Hyperlink Report: Lindgren

Simon Lindgren's book, Digital Media & Society aims to answer the questions, “What can flame-throwing squirrels tell us about human emotion? Can social media empower political activism? How has the internet changed the way we form our identities? Do algorithms have a social role? What is digital society?” Lindgren split the book into three sections, the first being ‘theories’ (digital society, social media, cyber debates, interaction and identity, communities and networks), ‘topics’ (digital visuality and visibility, feeling digital, digital citizenship, digital power and exploitation, digital activism, mobile culture, software algorithms, and data), and ‘tools’ (digital social research, the research process, digital ethnography, and mapping and mining digital society), to give an effective sociological perspective of analysis in the book. Lindgren has qualifications as a Professor of Sociology at Ume University, Sweden, with a focus on studying “social movements, participation, social organizations, social support, coping online”. In Lindgren’s book, he includes short ‘exercises’ throughout the chapters that help the reader synthesize the material and made sense of the examples, theories, and contexts given. I chose one such exercise to do a deep analysis of that asked, “Different tools and platforms that we use to get or spread information and communicate, enable and limit what we can do in their own specific ways. The medium used will alter our ways of seeing, speaking, and acting… In what ways are your uses of television and YouTube similar, and how do they differ? How do you act in a phone call as compared to in text messaging with the same person? Try to think of other examples of how different media lead to different ways of thinking and behaving”. I thought I would specifically link this question to our overarching theme of ‘are you a gadget’ in addressing the last question, ‘how does different media lead to different ways of thinking and behaving’? By linking the question to the idea that digital media does in fact change the way we think and behave, examining in what ways this interaction affects us as individuals and on a larger societal level can effectively answer the question of our being; a gadget, or not?

Lindberg begins the book by noting his key conclusion as, “social actions and phenomena that may appear to be quite random, insignificant, or even absurd can end up having a larger potential to transform society than one might initially believe”. This statement links to our experience in the digital era with the vast amounts of information circulating the internet and multiple other platforms, apps, and software’s. Therefore, by also looking at the social actions and phenomena, and the current popular discourse in media, we can evaluate the implications of these social interactions with digital media using the actor-network theory that Lindberg mentions on his YouTube channel. This actor-network theory looks at everything as part of a web of relations that consists of actors, humans, and things that all relate together. Essentially, the way we think and behave in relation to the device and other external factors that go along with the technology or digital medium. So, in a single device the 'actor' is made up of relations between actors and materials, i.e. the people who invented it, programmed it, distributed it, and worked on the device, the glass, plastic, circuit boards, and material it took to make the device, as well as yourself as an actor using the device.

With this theoretical framework I wanted to brainstorm about the technology that is arguably getting ‘smarter’, and pose the question again about ourselves as becoming gadgets within this actor-network system. For example, the iPhones ability to read our fingerprints and map our faces, Facebooks tracking of facial cues through phone and web camerasto be turned into data for user preferences and advertisement purposes. All these new, innovative abilities make our life easier in our usage of devices and digital media, but is it basically turning us into gadgets? Through using our fingerprints, the phone becomes inherently linked to you, and you only, making it a digital and technological extension of yourself. Through analyzing our facial cues as we scroll on Facebook, the data configured essentially turns our emotions into data and numbers. But is this innovative and effective, or a scary invasion of privacy and loss of autonomy? When technology goes further and further, in the name of effectiveness, evolution, demand, and let’s face it, commodity fetishism and capitalism, will there be a point where humans get uncomfortable with the level of one-ness they have with their devices and the digital media they interact with? Will there be a point where we as consumers must say "enough is enough" in the interest of saving our society and autonomy as living beings and not mechanical reproductions?

Overall, I believe Lindgren’s Digital Media & Society was effective in analyzing digital media in our society today and how these different theories, topics, tools, and frameworks work together to display key elements of digital media and our interaction in the digital era. This book made me look at parts of digital media and my interaction with media in a different light, with a possibility for change as everything in digital media is constructed by the actors themselves. Through our growing mergence with our devices, our interaction with digital media, and the implications our digital culture has on today and tomorrows society, I conclude that we are slowly but steadily becoming gadgets ourselves.

*In doing research about the authenticity and qualifications of Lindgren, I stumbled upon his YouTube channel, fully stocked with videos about social science, digital media, research, and writing. So, I thought I would integrate my experience with his YouTube channel and how he teaches material through these videos with my own experience of television and YouTube. From a technical standpoint, Lindberg’s videos were poor quality filming, but the content and editing he employs makes the videos watchable.