Brief thoughts on discourse networks

Every age has its metaphors. Ideas or notions around which related phenomena seem to crystallize easily. Descriptions and concepts that seem to explain what's going on by means of a waxing common sense, if not sound logic and reason. It's no accident that in our time, the term "network" frequently provides the strange attractor that gathers up all loose ends of the lineage of conceptual linkages, weaves a web or nets a nest of interconnected machine and social graphs. For interconnectedness is indeed the productive fabric of the internet age. Networks are its warp and woof, a smooth and flat space of decentralized meshwork, felt to replace the striated and hierarchical social patterns of yore.

But in the use of metaphor for conceptual illustration, logical argument should not be mistakenly ascribed to structure alone. Networks may handily account for non-hierarchical and flat organization, for distributed activities and even the tipping points and thresholds so often observed in the networked social processes of the day. This is not only the age of networks and networking. It is also the age of communication and mediated socialities, an era rapidly supplanting the information age that was its predecessor.

For this, there is already a rich post-structuralist field called "discourse networks." It's one of several disciplines interested in discursive regimes — talk in its large form, post meta-narratives, even post "subjectivity" and authors. Discourse networks seem a fitting approach to some of the pseudo-objective forms of talk currently produced by social tools by means of which communication transcends the individual to stretch relations across space and time.

For the emphasis should not be on the network but on the communication and action that it facilitates. Not on topologies but the subjectivities that networked relations enable. Socialities are not smooth and equally distributed, but are lumpen clumps — knots balled or fraying as if tufted by wear and use. It's not in the architecture of connections (networks) but in the distribution of statements and responses that networked socialities bind their relations and fashion their fabrics. Discourse networks — not topological, but sociological. Try that on for size.

SxD: Primary and Secondary Frames

I wrote several times last year about frames and re-framing the approaches to social media design. The concept of frames is borrowed from Erving Goffman's analysis of face-to-face social interactions. In brief, frames are how we know What's going on, and consequently, How to proceed. In Goffman's analysis, frames permit a vast number of opportunities to change and shift What's going on by means of what he calls keyings, reframings, cues and more. It's by means of the concept of frames that a comedian can tell a joke about a World War II ace telling a joke about a dogfight involving not a Messershchmitt but a Fokker. Framing explains the fact that I was able to retell that telling as described in a book about telling to you here and now, and you get it.

In thinking about frames, I was compelled first in the fact that frames offer a preferred alternative to conventional interaction design schemas. Frames are a way around the issue of lost context in social media. And can accommodate the greater number of meaning problems involved in both direct communication and symbolically-mediated interaction (use of interface and functional elements to structure interaction).

Frames also allow us to split the interaction schema in two, from one-sided user-software interaction into user-user interaction. A single frame corresponding to the social interaction at hand can now be analyzed from each user's perspectives of experience. This double-sided interaction model is essential if we are to recognize that the experience is not only different for each user, but is interpreted also. Users interpret the actions of others, and interpret the medium's role in representing and "designing" the actions of others. Our competencies with use of social media involve not only technical but also "social" competencies.

But last year my thinking around frames was monotheistic. Frames were frames. Now, I've long thought that systems theory can contribute to our understanding of social media, for the simple reason that media are systems of production, around which social practices emerge as social systems reproducing themselves incessantly on the basis of individual contributions. Systems theory provides a thinking of dynamics and processes, both of which in my mind trump structure and architecture as approaches to emergent social order over time. Systems, like structures, can be understood for their constraining and enabling features. But systems emphasize feedback loops and can better explain social media outcomes that include bias, ambiguity, noise, scale, and more.

Core to systems theory is the concept of order. Core to the systems theory of media is observation. Media are second order observation systems — they operate by observing "reality's events." The reality of media is a second order "reality." So, then, social media behave similarly, sometimes as a third order observation of second order media, sometimes serving as a second order system for third order observation by mass media. The two systems of media observe one another — this by necessity of the fact that they now use the same technical means of production (the web).

I think there may be a rich conceptual and theoretical, if not also methodological, benefit to combining frames of analysis with second order systems theory (there are different kinds, I use Luhmann). I divide frames into primary frame and secondary frame.

Primary frames correspond to user experience and are how we might accommodate most conventional UI and IxD user-centric concerns and descriptions. They are what the user is doing most proximately and immediately. Motives for user behavior here include the conventional observations of use and intent, as well as need and interest. UI design patterns, application settings, form design, sequencing, and much of the rest of UI designer's palette is in effect here. Valid usability concerns apply here also, and offer rich and necessary feedback around an application's efficacy from functional and use-based perspectives.

Secondary frames correspond to multi-user social interaction design interests, and may be justified as a design consideration from the argument of second order systems theory. Social systems mediate interaction and in their design re-present individual and aggregate activity by design: this is second order observation and produces what we think of as the social. Sociality emerges as a combination of mutually reinforcing social dynamics involving use practices, talk practices, social practices, and cultural practices. None of these can be explained or referred directly back to primary frame actions, for all depend on second order intervention of the social tool.

• Use practices are informed by the tool's thematic organization of a social field: my use of a tool is socially informed.
• Talk practices are informed by the tool's structured (facebook) or open (twitter) organization and representation of talk: including capturing audience, chronological and asynchronous discontinuous temporal ordering of talk, visibility and availability settings, and more.
• Social practices are informed by use of symbolic languages and media forms (including video, games, etc) by means of which new practices enable rich and innovative second order interactions.
• Cultural practices emerge as contextually specific games, past times, habits, and more: the same social practice may be used in many cultural forms (Linkedin status updates are not twitter updates — we know this culturally, though the social practice, which is to update an audience, is the same).

Now none of this may be conscious to the user, of course, but my interest is in formalizing a framework for social interaction design that is as good at accounting for social effects and outcomes as it is at describing the needs of interface and application design. Social interaction design needs to furnish social media professionals with observations and explanations, if not also proscriptive guidance, for social outcomes on the basis not of the individual designer's skill but on a generalizable methodology. This would be easy if the medium in question were objective only, but it's not. Subjective use, inter-subjective interaction, and second order effects insist not only on the importance of agency (user-centriciity) but also social complexity. This is not film theory, but urban planning.

I hope to expound on this during the course of the coming year. The field is new and its insights un-researched. I would be thrilled to work with those of you more familiar with research methodologies to lead investigations into social media practices. An at the same time, I look forward to working with those of you who are visually inclined to diagram and represent some of these dynamics in generalizable forms. I will continue to develop framework details in the interest of furnishing some observations around which practices, and what outcomes, are not only the best, but promise innovation.

Social media in the enterprise: formal v informal sociality

Social media will continue to penetrate the enterprise in 2010. And if past discussions are any indication, we should be able to look forward to a healthy discussion around similarities and differences between consumer-facing social media, and social media as deployed behind the firewall.

We can agree, I think, that in each case, it's as much the users that makes social media work as it is the tools themselves. No social media application functions without its users. In fact, all social media require the tacit and implicit cooperation of their users — and are evolved and iterated on the basis of use.

Whether you believe that the tool/technology comes first, and initiates changes within a social field; or that social needs and interests develop for which tools are then created to address those needs, you will need interaction models that account for both tool features and uses as well as corresponding user and social practices. Implementing social media, whether for use in the consumer space or in the enterprise, works only to the extent that implementation leverages these social processes.

In other words, a good interaction model is as important, if not more, as your functionality spec. Developing that model is a matter of articulating not just what you want from social media use, but how it actually unfolds in practice. And the dynamics of the workplace social are entirely different from the dynamics of the open social: what creates order in the open social field can lead to disorder in the workplace.

But the consumer social "space" is organized and works differently than the enterprise space. Where in consumer-facing social media the challenge is to create and sustain self-reinforcing social practices (user adoption > commercial hit), the enterprise social space actually presents possible strategies of resistance.

Open and consumer social spaces take work to get organized, constant activity to sustain interest and involvement, and social differentiation so that users can easily individualize themselves and become invested therein.

By contrast, "closed" corporate social spaces, even if they are semi-transparent to the outside, are already functionally organized and differentiated. The social dynamics of water cooler conversation usually serve to infiltrate functional organization with normal and natural social interests.

Social relationships pre-exist social tools in the enterprise, and the kinds of workplace social relations that most companies seem interested in leveraging are those which have formed personally, not by role, position, or function. Social media tools are usually pitched as a means of extracting value from the informal, not the formal, social workplace relationships.

But because these relationships pre-exist the introduction of social media tools, they are as likely to subvert and resist employer social tools as they are to welcome them.

Where the task, simplified, in consumer social media applications is to seed self-perpetuating social dynamics, the task in the enterprise may be to span gaps in the organizational chart and to erode calcification in the ranks.

So there is an important distinction to be made then between formally structured and organized social relations, and informally structured relations.

• In open social media spaces, sociality emerges around informal relations that may become increasingly formalized, as social differentiation and complexity develop over time. (Twitter lists are a direct example of this: it took three years for the soft and informal emergence of groups referenced by tweeting practices like #FF to become architecturally formalized as a list feature.)
• In closed social spaces, the formal sociality organized by workplace relations and job functions stands to benefit from the know how (information, knowledge) and communicative practices of informal social practices.

It can seem that social media in the open port directly to social media behind the walls. That the social is what these two use cases have in common. But there is no such thing as a generic "social." All forms of social organization exist only because relationships "exist" and are maintained by communication and interaction.

This is a pretty straightforward point — but one worth making. For tools in themselves are not capable either of organizing new relations nor of re-organizing existing relations.


[Just for fun, we can compare and contrast the social organization parodied in the workplace comedies The Office and 30 Rock. In The Office, a farcical and incompetent leader struggles to contain and shepherd his baffled employees, who bandage their disbelief by organizing in spite of, through, around, and without their comedic leader — hence the use of one-on-one on-camera confessional interviews with employees, used to disclose plots, wranglings, conflicts etc.

In 30 Rock, a comedy unfolds amidst an organization's effort to stage a successful comedy, the joke being that reality itself is more funny than the show made for television. Actual employee shenanigans trump the scripted humor, and work is itself more funny than the comedy the work is supposed to produce. Informal comedy, in other words, is better than the comedy attempted by means of formal comedy writing.

Employees are always smarter than the organization — and today, more brazen.)

Broken social (online) scenes

I've just gotten off a skype call with friend and colleague, and fellow sxdsalon member Thomas Vander Wal. Thomas and I pick up the virtual phone about every month or six weeks to tie up loose conversational threads. We usually manage to get into a two hour tangle, after which we have new threads to tie up, half of which are actually knots.

I enjoy talking to Thomas in part because there simply aren't that many social media theory and concept geeks out there. Thomas' experience and history in the field is deeper than mine, and his memory for past efforts and themes is scarily present to hand for him.

We get into conversations about conceptual models, of which there are few for social media. We compare these models to the social media sold by evangelists. The paint has now dried on the standard social media pitch — it awaits either a fresh coat, a new audience, or a new product. The social media pitch is something I will never be able to do well — it takes a level of salesmanship and enthusiasm that I neither possess, nor if I did, could convincingly embody. The conceptual model, owing to observation, reflection, and questioning, is more my style — and Thomas'.

But as conceptual builders, we recognize our models sometimes floundering on the shores of reality, breaking apart or struggling to stay afloat where the industry currents and waves of adoption churn. Concepts don't surf.

I enjoy these conversations in spite of the fact that it is impossible to solve anything with them, for the simple reason that our mutual commitment to deeper insight, revelatory explanations, incisive observations, if I may be so bold (in a baroque sort of way), is inspired by failures. Failures of the models to map to realities. Failures of concepts to reflect actual practices. And failures of actual uses, use cases, and users to meet the predictions of models.

The theory of social interaction will never describe social media in practice perfectly. It's an impossibility. No explanation or theory of social media can map to social media in an actual context of use — specific and particular. The generalization can never explain the particular.

But neither can a generalization be drawn from a particular.

I feel good about the year ahead. There may be some serious limitations to the value and potential for theorizing social interaction online. There are certainly real limits on how much of that theorizing can be translated into practical design guidelines. But the industry and marketplace want for better and deeper explanations. Explanations that are conceptually informed but specific to a particular (client) context. There's a forensic dimension to this — a touch of detective work, of participatory observation and ethnography. For which we will need both social and architectural, that is user- and tool-oriented descriptions.

The reason for which I enjoy the birds nests, the gordian knots, the loose ends and aporias of conversation as mutual entanglement.

Life offline, and why I do it

Greetings, and a happy new year. I am back after a prolonged absence from blogging, tweeting, status updating and online socializing. I took what was almost a month away from social media, and spent my time instead reading, taking notes, and catching up with friends in person.

I like to do this every year, and recommend it to those of you who use social media on a daily basis. Just being away from the scene is revealing. Not using social media is even more interesting. And reclaiming the long stretches of uninterrupted time with which you can read and really, properly focus and think -- is in fact rewarding.

I often say that we learn what our social tools do by turning them off. For it's when they're off that we realize what we are missing. And by realizing what we miss, we're made aware of how they have become second nature to us.

Well I have long had a difficult relationship with twitter. I prefer, if I'm to write, room for at least a couple parenthetical remarks, a couple disclaimers, perhaps a self-referential pun or poke, and a clear reference. Can't do those in twitter, and so I find it a difficult medium. Just doesn't suit either my writing style nor my conversation style.

The twitter break was great, insofar as I realized how much of my head goes to maintaining the realtime stream. Even those cycles, which run in the background, are a draw on the energy I normally need to focus and develop new thoughts and ideas. Twitter is a particular draw on me because as a conversation tool its "threads" are ongoing and incomplete. As it turns out, my own proclivity for interactions, and my personal style of conversation, are ill-served by the imperfect continuity of discontinuous attention, and stuttering conversation, and the ambiguous incompletion of much talk started and passed around twitter.

That said, it hurt not to be on twitter. I missed out on a lot of contact and communication, from the lively and regular local social media scene to direct and private conversations. You can be offline for a long time before the phone starts ringing!

It's good to be back. My absence was self-imposed, and had become somewhat uncomfortable. Not being online had forced me out into cafes, long walks, time spent in the company of people but not necessarily in the company of friends. I learned that too much social media is connecting but in a reified and isolating manner. What we do with our faces, voices, our eyes and ears, in person, really and truly is different. I'm stating the obvious when I say that social media are no substitute for the real thing.

I'll be less interested in social media qua social media this year than in the past couple years. I've reached my own personal fascination with mediation and how it works. And I have learned that much of what interested me in the past was my own desire to make the technology more interesting to talk and think about. I will be more engaged this year with what can be done through and with social media.

We face real problems -- problems that will be solved only by means of massively coordinated action, distributed information sharing, ongoing communication built on trust, on cooperation, on respect and on some degree of mutually reciprocated understanding. We won't get there without use of the internet -- the diversity and complexity of problems and of the response needed to address and solve those problems require use of information sharing technologies.

I believe social media can be useful in local social efforts and action, in distributed learning, sharing, and resource coordination, and in global collective action. If some of this involves the status update and the tweet, then that is interesting. And compelling.

The distinction between mass and social media has now blurred significantly. Each now borrows and re-appropriates forms from the other; each now copies and reinterprets modes of production from the other. I've said often that in the communication age, our talk is itself a commodity, and our social media, a means of production. A vast, rich, interconnected and active system of images, messages, news, and information now exists within which individuals can become brands, celebrities, experts, and so on. I sincerely hope that a lot of this effort is ultimately translated into offline behavior change and forward-looking wisdom.

The distorting effects of social media are high, the arbitrariness of connection and the ambiguity of intent are high. The dependability and commitment of participation and engagement are low, and transient conversations and interactions frequently leave little behind. We have yet to prove that social media are capable of creating real value beyond impressions, real knowledge beyond information, real relationships beyond the interaction, real communication beyond talk. Those outcomes and byproducts of these social media means of production would presumably be measured in the real world. It is important that we not mistake our symptoms for our outcomes.

I really enjoyed taking a month away from active blogging, tweeting, and facebooking (I kept up with google readering). I am sure many of you took breaks to spend time with family and friends over the holidays. This year should be a good one. If not better economically than 09, it should be a year in which to get more real about social media. Less personal branding, less ego, fame, and celebrity. More social media in the workplace, the organization, and learning environment. Less social media for itself and more social media for something else.

We are at that place in the medium's "evolutionary" timeline that begs for better and harder thinking. Less selling, pitching, evangelizing, and more problem solving. It's less sexy now. It's more common and ordinary. As we all know, however, with social technologies it's the social that makes them interesting. This becomes even more the case the less interesting the tech is as tech and for tech's sake.

I'll be paying attention to this. And we will be talking about this over on sxdsalon.org, the group I set up with Adina Levin and others end of last year to talk social interaction design. I intend to continue to articulate the ways in which social practices develop and grow around use of social media tools -- practices best understood with use of insights from sociology, anthropology, psychology, media theory, and linguistics. But with help of the group's members we will also push forward design, research, and implementation ideas. It should be a good year for social interaction design.

This was not meant to be more than a brief note. I hope I didn't lose you -- with this or with my absence. May it be a good, productive, and rewarding year.

Cheers,
Adrian Chan