The Breakup 2.1: the Ten-Year Update
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The Information Society An International Journal ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utis20 The Breakup 2.1: The ten-year update Ilana Gershon To cite this article: Ilana Gershon (2020): The Breakup 2.1: The ten-year update, The Information Society, DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2020.1798316 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2020.1798316 Published online: 30 Jul 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=utis20 THE INFORMATION SOCIETY https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2020.1798316 PERSPECTIVE The Breakup 2.1: The ten-year update Ilana Gershon Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Since 2007–2008, American undergraduates’ media ecology has changed dramatically with- Received 17 May 2020 out an accompanying transformation in how they use media to end relationships. The simi- Accepted 9 July 2020 larities in people’s breakup practices between 2008 and 2018 reveal that, regardless of what KEYWORDS social media is used, American undergraduates turn to media in moments of breakup as Breakups; conventionaliza- ways to manage three complicated aspects of ending a relationship: untangling all the ways tion; media ecologies; social in which people signal intertwined lives, deciphering the quotidian unknowable of another change; social media; person’s mind, and trying to control who knows what when. This paper explores how rapid social norms shifts in media ecologies may change the ways in which conventionalization around social practices emerges, leading to more norms oriented around what all media accomplish, rather than generating norms around the affordances of a specific medium. In 2007–2008, I conducted one of the earliest ethno- undergraduates’ use of new media while breaking up graphic studies of Facebook almost by accident. I could reveal insights into how changes in media ecol- wanted to understand how people’s attempts to disen- ogies affect the ways that people use recently intro- tangle relationships were affected when they used new duced media to perform complicated social tasks. media that was, for the most part, designed to connect Breakups seemed especially appropriate to focus upon people as much as possible. I hoped to learn what cul- because they often entail a great deal of interpretive tural assumptions about how media affect messages labor as users tried to decipher the social and emo- could become ethnographically accessible if I investi- tional implications of other people’s media use. gated how people used technologies for purposes that When I started my follow-up study, I believed that these technologies were not designed for – disconnect- changes in the media ecologies from 2008 to 2018 ing instead of connecting. To explore this, I inter- would lead to significant differences in how people viewed 73 undergraduates, graduate students and ended relationships, that the widespread use of faculty at Indiana University about how they used Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder (and so on) new media in the process of a romantic breakup, would change breakups. I was wrong. Instead the which resulted in a book, The Breakup 2.0: striking similarities in breakups involving new media Disconnecting Over New Media (2010a). Facebook suf- between 2008 and 2018 reveal that there is a growing fused my interviews with undergraduates, it was conventionalization in how American undergraduates impossible to have a conversation with a college stu- use media to end relationships. Yet the conventionali- dent in 2007 or 2008 about breakups in which zation is not around which media is used for a par- Facebook did not feature heavily. This is no longer ticular social interaction. Instead there is a the case, now Snapchat and Instagram dominate the conventionalization around what American under- same types of conversations (also true in Europe, see graduates want media to accomplish during the Miller 2013). Aware that there may have been this socially complicated task of ending a relationship, and substantive shift in media ecologies, ten years later, in as well as the expectations of how people manage the 2018, I decided to conduct a follow up study inter- mechanics of connecting or disconnecting. Too rapid viewing 40 undergraduates at Indiana University, with a shift in which media compromise one’s media ecol- the help of Julie Johnson and Torie DiMartile as ogy has led people to forego conventionalizing practi- graduate research assistants. I wanted to learn if tak- ces around specific media, and instead they now ing two snapshots in time of Indiana University conventionalize practices based on what most media CONTACT Ilana Gershon [email protected] Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Student Building 170, Bloomington, IN, USA. ß 2020 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2 I. GERSHON do, such as opening or closing a channel of communi- would give them pause. In short, people’s media ecol- cation. Based on continuities between these two snap- ogies had altered the medium people used to shots, I argue that during romantic breakups, new announce the end of a relationship. media often become focal points that people attend to Yet how important was this change in media for when accomplishing three central social tasks during people’s experiences? In my interviews, it did not breakups: 1) disentangling the relationship, including seem a significant enough difference that a romantic ending established routines, public displays of relationship is publicly announced to one’s peer group romance, and future plans; 2) trying to uncover what on Instagram now when it used to be announced on another person thinks and feels; 3) attempting to con- Facebook. Or that now when someone breaks up, they trol who knows what and when. In the process, there have to decide what to do with the publicly available has emerged a substantive degree of conventionaliza- photographic evidence of their romantic relationship, tion around how one manages one’s phatic practices – when ten years ago, they also had to figure out what how one opens, maintains or closes a channel of com- to do about the fact that they were Facebook official, munication – and how one circulates knowledge, and ceasing to be Facebook official would be regardless of which specific medium one is using. announced in all their Facebook friends’ newsfeed. In stressing this form of conventionalization, I am When I claim that the changes in media ecologies are suggesting that for people breaking up with each not significant enough, I am following Steve Barley’s other, the differences between Facebook and Snapchat lead in assessing how significant a technological or Instagram were not significant enough to dramatic- change may be. He suggests that a technological ally change how breakups took place. Yes, there were change is only significant when participants have some changes, but relatively minor ones. In 2008, shifted how they define a situation and changed their after the end of a relationship, US undergraduates understandings of what might be plausible lines of were often concerned with the ethical and social action in that context (Barley 2015, 10). Barley argues conundrums of making the breakup Facebook official. that focusing only on how technology might change a They wondered who should first change their relation- task, or how people view the new technologies, does ship status on Facebook – the initiator or the one not reveal whether anything substantive has changed. dumped. Or they thought long and hard about how To discern whether technologies have introduced sub- best to respond to the Facebook notification that stantial enough social change, one has to turn to the friends had broken up. Yet by 2018, Facebook was interactional order through which a complicated social largely a medium reserved for communicating with task is structured and performed, as well as examining one’s parents and extended family, and was not as whether new participants are included or those previ- commonly used to communicate with one’s peer ously involved are excluded. If new technologies have group. Thus nowadays, indicating on Facebook that led to a shift in interactional order or participant one is involved with another person (that is, becoming structure (see Gershon 2017), then, and only then, Facebook official) is a strategy to let one’s family should one begin to analyze the social interactions in know who one is dating. In 2018, becoming Facebook terms of social change. official is the digital equivalent of bringing someone Admittedly, I would have more clearly seen visible home to meet ones’ parents. Although there were still signs of social change, even by Steve Barley’s stand- some interviewees who saw Facebook official as ards, if I had conducted my first set of interviews ten announcing to everyone that they had entered a new years earlier, in 1998. The contrast between twenty stage of commitment and general publicness about years ago and today is a sharper one in terms of how their relationship, this was by no means common. information circulated publicly. In the late 1990s, very Thus, in 2018 if someone wanted to announce to few people were walking around with a camera all the everyone, but not specifically their older relatives, that time. Very few people could easily express their anger they were in a relationship, they would post photo- at someone else in a public forum using a handheld graphs that signal romantic involvement on their device. How these forums were accessed and consti- Instagram account. Conversely, US undergraduates tuted was also different. In 1998, someone recently would examine the Instagram account of anyone they heartbroken might have had a difficult time locating a were romantically interested in to find out if they forum that could become a rapidly growing public.