and this story surely is not the exception (Leber, 2016). Seen this way, the question is not whether we disclose non-voluntarily, but how we should regain a modicum of control over who has access to our selves so disclosed. Cocking and Matthews of course had different recipients in mind of such disclosure — friends, not large corporations attempting to turn people into consumers by capturing externalities. But this still shifts the problem in an interesting way: we have moved from the alleged impossibility of substantial disclosure, to making sure that the disclosure reaches the right recipient.
On the claim of Cocking and Matthews (2000) that true friendship is required for reflective self-development, I would say the construction of a public-facing persona inevitably requires a certain introspection into one’s authentic character if for no other reason than to determine how the constructed persona must differ from the authentic persona. If one does not know oneself, one cannot deceive others because so much of
your past expressions are (semi) publicly catalogued and searchable; all this would have to be taken into account in creating a consistent persona. It is thus not possible to consistently present yourself as what you are not without having already confronted deeply what you are.
Finally, in keeping with the Aristotelian conception of friendship under- lying most of the charges against CM friendship, we could instead look towards shared activity rather than shared physical cues as the pivotal ingredient in developing full CM friendships:
And whatever being consists in for each person, or whatever it is for the sake of which he chooses to live, in this he wants to spend time together with his friends. Therefore some drink together, others play dice together, others engage together in gymnastics and hunting, or philosophize together: Each group of friends passes its days together in that which it loves most in life. For wanting to live together with their friends, they do and share in those things by which they suppose that they live (Aristotle, 2009, §1172a1–8)
But under Aristotle’s account, there are activities that are preferable in building a friendship; The shared life must “include both sharing of broadly human good, and of particular goods for particular human beings” (Elder, 2014, p. 288). For Aristotle, these particular goods are strongly
associated with “living together with conversing and sharing thoughts” (Liu, 2010, p. 593).
The idea that physical proximity is a necessity for shared activity could perhaps originate from theinstrumentalnecessity of proximity in Aristo- tle’s time (Kaliarnta, 2016, pp. 12-13). But the spaces in which the shared activities happen need not be physical spaces; as Elder points out, Aristotle differentiates “‘living together’ in the friendly sense from ‘living together’ in the cattle sense5. Friends, rather, ‘live together’ by sharing rational life, by sharing language and thought through conversation, as the rational life is characteristic of human beings and conversation is how we reason collectively” (Elder, 2014, p. 288). Given this, the CM environment does not need to be deemed so hostile to friendship; as Bülow and Felix points out, “seeing as it is possible to engage online even in theoria, the highest sense of human activity according to Aristotle, why should he not have accepted such an online relation as a perfect friendship?” (Bülow & Felix, 2014, p. 31). The main technological concern for CM friendship would
5Aristotle (2009, §1170b10-15)
then be that the mediating environment would be a space conducive to shared activities that encourage such conversing and sharing thoughts to the extent that you can get a deep sense of the character of the other. Munn describes such shared activities in the CM space of massively multi- player online role-playing games (Munn, 2011, p. 9), but we should of course not limit our scope to games when so-called social media platforms enjoy a substantially larger user base. The question would then become how we might foster deep and shared activity in a broader class of CM spaces.