Thesis Title: Subtitle

Introduction

To address the questions and aims presented in the previous chapter, this literature review is broadly situated within the sociology of technology. The focus of this chapter is on technologically mediated communication and SNS in particular as these represent the bodies of literature that are contextually and analytically relevant to this research project.
This chapter begins by outlining the role of technology in late modernity including its ability to facilitate mobility and ‘speed up’ one’s lived experience. Addressing theoretical understandings of technology and late modernity provide context for the following review of empirical work. The review of empirical work begins by focusing on digital technologies, specifically information communication technologies (ICT) such as mobile phones and CMC since these are most closely related to the topic of this thesis. Finally, the review examines the present literature on SNS as it relates to identity, space and social relationships. While this thesis draws on previous scholarship relating to technology and SNS it also draws on other conceptually useful fields such as the production of space, and sociological understandings of friendship. However, to produce the latter two fields here would create a literature review that pre-empts the results of this research. Therefore, in line with the methodological approach outlined in the following chapter some literature has been reserved so it can be addressed in relation to the results for which it is analytically relevant.

Understanding Technology in Late Modernity

This section discusses the interplay between the social and technological aspects of late modernity. The effect of technology on social bonds is a significant feature in late modernity with many theorists explicitly or implicitly addressing technology as part of their analyses of late modernity. Giddens (1990) and Beck (2000) argue that the pace of social and cultural change is much more rapid than any previous era. Lash (2002) also argues that the intervention of digital technologies mean that culture and life more generally are speeding up. The compression of time and space in the information age have increased the mediation of social relations meaning that social bonds have become stretched across space, but compressed in time. In their place, Lash (2002) argues we have communication bonds, which are immediate, yet, distanciated.

Urry’s work also examines some of the social complexities of late modernity, specifically social phenomena that are driven by technological advances such as his work on mobility (Urry 2002, 2007), travel (Urry 2003) and tourism (Urry 1990; Urry and Larsen 2011). Urry (2003: 158) states that the current patterns of mobility represent the “largest peaceful movement of people across borders.” He further argues that these technologically facilitated patterns of mobility are creating new social spaces. He argues that the information revolution has allowed for the creation of increasingly expansive networks that are sustained through occasional moments of co-presence (Urry 2003). As such, Urry argues many patterns of social life occur “at a distance” (2003: 155). Part of the patterns of this increasingly networked and mobile existence are facilitated by digital technologies like the internet and mobile phones. Not only are individuals’ networks more geographically diffused, they are also have fewer overlapping affiliations. In turn, digital technologies represent a way of managing these diffuse and disparate networks. While Urry (2003) does not include SNS in his head count of technologies that assist with the management of a mobile life, I believe they form part of the cluster he identifies. In fact, SNS represent a significant advance on the affordances of mobile phone, laptops and the internet as they are able to condense the expansive networks that Urry (2003) identifies into one space.

This reduction of one’s network into one stable space may help provide some of the sense of co-presence that he identifies as being essential to the maintenance and sustenance of social relationships. Similarly, Lash also includes technology in his examination of late modernity by examining its role in the creation of “technological forms of life” (2002: 105). Technology is an intrinsic part of the conditions of late modernity as it is a central part of
what has been described by Lash (2002) as the ‘speeding up’ of lived experience. Lash (2002) argues that late modernity is governed less by principles of society, but rather more by principles of information. This means that the previously perceived fixity of social bonds has given way to transient bonds based on communication, not social togetherness.
Machines are increasingly involved in all aspects of life, including the regulation of the body, meaning that life is becoming technological. For Giddens (1990), the involvement of machine or non^-human actors into social life points to the growth of abstract systems, which consequently shape our interactions with other individuals. Lash (2002) argues technology can shape the pace of our interactions, often making them more frequent, faster and present in previously ‘dead’ time. In addition to patterns of interaction becoming more continuous, it has been argued that these interactions are made shallower by technologically enabled mediation as it offers a low-effort alternative to connecting
face-to-face (Gershon 2010; Turkle 2011).
Despite the seeming consensus that life is speeding up, there is ongoing debate about whether technologically induced ‘speeding up’ is unique to late modernity. For example, Virilio (1995, 2000) argues that the speeding up of life is not uniquely associated with the introduction of digital technologies, but rather is part of the history of modernity. Virilio (1995, 2000) further suggests that the history of modernity is replete with examples of technological innovation increasing time compression. Virilio’s analysis of time compression encompasses technologies of mobility such as trains, planes and cars, which dramatically shorten travelling time. Similarly, he contends that technologies of transmission and communication, such as the telegraph, telephone, radio and computer have replaced the previously sequential experiences of time with simultaneous and instantaneous ones. These developments, Virilio argues, means that social relationships of time and attention are increasingly able to exist separately from space and the body.
Human history can be understood in relation to time’s ever increasing speeds, which transcend our biological capacities. Rosa (2003) also addresses the concept of ‘speed’ in his explanation of what it means to call modern (Western) societies acceleration societies. Like Virilio (1995, 2000), he pinpoints transportation as the most obvious form of acceleration – technological acceleration (Rosa 2003). Secondly, he identifies the acceleration of social change as significant and uses this concept to focus on institutional (in)stability with regards to family and occupation. Finally, Rosa (2003) argues that the third significant process is the acceleration of the pace of life, meaning the speed and compression of actions and experiences in daily life. These theories speak to the
‘disembeddedness’ of late modern life as highlighted in the previous chapter and contend that it is difficult to experience a concrete attachment to a place if one is constantly moving, or experiences continual occupation instability that might require mobility to pursue other job opportunities.

However, the ‘speed’ aspect of these theories is rather difficult to quantify given that the ‘pace’ of life is a subjective experience mediated by many factors, which can be difficult to isolate. Wajcman (2008) argues that such theories of technology are rather deterministic in nature and do not account for the complexity of lived experience documented by empirical studies. Wajcman (2008) contends that this is because much of the literature that examines information communication technology (ICT) lacks a concrete definition for one of its key concepts – acceleration. Additionally, Wajcman proposes that understanding acceleration and its relationship to the temporal structure of contemporary life may help resolve the ongoing debate regarding the distinction between modernity, late-modernity and post-modernity (2008).

Expanding on the idea of acceleration, Wajcman argues that technological innovations do not simply save time or simplify process, but rather change the nature and meaning of tasks and “create new material and cultural practices” (2008: 66). However, current sociological readings of ICTs treat social relationships and configurations as existing prior to, and outside of, technology. This means, for example, that when theories of technological acceleration are applied to existing social practices, the conclusion is that people are doing the same things, but at a faster pace (Wajcman 2008). These theories consider the social and the technical as two separate spheres, rather than considering them as one and the same –overlapping and intertwined (Wacjman 2008). Conversely, actor network theory attempts to bridge the gap between the social and the technical.

Using Latour’s actor network theory (ANT) to discussing the intersection of the social and technical aspects of the internet as it extends the title of ‘actor’ to non human and non individual entities (Latour 1996). An actant can be anything as long as it is something that acts, or something that is granted activity by others (Latour 1996), Thus, the human and non-human have equal status and no list of basic competencies to which an actant must meet. Latour (1996) claims that the only way to account for ‘things’, such as the artefacts produced by engineers, is to ‘reinject’ things in to understanding of social fabrics via a network like ontology. In reintroducing non-human elements into networks, Latour gives

equal ontological status to both the non-human and the social. For Latour (1996: 370) “there is nothing but networks.” Additionally, Latour’s (1996) ANT model also takes away the element of distance or proximity when considering the relationship between things.
Instead, what becomes important is how those elements are connected. Proximity between things does not matter if they remain unconnected, and for all intents and purposes, distant. Thus, what matters is not the spatial arrangement of things but the ways in which they are associated with or connected to each other. Not only are networks lacking spatial orientation, they also resists spatial metaphors in terms of size. Instead of arguing that one network is larger than another Latour insists that the most that can be said about networks is whether they are more (or less) intensely connected than another. Latour (1996) resists making statements of size regarding network because he argues that these terms imply an order relation, which is too linear to adequately account for social life. The notion of a network that Latour (1996) employs has no a priori order. Latour (1996) argues that by, in essence, flattening out some of these prior assumptions it allows us to manoeuvre between the ingredients of social life without positioning these concepts in opposition to each other.

Work by Van Djick’s (2014), Helmond and Gerlitz (2014), Gehl (forthcoming) and Langlois (2014) represent a push towards examining the intersection between the architectural constraints and properties of social media and individual agency and is inspired by ANT theory, as it treats non-human elements as actors. This recent output is theoretical and explanatory in its focus. These studies forensically map the growth and change in various social media sources, they do not engage with the participants in these environments directly, as they are more focused on distinct architectural properties of the technologies that they are investigating. For example, Helmond and Gerlitz (2014) examines the way Facebook’s like button has increasingly colonized the broader web. Helmond and Gerlitz (2014) argue that Facebook’s sharing and like buttons quantify user behaviour so that sociality is transformed into data with an economic value. However, in much of present ANT inspired research the voice of the users them themselves, is still missing when it comes to considering the architectural properties of social media broadly and SNS in particular.