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234249 Stark 2015.Pdf (10.62Mb) School of Media, Culture, and Creative Arts Department of Internet Studies Re-placing the networked self: Place, identity, and the experience of being online. Erin Lee Stark This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Curtin University September 2015 This page intentionally left blank. ii Declaration To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgement has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. .................................................. Signature ................................................... Date iii Abstract As human beings, we share a special relationship with the physical world in which we live. Through our actions, our interactions, our stories, and our reflexivity, we write the self into being as an actor in space; further, we write place into being by transforming abstract space into “location made meaningful” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 7; Tuan, 1977). Never has this been so prominent as it is in the present: bloggers, social media users, and smartphone users actively contribute to the authoring of place en- masse via the stories they tell about the physical world and their role in it. This process of writing and writing place (and the self-in-place) contrasts strikingly with the previous conceptualisation of the Internet as disembodied and placeless, indicative of an unprecedented interweaving of the material with the digital. Adopting a phenomenological perspective that grounds the self in embodied, lived experience, this research demonstrates that location and locatedness do matter in an increasingly networked world, particularly given that pervasive smartphone culture has made access location-independent but, at the same time, very much located. The research contributes to a growing body of digital culture theory that seeks to renegotiate increasingly intertwined notions of ‘online’ and ‘offline’, vouching for the fundamental role of Internet technologies in the experience of everyday life. iv Table of Contents Declaration iii Abstract iv Table of Contents v List of Figures viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 A very brief history of identity and physicality in Internet research 2 In this thesis 10 Chapter summary 11 Conclusion 15 Phenomenology 18 Introduction 18 Background 19 Husserl 23 Heidegger 26 Being 29 Merleau-Ponty 32 Technology 34 Virilio and virtuality 38 The end of absence 40 (Post)phenomenology in a connected world 43 Conclusion 46 Location & Place 50 Introduction 50 Introducing human geography 52 Place & place identity 54 Mapping places and histories 58 The cartographic democracy 63 Mobility, isolation, and complicated geographies 67 Conclusion 70 v Narrating the self 76 Introduction 76 Narrative identities, reflexivity, and storytelling 78 Writing as a technology 85 Writing the self into being 88 Textual meditations: The ancient Greek hypomnemata 91 Epistolary: Writing the self for another 99 Documenting the daily: journals and diaries 102 Early online storytelling 105 Personal home pages 112 Conclusion 114 Performing identity, constructing place 118 Introduction 118 'The self we would like to be': Interaction and performance 119 Performing the interactive self 124 Beyond blogs 130 The located flâneur-as-author 135 Conclusion 140 Being, online 144 Introduction 144 Locating phenomenology 146 Online/offline: The (former) dualities of being connected 150 Going mobile 156 Location-based social networks 158 Conclusion 162 Locating place networks 168 Introduction 166 Background: Food as a nexus for communication, identity, and place 168 Food, society, and the self: Eating embodied geographies 172 Storytelling located and embodied experience 177 Data collection 179 Research methodology 181 Locating Perth’s blogosphere 183 Twitter as a research tool 186 vi Tools for mining and scraping 189 Parameters and scope of sample group 192 Eat Drink Perth 195 Network visualisation 197 Perth food blogs 200 They are connected, but are they a community? 203 Visualising Eat Drink Perth 206 Discussion 212 Conclusion 217 Conclusion 220 Introduction 220 Findings 222 Limitations & recommendations for future research 227 Conclusion 232 Works Cited 234 vii List of Figures Figure Details Page 1 A series of Pinterest boards - curated, themed collections of hyperlinked 97 images 2 When an image is selected for pinning, the user can see what other boards 97 that image belongs to as well as other pins by the source of the image 3 Northbridge Piazza area before redevelopment 171 4 Northbridge Piazza after redevelopment 172 5 Forrest Place during a Friday evening Twilight Hawkers Market 172 6 Twitter request for participants 187 7 An early representation of Perth’s blogosphere 200 8 Visualisation of Perth’s food blogger network 204 9 Inbound (L) and outbound (R) blogroll links on Perth food blogs 205 10 Perth food bloggers who also use Twitter 207 11 Venues for Eat Drink Perth events over four years 208 12 Visualising Eat Drink Perth 210 viii Acknowledgements To Mum & Dad, There are not enough words to describe how grateful I am for everything you have done for me. Thank you for your patience, for believing in me, and for saving me. To Morgan, My best friend and my unwavering number one supporter, thank you for being a wonderful sister and for lighting the way when I couldn’t see where I was going. I will always endeavour to make you as proud of me as I am of you, and to be as strong for you as you have been for me. To Musket, You’re a dog and you can’t read, but you ought to know you’re the very best. If everybody had a four-legged best friend like you, the world would be a better place. I love you, my Mucky Moo. To Carla, My rock, my left brain, my voice of reason. Thank you for never letting me believe I was anything less than amazing. Everyone deserves a best friend like you, and I’m really glad you’re mine. To Tosh, Thank you for the laughs, the love, the beers and the company during late nights of study. Every time over the years that I felt like I couldn’t keep going, you were there to pick me up, dust me off, and point me in the right direction. To Helen, You have been amazing over the past seven years. It takes a special kind of person to handle my kind of crazy – thank you so very much for never giving up on me and for inspiring me to believe I could actually do this. For all your encouragement, wisdom, and patience, thank you so very much. I couldn’t have asked for a better supervisor. To Tama, ix A decade ago, while taking your Self.Net class at UWA, I realised I’d found a subject I was truly passionate about. It’s been a rollercoaster, but here we are at the end. Thank you for sticking by me, especially over the past year or so. It’s your fault I’m here, and I’m honoured to have shared this journey with you. To my friends and extended family, For being supportive, compassionate, funny, loving, engaging, and generally brilliant despite my constant cancellations, bad moods, boring thesis stories, whinging, and generally average company over the past decade, you all a pat on the back and maybe a wine or two. I’m slowly getting around to making up for lost time and can’t thank you enough for sticking by me. Special thanks also to the following: Mike Kent, Stewart Woods, Eileen Tay, Clare Lloyd, Eleanor Sandry, and Sky Croeser (I hope that is everyone!) for hiring me as a tutor over so many semesters, as well as Michele Willson for guidance and encouragement over the years, and also to everyone I’ve taught alongside in Net Studies – you’ve been awesome. Tim Highfield, for the help with data visualisation when I had no idea what to do. Liam Lynch, for being a wonderful office buddy for so many years. Curtin University, for the Curtin University Postgraduate Study Award and Curtin Research Scholarship, both of which made the first few years of this adventure a little bit easier. Kally Whitehead, my proofreader and editor par excellence, for reviewing my work with fresh eyes when mine were well and truly worn out. Finally, Having spent more than my fair share of time on Twitter, blogs, and playing games over the course of this Ph.D. adventure, I find myself lucky enough to be entangled in more friendships and communities than I can even count. Thank you all for listening and for keeping me entertained during the long nights I spent in nocturnal mode. Individually you are strangers and friends, entertainers and confidantes: wonderful, supportive, inspiring people scattered far and wide around the globe. Collectively you have been the fuel that has helped to keep this fire burning. x This page intentionally left blank. xi Chapter One Introduction We are living in an exciting time. Technology and culture are more integrated than ever, with increasingly ubiquitous computing — especially smartphones and other mobile Internet devices — changing the way that we go about everyday life, and reconfiguring the way that we see ourselves and the world. The ongoing negotiation between materiality and technology punctuates daily life as media locates and reiterates physicality; as a result, Internet users find themselves re-placed in the world as location, mobility, and embodied experience garner salience in both the digital and material spaces. Today, the screen moves with the user. This idea of re- placing identity implicates and is influenced by locative media, shared-proximity online communities, an “always online” state of being, and lowered barriers to entry, each of which has contributed significantly to the changing nature of both identity construction and performance and the experience of social and cultural life.
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