Social Media and Society 2016 http://sched.co/7G8M Full paper by Dr Ella Taylor-Smith and Dr Colin Smith http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2930971.2930974

1. Social Media and Society, London, July, 2016
http://socialmediaandsociety.org/
Non-public eParticipation
in Social Media Spaces
Dr Ella Taylor-Smith (@EllaTasm)
and Dr Colin F. Smith
www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/e.taylor-smith
www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/cf.smith

2. Summary: technology as context
Focusing on the relationship
between activities
and contexts in
citizen-led participation.
These contexts are described as
participation spaces.

3. Participation spaces are
sociotechnical assemblages
Participation spaces are
sociotechnical assemblages
Human and non-human
artefacts and processes
working together.
cf. Sociomaterial assemblages
(Suchman, 2007)
e.g. Google search (Orlikowski,
2007)

4. Habermas’ Public Sphere
Oldenburg’s 3rd Places
Political talk and deliberation
Deliberation/ Public Sphere
(Habermas, 1964; 1989)
Third Places (Oldenburg, 1999;
Wright, 2012)
Everyday political talk (Kim and
Kim, 2008)
Wife Swap forums (Graham, 2012)

5. Goffman’s regions
Cornwall and Hassan’s spaces
Place/ behaviour
Goffman (1971): audience
Back region: preparation
Front region: performance
Cornwall (2002): ownership
Participation initiatives
Invited spaces: top-down
Created spaces: bottom-up

6. Case study groups
1. Local anti-cuts group
2. Community improvement
group
3. School parents’ campaign
against planning application
Data collection
• Interviews
• Participant observation
(in on and offline spaces)
Case studies and data collection

7. Participation spaces modelled as Socio-
Technical Interaction Networks
Participation spaces (online and offline spaces)
CS1
Anti-cuts group
CS2
Community group
CS3
Parents’ campaign
Community centre
meeting room
Facebook page
Email
Flyers
Twitter
Alliance blog
WordPress blog
Hill Facebook group
Hill Facebook page
Hill.org website
Org’s Office
Hill Village Twitter
Directory magazine
Reply-all email list
PC Facebook group
The Playground
City planning portal
City Chambers
Hyperlocal paper
(website and
newssheet)

8. Modelling participation spaces as
Socio-Technical Interaction Networks
STIN heuristics
to model participation spaces
H1 System interactors
H2 Core interactor groups
H3 Incentives
H4 Excluded actors,
undesired interactions
H5 Communication forums
H6 Resource flows
H7 System architectural choice points
H8 Viable configurations and trade-offs
Kling, McKim and King, 2003

9. Modelling participation spaces as
Socio-Technical Interaction Networks

10. Findings: spatial characteristics
influence use
Use of both online and offline
spaces influenced by:
• boundaries
• inhabitants
• access
• ownership
• cost

11. Findings: most participation takes place
in non-public spaces
Closed Facebook groups
(and email)
Can see/ know likely
audience.
Defined boundaries and
inhabitants.
Like Goffman’s back region.
All social media spaces
considered public for
government employees.

12. Findings: free space =shared ownership
Ownership and cost
Free to the group:
shared ownership (Cornwall’s
Created Spaces).
Costs of social media diversified
and moved to background, e.g.
devices + Internet.
(Polymedia: Madianou and
Miller, 2012).

13. Findings: invisible, informational work
The Iceberg of participation
Hidden (non-public) work
supports public outputs.
Most work (and discussion) is
organisation,
not performance,
or public deliberation.

14. Findings: photos
Photos
Practical and influential vehicles for
emotion and information.
On social media
and in e.g. Planning Committee
hearing.
cf. affect and impact (Papacharissi,
2014)
and Media Logic (Altheide, 2004)

15. Findings: Boundary objects
Facebook as Boundary
Object
Information objects which
support collaboration of
people from different social
worlds.
(Star and Griesemer, 1989)

16. End. Thanks. Questions.
However, social media spaces
are mutable, permeable, and
subjective spaces.
Dr Ella Taylor-Smith (@EllaTasm)
and Dr Colin F. Smith,
School of Computing,
Edinburgh Napier University.
Woodcuts: thanks to Van Gogh
Museum.

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