Ephemeral Narrative Systems' Sociability Mediated by User Experience: A Case Study of Instagram Stories (original) (raw)
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Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 2021
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Narrative theorists have identified the role of social networking sites as elementary in the contemporary story economy. This article argues that they have, however, neglected to treat the sites as part of the digital infraculture which creates blind spots in current analyses of the digital as a context for narrative. The aim is to construct tools for a semiotics of the imperceptible, an approachto analyze the ways in which the digital shapes human agency in dimensions the users cannot directly perceive but which nevertheless affect users' sense of what is possible for them. The article first reevaluates affordance and affect as concepts to demonstrate digital environments as a new type of context for uses of narrative. It then shows how these concepts can be applied to readings of experientiality and narrativity in digital environmentswhich shape users' narrative agency on multiple layers. Finally, the article examines how different agencies on these layers can be analyzed within the wider affective logic of the social networking sites. Finally, the article's findings are summarized as a storycritical approach to digital environments, one which accounts for the entanglement of individual agents in collectivities and points the way toward recognizing the ethics of shared responsibility.
Understanding factors affecting perceived sociability of social software
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Sociability is considered to be important to the success of social software. The goal of the current study is to identify factors that affect the users' perception of the sociability of social software and to examine the impact of sociability on the users' attitude and behavior intentions. In a pilot study, 35 web users were interviewed to gain understanding of how they use social software to supplement their social life and to explore the possible factors that influence the users' utilization of social software. In the first study, a questionnaire was developed, and 163 valid responses were collected. From the factor analysis results, seven important factors for social software design emerged, which accounts for 63.3% of the total variance. In the second study, 246 participants were asked to evaluate one of ten popular social applications with respect to the seven factors, their perceived sociability, and their attitudes and intention regarding the use of the applications. Results show that sociability is influenced by social climate, benefits and purposes, people, interaction richness, self-presentation, and support for formal interaction. System competency is not a sociability factor, but it significantly influences the user's experience. Sociability and system competency, when combined, can predict 43% of users' attitude towards social software and 51% of their intentions to use social software.