Digital mandalas: Communication and authentic human interaction in reddit's r/place platform (original) (raw)
Related papers
Issues in Information Systems, 2024
This study offers continued research on the Reddit Digital Mandala phenomenon r/place. The research provides a background understanding of sand art/mandala as an ancient communication, art form and technology. A historical precis of the r/place mandala events provides details on the process and construction of the mandalas of 2017, and 2022 in which defined themes emerged giving insight into user preferences, motivations, and participation. Employing Digital Ethnographic collection and analysis for this study, the 2023 mandala experience is examined with consideration of variables affecting users: ownership of Reddit and data, pricing for participation, and technology enhancements with Artificial Intelligence and software application use. Considering these variables, major themes again emerge as direct response, disclosing characteristics and behaviors exhibited by the r/place mandala community, Reddit and Redditors and AI investors as a whole.
An Iconographic Visual Analysis on Reddit R/Place Pseudo Social Experiments
2023
The rapid progress of technology brings many innovations along with it. In particular, its effects on art and the art production process are quite high. The r/place pseudo-social experiments organized by Reddit are also among the innovations that we come across in this direction. The experiments in question were opened to the access of users for a total of 72 hours between 1 st and 3 rd in 2017 and 2022, allowing them to leave a cooldown-based pixel color on a blank canvas presented to them. With this research, the content and artistic qualities of the images revealed through collaborative activities during the experiments in question were analyzed. Sixteen figures selected with random sampling were categorized according to their types and examined by the iconographic visual analysis method. The findings obtained because of the research show us those mentioned collaborative creative actions constitute pixel art. However, it is not possible to say that the elements behind these actions have a purely artistic creation purpose because of their different variables. In this context, the creation-based actions that take place in the experiment could be defined as the expression of cultural memory in the collective structure. The resulting images are different from each other in terms of subject matter.
The Anthropology of Online Communities. Wilson, Samuel and Leighton C. Peterson
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2002
"Information and communication technologies based on the Internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices—phenomena worthy of the attention of anthropological researchers. Despite early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet and the enormous transformations it would bring about, the changes have been less dramatic and more embedded in existing practices and power relations of everyday life. This review explores researchers’ questions, approaches, and insights within anthropology and some relevant related fields, and it seeks to identify promising new directions for study. The general conclusion is that the technologies comprising the Internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products. Anthropology is thus well suited to the further investigation of these new, and not so new, phenomena."
Participatory culture, community, and play: Learning from reddit
2015
What does online community look like in the age of social networking? How do participatory culture platforms reflect both their designers’ intentions and the desires of their users? In this incisive and timely work, Adrienne Massanari discusses how culture is created and challenged on Reddit.com (the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet”). Reddit enables the sharing of original and reposted content from around the web, and provides a platform for like-minded individuals to commune around topics of interest – everything from the joys of drinking beer in a shower (/r/showerbeer) to celebrating the pleasures of tidy penmanship (/r/penmanshipporn). Massanari’s ethnographic work provides a detailed examination of the contradictions that shapes Reddit’s culture and how they reflect its role as an epicenter of geek culture. The book explores the ways in which community on Reddit is formed and solidified through play and humor, and the complex ways in which Redditors come together that demonstrate a deep capacity for altruism and charitable giving, but can easily lapse into mob action. It also explores the community’s troubling gender and racial politics and how some Redditors are carving out their own space on the site to fight back.
Living in virtual communities : an ethnography of life online
2005
This thesis examines some of the issues involved in the development of human relationships in cyberspace. Set within the wider context of the Internet and society it investigates how geographically distant individuals are coming together on the Internet to inhabit new kinds of social spaces or virtual communities. People `live in' and `construct' these new spaces in such a way as to suggest that the Internet is not a placeless cyberspace that is distinct and separate from the real world. Building on the work of other cyberethnographers, I combine original ethnographic research in Cybertown (http: /www. cybertown. com), a Virtual Community, with face-to-face meetings to illustrate how, for many people, cyberspace is just another place to meet. Secondly I suggest that people in Cybertown are investing as much effort in maintaining relationships in cyberspace as in other social spaces. By extending traditional human relationships into Cybertown, they are widening their webs of ...
The Anthropology of Online Communities by Samuel M. Wilson and Leighton C. Peterson
Internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices-phenomena worthy of the attention of anthropological researchers. Despite early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet and the enormous transformations it would bring about, the changes have been less dramatic and more embedded in existing practices and power relations of everyday life. This review explores researchers' questions, approaches, and insights within anthropology and some relevant related fields, and it seeks to identify promising new directions for study. The general conclusion is that the technologies comprising the Internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products. Anthropology is thus well suited to the further investigation of these new, and not so new, phenomena. 0084-6570/02/1021-0449$14.00 449 This content downloaded from 14.139.211.194 on Mon, 15 Jun 2015 10:48:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 450 WILSON 0 PETERSON products, will an anthropological approach to these phenomena necessarily differ from other types of anthropological investigation? As is the case in other academic disciplines, anthropology's interest in Internetbased social and communicative practices is relatively new, and a coherent anthropological focus or approach has yet to emerge. Despite the early interest in new media and Internet phenomena and an emerging anthropological literature, there have been relatively few ethnographic works on computing and Internet technologies within anthropology. The relative scarcity of mainstream anthropological research on the Internet and computing reflects the fact that anthropology has not played a central role in studies of mass media in the past; anthropologists have positioned media as peripheral to culture (Dickey 1997) or have viewed technology in general as a context for, rather than a central part of, culture (Aronowitz 1996, Hakken 1999, Latour 1992, Pfaffenberger 1992). As a result, much of our understanding of new information and communication technology comes from other disciplines through research into online computer-mediated interactions within the framework of the Internet, whose locus of interaction has been commonly referred to as cyberspace. Nevertheless, anthropologists remain intrigued, as they long have been, by the nexus of culture, science, and technology. Indeed, anthropology is uniquely suited for the study of socioculturally situated online communication within a rapidly changing context. Anthropological methodologies enable the investigation of cross-cultural, multileveled, and multisited phenomena; emerging constructions of individual and collective identity; and the culturally embedded nature of emerging communicative and social practices. Recently there have been calls for an ethnographic approach to the issues of new media, an approach that is timely and indispensable as we begin to theorize the sociocultural implications of new communication technology (DiMaggio et al. 2001, Escobar 1994, Hakken 1999, Kottak 1996, Miller & Slater 2000). The following sections address anthropological and related research dealing with the following broad investigative topics: the ways in which information technology and media are themselves cultural products, the ways that individual and community identities are negotiated on-and offline, and the dynamics of power and access in the context of new communications media.
Online Community: Emerging Spaces of Iidentities, Ethnic Assertions and Conflicts
Communication Today, 2021
Social relations between the Khasi and the non-tribal settlers in Meghalaya are filled with little nostalgia and much violence. A freak incident in June 2018 between two individuals due to an already congested traffic situation in the streets of Shillong, which should have wrapped up within the police station soon takes a communal overtone and escalates into a huge law and order failure, resulting in several days of curfews, flag marches and a total clamping down of mobile and internet services over the entire state for over fifteen days. The way this incident gained momentum within a short span of few hours and took a violent turn instantly takes us back to the series of clashes Shillong witnessed in 1979, 1987, and early 1990's. At the core of all these violent clashes including the most recent one what remains consistent is an identity, a feeling of oneness, belongingness and togetherness, self-esteem and pride often demarcated on the ethnic lines. An identity that deeply roots itself into the "sameness" of language, culture, religion and stems out of differentiation of us and them is marred in conflict. Ethnic identity is a socio-political construct that has been a driving force of resistance and power since the formation of Meghalaya as a state in 1972. This study through ethnography of an online community explores how the Khasi youth are conceptualizing their social identity in an online space. The study reveals that the online community in social media
Evolving the Collective Conscious: A Closer Look at the Offline Actions of the Online World
2009
This thesis applies Anderson and Meyer's (1988) theory of social action media studies to examine whether social action occurs offline as a result of controversial topics discussed in online communities. One example of this is the blog PostSecret.blogspot.com. PostSecret is an Internet blog that encourages viewers around the world to mail in personal secrets in the form of a postcard for online posting. The blog potentially supports the development of social action through its allowance for open discussion of controversial and socially taboo topics. A hybrid media analysis will incorporate an ethnographic study, online discussion forum and semiotic analysis. Currently, the communication field has extensive scholarship regarding online community building, the impact of such on local community building, online community communication methods and other facets of online communities; however there remains limited scholarship on the offline actions that occur in response to controversial or socially taboo discussions that develop within online communities.
Becoming Folkwise: Sustaining Digital Community While Socially Distant
Cultural Analysis, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic reconnected a group of early-career folklorists leading to the launch of WiseFolk Productions, LLC. The organization uses digital platforms to share folkloric research interests with new communities, build the field's visibility, and present alternative venues for intellectual discussion while physically distancing. This reflection explores social media's potentiality for enhancing the reach of folkloristics and inspiring broader participation in discussions of everyday life. This essay is organized around the four core values of the group's primary project, Folkwise, and offers a transparent example of what they define as Public Digital Humanities.