The virtual supermarket

By Bronwyn Harvey

Are YOU a Facebook addict? Do you check your newsfeed as soon as you wake up and continuously throughout the day and night? Facebook is a huge part of everyone’s lives. It allows us to share photos, statuses, information – share just about everything! Facebook allows us to be whoever we want either ourselves or a new persona. However, majority of people, including myself, use our own identities to connect with our real life friends and family and meet new people in other parts of the world. Facebook joins the dots of people connected in this virtual network as demonstrated by the mutual friends lists (Buchanan, 2002).

Image 1: The Supermarket Experience

Facebook is a bit like a supermarket, a home range where we feel like we can go anywhere we want. We can travel freely up and down the aisles browsing through all the products available just like browsing through our newsfeed (Petray 2013). Everyone has power and this is evident in the way the Facebook designers have created Facebook to allow us to defend our page, our territory, as we are empowered to control who has access to our page by either blocking or accepting people. (Petray, 2013). However, there is a bit of a panoptic effect as there is always someone watching our every move but we can’t see them. Security cameras allow supermarket managers and security guards to watch us shop just like Facebook has system administrators who monitor our actions and restrict our travelling abilities. Knowing we are constantly under surveillance we behave in an appropriate manner (Turkle, 1995). This panoptic effect makes us feel like we have the power of doing what we want but really our power is restricted and controlled by the “bosses” who have greater power than we do.

Facebook users are the flâneurs of the virtual network. We can browse through our pages and other people’s pages determining whether we read a status or look at a photo. We determine whether something is interesting or not (Benjamin, 1928) But just like in a supermarket we can’t see EVERYTHING that is going on around us (Wood et al, 2006). Even under surveillance nasty people like paedophiles or stalkers blend in with other Facebook users travelling through this virtual network undetected.

Regardless of all the bad stuff that can happen in a virtual network, Facebook is a great tool for us to socialise and exercise our power in the way we interact with others, so start Facebooking!

 

References

Benjamin.,W. (1928) One Way Street [Einbahnstrasse], Rowohlt, Berlin.

Buchanan, M. (2002) Strange Connections, In Buchanan. M, Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks.(pp. 23-33) New York: Norton & Company.

Petray, T. (2013). BA1002. Our space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of place. Week 3. [Audio Recording]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Turkle, S. (1995). 'Panoptican.' In life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuster

Wood, D., Kaise, W.L, & Abramms, B. (2006). Seeing through maps: Many ways to see the world. Oxford, UK: New Internationalist.

Image credits:

Ashraf, A. (2011), The Supermarket Experience, Retrieved from http://expatlog.com/2011/11/07/the-canadian-supermarket/