I am in the initial stages of developing my dissertation research agenda. My dissertation will focus on the question of how people form and maintain social ties using digital social media, such as Facebook or YouTube or text messaging via cell phone. My work draws together areas of social informatics, media studies, human computer interaction, science and technology studies, audience studies, computer supported cooperative work, and fan studies. As many scholars in these fields have argued, I find that people construct their social relationships through a multitude of media, rather than just one particular medium, as has been the focus of much research regarding online sociality.
The main theme of my research agenda is an exploration of how the use of multiple media is significant, how it speaks to the relationship between humans and technology. I believe that I will find that our sociality is more than a multiplicity of interactions, that simply recognizing that multiple media are involved does not capture what is happening. To that end, the question I ask is this: if our sociality is more than a sum of multiple interactions, can we say that human sociality transcends the multiplicity of media that facilitate it? This question raises other questions regarding the extent to which human behavior is shaped by technological innovation, or to what extend technologies are socially constructed. In finding answers, I hope to gain some insight into what it means to be a social human in a time of significant technological change.
In order to explore these questions I practice ethnography. In particular, I work with a group of independent musicians and Harry Potter fans that are members of a phenomenon known as "wizard rock." Wizard rock is a collective comprised of fans of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. Some members of wizard rock are musicians who write, perform, produce, and circulate original music based on the book series, others are fans of this type of music. I have been an observing participant in wizard rock since 2007 when I launched my first research project studying this group. Wizard rockers reside all around the world, but interact online through a number of different channels (such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, livestream.com, and personal blogs, just to name a few) and frequently meet in person at various types of events such as concerts, parties, and large Harry Potter fan symposiums. I have practiced ethnographic methods such as interviewing and participant observation both online and offline.
This work has lead to a journal paper that is still under development and a conference paper presented at the Information Technologies: New Generations conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in April of 2011.
Previous Projects
Fashion in Second Life
Working with Jeffrey Bardzell and Tyler Pace, this project explored practices of fashion creation and consumption in Second Life. We analyzed the results of a survey taken by 143 Second Life residents. In gathering empirical data regarding the design and shopping habits of Second Life users our results generated questions about sociality, style, embodiment, and gender in the virtual world. This work resulted in a short paper presented at NordiCHI 2010.
Migrating Music Genres: From 1.0 to 2.0
Working with Camilla Rossi of the University of Trento, Italy, I researched the geographic spread of music through digital space. Using join up dates gathered from Myspace pages of wizard rock bands to approximate a band's formation date, I attempted to find a path of migration from the birthplace of wizard rock (the New England area of the United States) out to the rest of the world.
Camilla, similarly, attempted to map the spread of theItalian punk rock scene. However, Camilla and I both found that such migration paths could be found - movement through digital spaces of Myspace is not reflected in non-virtual geographic space. The music seemed to go everywhere all at once. This work was presented at Migrating Music: Media, Politics and Style, an international conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, UK in 2009.
Social Activism in Wizard Rock
This project, conducted in the winter of 2007 and spring of 2008, was my first exploration into ethnographic research. I set out to understand the role of social activism in wizard rock. I interviewed 13 wizard rockers and attended 7 wizard rock events. I found that
social activism was an inherent component of wizard rock culture, that it was one aspect of what it meant to participate in wizard rock. As one informant put it so nicely, "social activism is written into the DNA of wizard rock." This work was presented at the Artful Strategies and Necessary Risks conference held at California State University, Sacramento in 2008.
