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]]>Here’s one on the internet and relationships.
Yes definitely.
Social media encourages us to be more public about our relationships in both explicit and implicit ways. Social networking sites like facebook ask users to say whether they are in a relationship and lists that as part of their profile – suggesting our relationship status is a major part of who we are. Such sites also encourage people to list who they are in relationships with and to mark occasions like weddings, so it becomes public when people get together and if they break up.
There are also a proliferation of dating and hook-up websites like grindr, tinder, OKCupid and match.com. Those mean that the internet becomes part of how we get together with people as well as how we signal our relationship publicly.
It’s not as simple as the internet being either a good thing, or a bad thing, for relationships. Instead it opens up some possibilities whilst closing others down.
On the up side, perhaps, internet dating moves away from previous ideas about falling in love at first site on the basis of physical appearance, and enables people to meet folk who they have things in common with and who share their values. Hook-up sites also remind us that long term monogamous relationships aren’t the only way to have an enjoyable sex/love life. Being open about our relationships on social media might help people to realise that most of us struggle in this area some of the time, as we see our friends getting together, breaking up, and finding that ‘it’s complicated’.
At the same time, social networking can encourage people to present an entirely positive side of themselves which other people can then evaluate themselves against unfavourably. If all you see on your facebook wall is pictures of happy couples celebrating anniversaries and going on picnics then it’s pretty easy to feel bad about being single, or about having tough times in your own relationship. Also break-ups can be particularly painful if you’re constantly drawn to checking how an ex partner is doing through their blog or twitter feed. Ads for internet dating sites can exacerbate the sense that everybody should be searching for a partner, and that anything less than a perfect match won’t do.
For myself I’d like to see a wider range of relationships being presented online: different ways of being single, and having different kinds of relationships, including friendships being valued as highly as romantic relationships. I’d also like to see people being more open about the difficult stuff of relationships as well as the good parts. Social media has the potential for such diversity and openness if we’re up for taking the risk and using it in that way.
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]]>A newer blog, Sense about Sex provides a similar function as the hub for a number of related ESRC and Wellcome funded projects on sexualisation. This led to an offshoot – Bad Sex Media Bingo – which was an idea that a bunch of researchers, educators and practitioners came up with during our regular facebook moans about poor media reporting of sex-related stories. We came up with a bingo card of the most common examples, and then encouraged others to livetweet along to programming and articles to produce examples of good and bad practice in this area.
Rewriting the Rules is my main blog, which accompanies my general audience book Rewriting the Rules. I post weekly on this blog, publicising the posts on twitter, facebook and linkedin. As well as being a great place to blog regularly about whatever I’m currently thinking about in this field, it is also a useful place to provide additional resources on the topics covered in the book (for individuals or groups), to keep links to other relevant sources of information, to bring together all the reviews of the book, and to field enquiries.
Probably my main reason for blogging and engaging in social media is a desire to get good information about relationships and sex out there as widely as possible. I work in a field where there is a great deal of misinformation and mythology, so there is a real need for researchers and academics to provide better alternatives, but in ways that are just as accessible as more mainstream messages.
For this reason it is helpful for me to keep an eye out for what is currently interesting people in my area. That way I can find useful jumping off points for a blog post or online event. Facebook and twitter are great ways to keep track of what people are talking about. Because I particularly follow people who are interested in the same topics as me, I’m usually quick to hear about relevant news stories, movies and the like. So, for example, I used the summer phenomenon of Blurred Lines, and its parodies, to write about gender and sexual consent, and the film The Sessions, to write about sex and disability. It can also be good to think ahead and put something out there at a time when people are likely to be talking about it, as we did with the Valentine’s Day video and facebook discussion.
I’ve found that social media can function in a useful cyclical way for research – at least in areas like mine. Keeping an eye on current trends can help us to be aware of what people are currently concerned about – which might be a useful focus for our studies. Then we can use social media as a means of disseminating what we have found, engaging people in dialogue, and refining or developing our research.
An example of this has been my consent project. First I became aware that issues of sexual consent were of heightened public interest around a number of news stories relating to coercive and abusive sexual behaviour. I found some of the online discussions of consent challenging and difficult myself, which prompted me to find out more and to reflect on my own thoughts and feelings on the matter. Then I discovered that members of the sexual communities which I study myself (notably kink communities) had been having some very interesting and useful online conversations on this topic. I conducted a detailed qualitative analysis of their discussions, using my own social media to ensure that I had all of the key blog posts. I was able, through social media, to feed back what I was finding and to engage people in further discussion. This has led to a journal publication, a number of blogs and presentations, and a public event on the topic to take place next year.
Perhaps the most obvious challenge of blogging and social media for the researcher or academic is the time required, on top of our day jobs. Although the REF (Research Excellence Framework) now has a means of recognising research impact, as well as individual publications, public engagement projects such as blogs don’t necessarily fit easily into what is categorised as impact, because it can be difficult to quantify who it has impacted and how. This means also that universities do not often recognise public engagement work in staff workload or promotions, which can act as a disincentive to doing such work. However, it seems likely that the direction of travel is for further recognition of this kind of work in future, so – even for career reasons – it may be worth engaging in this way. It is also worth encouraging your institution to recognise this work more explicitly, given the importance of research making a difference and addressing areas which are useful to various publics.
Also I have already made the point that such engagement can enrich our research and academic work itself. As well as providing me with research topics and data, my engagement in social media is very helpful in terms of keeping my teaching current and engaging, as there are many online resources which provide excellent examples or activities in class. For example, I’ve collected together some of the helpful resources around sexuality here, as part of a recent book project, for trainee mental health professionals.
Another time-related challenge is that it is often best to blog and tweet about topics when they are current rather than after the event, so we may need to build time into our schedules such that we are able to drop everything and jump on something when it is live, so to speak. This is particularly the case if we’re asked to comment on an area of expertise on an online forum, for example. With research projects like the one I mentioned, it may be necessary to build quite a lot of flexibility into our schedules so that we do have the freedom to spend some weeks analysing an online phenomenon and writing about it. This is something that Leeds Met academic Bridgette Rickett did earlier this year when she and her colleagues analysed the ongoing newspaper conversation about trans and feminism. However, the time frames of funding bodies and journal publishers can mean that we have to think flexibly about obtaining the money to undertake such research and about how to publish it whilst it is still relevant.
From my own experience I would strongly suggest blogging while the iron is hot – i.e. when you have an idea that is buzzing around your head. Often if you don’t catch those moments they fade away, and also it can be a lot quicker at those times than it is if you sit staring at a blank screen and hoping for inspiration to strike. I often find that I think of something on a journey into work and that it comes easily if I give myself half an hour writing before the start of the working day.
It is also important not to be too perfectionist about it. A blog is not a piece of polished academic writing, and it is actually a plus if people can see you come back to it later and edit it on the basis of further conversation. It’s a great way to demonstrate that nobody is perfect and that talking with others influences your work.
Blogs can also give us greater control over what people do with our work. For example, if your research is poorly presented in a newspaper or magazine article you can always use your blog to put up the whole interview, and/or to correct any errors that were made. This can mitigate against one of the other challenges of public engagement: fears about being misrepresented.
I hope this encourages others to get blogging, and engaging in social networking in other ways. I am constantly struck by new potentials that open up through the work I’m doing in this area, and by the people that I meet and ideas that I come across that simply wouldn’t have been possible prior to social media.
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]]>For the first event we were very lucky to have Sue Jamison-Powell from the University of Lincoln talking to us about her work on social networking. Sue has particularly studied the experience of ‘defriending’, or being ‘defriended’ on social networking sites such as facebook. She points out that, in real life friendships, there is the possibility of allowing friendships to drift into acquaintance-ships. On many social networking sites, however, it is only possible to have people as a ‘friend’ or not. This makes online friendships something more like romantic relationships, which we tend to view in an either/or way: Either we are in a relationship or we are not. For this reason Sue suggests that the experience of being ‘defriended’, or ‘defriending’ someone, may have more in common with losing a lover.
Defriending is certainly a very common experience. Sue found that only 16% of the people she studied had not experienced being on one end or the other of a defriending. When she studied those who had been defriended by somebody else, she found that the vast majority of them had not done anything about the situation when they found out about it. Research on romantic relationships suggests that an important part of the break-up process is some kind of communication between people acknowledging that there is a need for change. Clearly this doesn’t happen in online defriending. Rather people are generally surprised to find themselves defriended, and don’t feel that initiating a conversation about it is something that they want to, or are able to, do. Levels of distress following a defriending clearly weren’t usually as high as after most romantic relationship break-ups. However, they were not non-existent either.
When she looked at the reasons people gave for defriending others, Sue found that it was sometimes done due to different expectations of the friendship (e.g. one person thinking it was pointless because they weren’t close in ‘real-life’). Other times people found it difficult to bring together different groups of friends on a social networking site and defriended those whose comments were likely to be disapproved of by other friends or family (‘I didn’t want me mam reading about my debauchery’). Some people valued their privacy and didn’t want their posts read by certain friends (for example, work colleagues). Others found themselves irritated by some friends’ online styles (spamming them with quizzes, for example).
Sue’s talk sparked a lively discussion amongst the Psychology in the Pub attendees about the potentials and pitfalls of social networking sites. It became clear that people used them in very different ways, and that they meant different things to different people as well. For example, some were friends mostly with people who they knew well and used the sites to arrange meeting up. Others used social networking more to keep up with people at a distance, and/or to connect with new people. Some had more than one social networking persona for different aspects of their lives (e.g. work, social, family, sex) whilst others brought these together in one place.
Like Sue, it is important that people studying sites like twitter and facebook maintain an awareness of the multiplicity of experiences that people can have of them. Rather than trying to determine whether social networking is a good thing or a bad thing, perhaps it is more useful to explore the potentials that they can open up and the possibilities that they can close down. For example, the limiting either/or approach to (de)friending has changed now that it is possible on facebook just to hide friend requests. However, this may still discourage any kind of open communication between people and leave them feeling rejected with no idea why.
Social networking can be both a wonderful way for shy people to try out relationships in a safe context and for those who are geographically isolated to connect with like-minded people. It can also encourage fairly superficial connections and a sense of alienation when a post is not commented upon, for example. Seeing the varied experiences of our facebook friends can remind us that everyone suffers and give us opportunities to offer, and to receive, compassion. Alternatively, we might be confronted with purely shiny happy postings which leave us worrying there is something wrong with us, or with an overwhelming sense of hardship and impotence when many of our friends are struggling. When we socially network we can feel pressured to present one, coherent side of ourselves which will gain the most approval (‘like’), or we can creatively enjoy the precarious experience of revealing the complexity and multiplicity of our daily existence.
In conclusion, as facebook would have it: it’s complicated.
You can read Sue Jamison-Powell’s presentation here
Find out more about Psychology in the Pub here
I will continue to blog here about the Psychology in the Pub events. Watch this space…
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