Status Hierarchies in Web 2.0 Environments

Copenhagen.
The post-lunch session here at AoIR 2008 starts with Paul Emerson Teusner, presenting on the presence of emerging religious movements in the blogosphere. How do authority rankings in the blogosphere affect the standing of such religious bloggers? Paul focusses here on a sample of 30 blogs in the Australian blogosphere, examined between July and October 2006.

This is backgrounded by the rise of Web 2.0 and its growth in user-led content production, of course, as well as by the merging of public and private spheres through social networking technologies. However, the effects of these phenomena are not so strongly felt in the religious blogosphere as yet - traditional religious authorities have not yet been replaced by any form of user-led religiosity, in other words. What is common to the blogs studied is an understanding that any culture war between Christianity and secularism has been lost, so the focus is not on missionary efforts but simply on developing a sustainable arrangement with the secular mainstream.

The bloggers Paul investigated were bloggers with high authority in Technorati rankings; all of them were religious workers. The bloggers themselves saw the rankings as highly unfair and flawed, and those with high rankings often tried to play down those rankings. There was no strong drive to rise to higher rankings, and people resisted being identified as leaders of the emerging church movement by virtue of their rankings.

That said, bloggers give authority to each other - intellectual authority by highlighting interesting posts by others; indexical authority by identifying themselves with the statements of others; and personal authority by recognising others (online or offline) as their mentors. Of hyperlink references to others, 70% were to authors of published works, or works themselves (on Amazon, or to authors' own Websites); 26% to other bloggers or online works; and the rest to other people. References to one another showed the presence of an 'A-list' structure; 62% of links to other bloggers went to the same six bloggers, with the rest going to less prominent bloggers in the community.

This, then, indicates that in this community, authority favours intellectual conversation; authors (of books) are still valued over bloggers and other users; links between blogs were in good part influenced by offline connections between people; posts about public discourse were favoured over private discourse; and religious authority in the blogosphere is still predominantly male, educated and literate, and professional.

Next up is Rhiannon Bury, whose focus is on paid IT workers in the Web 2.0 environment, not on the unpaid labour of produsers. For all of the excesses of Web 2.0 rhetoric, it still remains evident that there are changes taking place here, and that the residual, dominant, and emergent are coalescing into something as yet indefinable but nonetheless recognisable.

There are interesting questions here about the gender distribution of participants in the Internet environment. The original dot.com boom had been seen as an opportunity for the employment of more gender-neutral, hybrid workforces, but this does not appear to have materialised in any significant way; there remains a split between male-dominated tech positions and more female-staffed content and service positions (which are often less stable - if not necessarily themselves highly rewarding - than technology jobs).

Has this changed with more recent Web 2.0 trends? Well, there is some evidence of a growth in the employment in female hybrid workers, and such work is increasingly rewarding at least in early parts of such workers' careers (after which some encounter an all-too-familiar glass ceiling once again). (And Rhiannon now presents statements from a few exemplary workers to demonstrate this.) However, there remain prejudices against female workers, who are still perceived as less technical and paid less, while female workers observe that male workers lack some of the collaborative and networking skills sorely needed in technology companies.

Finally we move on to Erika Pearson, whose interest is in the rhetoric of democracy as it relates to Internet uses. Traditional rhetoric ascribes an equal voice to all online participants, but such promises have not been delivered so far; this is now also further complicated by the shift from text to image in online communication. Far from general equality, new hierarchies form online; boundaries do not simply disappear for good, but revised structures of authority and value also emerge in the process.

Today, the Internet is a social, a networking space; this further undermines the idea of an automatic democratisation of communication through the Net. This Internet replicates the inequalities and power structures of offline life, and social status is influenced by communicative competencies and other personal attributes.

Erika explores this here especially through the case of LiveJournal, where social networks are particularly visible, and which is especially well suited for multimedia- rather than merely text-based communicatory exchanges. LiveJournal is also relatively complex to customise; customisation is highly flexible, but requires more advanced coding skills compared to, say, Facebook.

Other forms of multimedia-based communication (beyond the design of one's homepage) include the definition of custom-made mood indicators (going beyond built-in mood icons), or the use of multiple personal icons to symbolise current moods or attitudes (a relatively unusual feature for social networking sites). The value placed on icons in this way also leads to other users copying icons they see, which can lead to their ostracisation.

There is a new hierarchy emerging here, then, which is defined by users' performance and proficiency in participating in LiveJournal. Users are not simply equals in such conversations, then, but the multimedia elements of the site generate significant striations in the community.

Technorati : AoIR 2008, LiveJournal, Technorati, Web 2.0, blogs, community, gender, hierarchy, ir9, produsage, religion, status
Del.icio.us : AoIR 2008, LiveJournal, Technorati, Web 2.0, blogs, community, gender, hierarchy, ir9, produsage, religion, status