The effort of being immersed

Yesterday, I hosted a talk at my department by Jonas Linderoth (University of Gothenburg) entitled The effort of being in a fictional world: Upkeyings and laminated frames in MMORPGs. Its topic was hard core role playing subcultures within the World of Warcraft community, and it illustrated how these players — wanting to achieve a maximum level of authenticity and immersion in their gaming — navigate the nexus between rules/ludology and fiction/narratology. Immersion does not come easy, which is something that the moral entrepreneurs who see nothing but dangers in MMO gaming seem to think. Rather, it takes a lot of hard work to actually “lose grip of reality”.

The presentation made me realize that I really have to look more into Goffman’s frame analysis, which is something that I have been meaning to do for quite some time now. Also, “Hamlet on the Holodeck” by Janet Murray seems to be important reading to anyone interested in cultural and linguistic aspects of digital cultures. There is more information on Jonas Linderoth here, and those who understand Swedish will definitely enjoy his talk WTF r u female IRL?!? from the latest Dreamhack festival.

Veblen: Thinking on the margins

Norwegian-American cultural sociologist and economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen is most famous for his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. In that book, he introduced the concept of “conspicuous consumption” and formulated a theory of social distiction through acts of consumption that predated Pierre Bourdieus similiar ideas in Distinction (1979). In this month’s issue of Wired magazine, the article “Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up“ by Jonah Lehrer discusses a lesser known but very interesting contribution made by Veblen:

In 1918, sociologist Thorstein Veblen was commissioned by a popular magazine devoted to American Jewry to write an essay on how Jewish “intellectual productivity” would be changed if Jews were given a homeland. At the time, Zionism was becoming a potent political movement, and the magazine editor assumed that Veblen would make the obvious argument: A Jewish state would lead to an intellectual boom, as Jews would no longer be held back by institutional anti-Semitism. But Veblen, always the provocateur, turned the premise on its head. He argued instead that the scientific achievements of Jews — at the time, Albert Einstein was about to win the Nobel Prize and Sigmund Freud was a best-selling author — were due largely to their marginal status. In other words, persecution wasn’t holding the Jewish community back — it was pushing it forward.

The reason, according to Veblen, was that Jews were perpetual outsiders, which filled them with a “skeptical animus.” Because they had no vested interest in “the alien lines of gentile inquiry,” they were able to question everything, even the most cherished of assumptions. Just look at Einstein, who did much of his most radical work as a lowly patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland. According to Veblen’s logic, if Einstein had gotten tenure at an elite German university, he would have become just another physics professor with a vested interest in the space-time status quo. He would never have noticed the anomalies that led him to develop the theory of relativity.

Predictably, Veblen’s essay was potentially controversial, and not just because he was a Lutheran from Wisconsin. The magazine editor evidently was not pleased; Veblen could be seen as an apologist for anti-Semitism. But his larger point is crucial: There are advantages to thinking on the margin. When we look at a problem from the outside, we’re more likely to notice what doesn’t work. Instead of suppressing the unexpected, shunting it aside with our “Oh shit!” circuit and Delete key, we can take the mistake seriously. A new theory emerges from the ashes of our surprise.

Modern science is populated by expert insiders, schooled in narrow disciplines. Researchers have all studied the same thick textbooks, which make the world of fact seem settled. This led Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to argue that the only scientists capable of acknowledging the anomalies — and thus shifting paradigms and starting revolutions — are “either very young or very new to the field.” In other words, they are classic outsiders, naive and untenured. They aren’t inhibited from noticing the failures that point toward new possibilities.

Aside from the provocation and controversy, this seems like a perfect ideal for good research: be sceptical, question everything, think on the margins, stay naive, and let theories emerge from the ashes of your surprise.

The economy of linguistic exchange in gaming culture

I was interviewed today by Språktidningen, a Swedish monthly magazine about language issues. The article for which I was contacted will be printed in the January edition and deals with the specialized language in gaming culture, and the difficulties for game reviewers and cultural journalists to make games accessible to a wide audience of people of various generations.

This dilemma is further emphasized in a non-English speaking setting, where gaming discourse not only includes a lot of specialized terminology but also a lot of loan words. I think that gaming language must be seen in the context of sub or youth cultural language. This means that specialized jargon has been developed for reasons other than purely technological. Furthermore, many online cultures related to gaming are quite hierarchal and langue plays a big part in maintaining distinctions in these cases. As gaming is moved into the mainstream, these linguistic patterns live on. My contribution to the article, from the perspective of cultural sociology, revolved around the following points:

Dick Hebdige illustrated in Subculture: The meaning of style (1979) that membership in subcultures is signalled through specific uses of mannerisms and argot. Argot is a French, Spanish and Catalan word for “slang” or “secret language”. Argot is used by various groups “to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations”. “The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job, sport, etc”.¹

“Notions concerning the sanctity of language are intimately bound up with social order. The limits of acceptable linguistic expression are prescribed by a number of apparently universal taboos. These taboos guarantee the continuing ‘transparency’ (the taken-for-grantedness) of meaning. Predictably then, violations of the authorized codes through which the social world is organized and experienced have considerable power to provoke and disturb” (Hebdige 1979, p. 91).

Cultures such as those characterizing gaming, online piracy, IRC chats, hacking, etc. are often hierachal. The status divisions between n00bs and more established members in online culture in general are one example of this. Bowker and Liu (2001) have written about this in terms of gender differences, and Blashki & Nichol (2005) have illustrated how so called 1337 5p34k (leetspeak) has its roots in gaming culture.

Pierre Bourdieu writes in the seminal article on “The economy of linguistic exchanges” (1977) of “legitimate language”, and of how language is connected to “relations of symbolic power”.

“A person speaks not only to be understood but also to be believed, obeyed, respected, distinguished.” (p. 648)

“Linguistic competence (like any other cultural competence) functions as linguistic capital in relationship with a certain market.” (p. 651)

School Shootings, Google Trends and Marilyn Manson

I am currently working on a conference paper related to our YouTube project. When I visited CAQR2009 earlier this month one of the participants, Silvana di Gregorio, gave an interesting presentation about online research tools. One of these were Google Trends which a free service that shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. I thought I’d try it out for the paper. By exporting the data to Excel and working further with it there, generating diagrams etc, I was able to sketch out an analysis very fast. I actually think that I can use this as a starting point for the paper (which will also include a number of other analyses).

Web activity in relation to three school shootings measured with Google Trends

Figure 1: Increased interest in names of locations of school shootings when they take place. Not surprising.

Figure 2 is more interesting: On events of school shootings there is an increased interest in political themes such as gun control, and pop culture themes such as Marilyn Manson. (Figure 2 is aggregated data from periods before and after all 3 above shootings).

Q: What does this mean?

A: It means that the societal reaction to incidents of school shootings follow the panic pattern described by Stanley Cohen in Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972). In the case of gun control, for example, one might draw upon Stuart Hall’s (1978, p. 19) idea, from Policing the Crisis, that labels applied to dramatic public events are likely to mobilize an entire referential context with a set of associated connotations. Even though gun control ought to be discussed all of the time, the issue is specifically activated and understood in relation to certain things that happen in society. School shootings being one example.

As regards the case of Marilyn Manson, the peak in web activity in relation to incidents of school shootings can be understood in terms of sensitization (Cohen 1972, p. 83). Cohen writes that “a characteristic of hysteria” is that the wrong stimulus gets “chosen as the object of attack or fear”. School shootings are traumatizing events to society, and they make a number of targets more visible as candidates for social control. And these targets are of course not chosen randomly. As Cohen puts it, they are chosen “from groups already structurally vulnerable to social control”. And as Manson himself puts it: “I definitely can see why they would pick me. Because I think it’s easy to throw my face on the TV, because in the end, I’m a poster boy for fear. Because I represent what everyone is afraid of”.

The cultural sociology of Barbie

A group of students from the  Culture Journalism programme here at Umeå University will film an interview with me today about the impact of Barbie on popular culture. And since I tend to say yes to everything, I said I would do it. When discussing Barbie, I think you can get quite a long way by relating the phenomenon to general theories of gendered and sexual subjectivities, and of social change, and of the relation between popular culture and the identities, dreams and aspirations of its users.

Still, to be a little more prepared than that, I decided to research the field a bit. Unsurprisingly, the subject is often discussed in terms of the potentially negative effects of Barbie on young girls: “Skinny Barbie blamed over eating disorders” (TimesOnline), “Barbie’s body may be perfect, but critics remind us it’s plastic” (Knight-Ridder), “Distorting reality for children: Body size proportions of Barbie and Ken dolls” (International Journal of Eating Disorders). But I also stumbled over this comprehensive article which both summarizes previous research on Barbie, and presents new empirical studies. Things that I will bring with me to the interview [most of these are direct quotes from here]:

- Barbie is one of the most successful toys of the 20th century and, arguably, the icon of female beauty and the American dream. Children’s toys are influential in the development of self-concept [messages about gender, adult roles, and values].

- There is disagreement over the messages the Barbie sends and the toy’s place in the lives of young girls.

- It has been argued that Barbie reflects a highly sexualized image and circumscribe girls’ play by emphasizing prescribed roles and patterns of interaction [promoting stereotypical feminine roles].

- Most interviewed girls (in a study of early-adolescent boys and girls)  reported owning at least two Barbie dolls. They reported no longer playing with Barbie dolls; however, when the group facilitator produced several Barbie dolls for use in their focus group session, many of the girls exclaimed, “Barbie!” and all expressed the desire to hold one of the dolls.

- A surprisingly common form of Barbie-related play reported by the participants was torture play. All reported damaging their dolls by cutting off the hair, painting them, or even removing appendages.

- The majority of participants argued that Barbie presents an unrealistic image of perfection that may harm girls’ developing self-concept and body image. Some reported that Barbie dolls offer positive role models because they allow girls to imagine a variety of careers and practice female adult roles.

- The disfigured Barbie doll may represent girls’ ambivalent views about their developing feminine self.

Also, a note about the continued popularity of Barbie from Elisabeth Eaves (forbes.com). She asks: “why, in this era of digital games, educational toys and over-involved parents, does our collective fascination with Barbie linger on?”. She continues:

Ninety percent of American girls ages three to 10 own at least one Barbie, according to the doll’s maker, Mattel  (nyse: MAT -  news  -  people ), and that’s just the primary market. Barbie has inspired impassioned legions of adult collectors who dote on her various iterations and costumes. She is imitated–in December, Mattel won a copyright infringement case against MGA Entertainment, maker of the Bratz dolls, who are a poutier-lipped, trashier variation. And for decades, Barbie had the distinction of being a feminist whipping girl, blamed for inspiring little girls to want to grow up to be sex objects with unrealistic physical proportions. Barbie marches on undaunted.

Referring to this book about Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, she gives some clues to the love-hate relationship [direct quotes from Eaves' article]:

- “Barbie is fascinating in part because she discomforts, which she does by shining a light where we don’t want to look, specifically on children’s sexuality.”

- “The inspiration behind Handler’s invention, she repeatedly said, was her observation that ‘little girls just wanted to be bigger girls.’”

- “Girls who play with Barbie are, among other things, playing at being desired.“

Finally, from Wikipedia, about Barbie collectors:

- There are well over 100,000 avid Barbie collectors. Ninety percent are women, at an average age of 40.

- Vintage Barbie dolls from the early years are the most valuable. On September 26, 2006, a Barbie doll set a world record at auction of £9,000 sterling (US $17,000) at Christie’s in London.

- In recent years Mattel has sold a wide range of Barbie dolls aimed specifically at collectors, including porcelain versions, vintage reproductions, and depictions of Barbie as a range of characters from television series.

- There are also collector’s edition dolls depicting Barbie dolls with a range of different ethnic identities.

In 2004 Mattel introduced the Color Tier system for its collector’s edition Barbie dolls, ranging through pink, silver, gold and platinum depending on how many of the dolls are produced.

The YouTube Gunman?

Before the school shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, as well as before the similar tragedies in Finnish Jokela 2007 and now yesterday in Kauhajoki, the gunmen gave warnings by posting videos on YouTube. This fact is highly emphasized in the news media coverage of these events. Östersunds-Posten [Swedish] writes today that “the acceleration of violence on YouTube and in the world of videogames can [...] lead to young people not being able to tell right from wrong, or fiction from reality. Symptomatically, Kvällsposten [Swedish] emphasizes that: “After having posted the clip online Matti Juhani Saari is believed to have shot ten people”. TimesOnline writes of “the YouTube Gunman” (!). In spite of the deep tragedy of this event, a dangerous form of causality is inherent in such discourse. “After having posted the clip” Saari killed ten people. X leads to Y, or what?

Influenced by the classic theory of moral panics, Danish media researcher Kirsten Drotner has written on what she labels media panics.The latter concept refers to the recurring type of societal reactions wherein new media and novel technologies get blamed for causing behaviors and events that rather obviously have other causes. These school shootings are examples of such events. Looking back, we often laugh nostalgically at the obvious fallacies of earlier debates on youth and media, and on parental responsibility. The dime novels of the late 19th century, the wild west comic books of the 1950s, the pelvic thrusts of Elvis, and the VCR. In the rearview mirror, the repetitiveness or, to use Drotner’s term, “historical amnesia” of reactions such as these becomes all too obvious. It is apparent that this is about something else.

At every point in time when a new medium enters the stage, this tends to lead to strikingly similiar debates on basic social and cultural norms. On some occasions these debates get heated and affected, that is when we talk of “media panics”. The discussion is often polarized. The medium is demonized by some while celebrated or de-dramatized by others. In the news, it is often the negative side that becomes the most visible. The message tends to come from an “adult” direction: Teachers, librarians, cultural critics, politicians and researchers – each and everyone with their own interests and stakes in the issue – produce diagnoses and offer “solutions” directed towards children and young people. The new medium under discussion becomes a fitting rhetorical device in discussions that are, in fact, about something completely different.

Of course, these media panics tell us less about the discussed mediums as such, and more about social and cultural dilemmas that are of a wider character. The moralizing discourse on YouTube, for example, directs attention away from what is actually happening. For example the fact that the US (where, of course, Virginia Tech is located) displays the highest level of gun ownership in the world, or that Finland (where, of course, Jokela and Kauhajoki are located) comes in third on the same list. Somewhere around 1.6 millon firearms are owned privately by Finnish individuals, and the gunlaws rank among the least restrictive in Europe. You need to be  no more than 15 years of age to legally acquire a gun. Meanwhile in Virginia, anyone over 21 is allowed to buy a handgun a month, as long as they have not received a permit to buy even more. It goes without saying that neither YouTube as a medium, nor the laws as such lead in any natural or given way to school shootings taking place. Still, it makes you wonder what happened to the social analysis.