he extensive use of social media and social networking websites is a central part of many people’s daily social interactions. Since the arrival of the Internet, indeed, a particular interest in social sciences research was placed on the effects that mediation has on social interactions. This section highlights the basic concepts concerning social relationships before and after the arrival of the Internet. Starting by defining sociality, it describes the dynamics that structure the creation and the maintenance of the social relationships.
It focuses on the affordances brought about by the arrival of the Internet and social media that changed previous experiences of social interactions. Subsequently, it illustrates the development of online communities and social networks as widely used means for social practices, questioning what forces shape people’s online connections. This explanation intends to further explore the elements that determine the development of contemporary mediated sociality that involve visuality as new means for social connection. An important element here is the pervasive use of visuality, with Instagram providing a clear example of how this shapes the way in which we interact online.
The growth of online communities and social networking websites has emerged as a key theme in the study of new media. For instance, Calhoun, in ‘Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technologies and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere’, discussed the initial effects caused by the emergence of virtual communities, advancing a reinterpretation of Webber’s studies on communities. Calhoun underlined that Webber discussed the notions of flexibility, multiplicity and transcendability of space-time dispersion even before the Internet.
Moreover, Calhoun added that ‘community meant no more to Webber than clusters of personal relationships characterised by some common identity and perhaps a bit of emotional warmth’, pointing out the weakness of that conception. In principle, communities were understood as an extension of people’s personal relationships. Calhoun built upon this conception by exploring the implications of computer networks for community, discussing how the presence of indirect relationships fosters multiplex networks.
Before the mediation of means of communications (such as telephone and computer, but also letters), physical proximity was considered an essential element for the development of communities. Broadly, theorists considered physical communities based on individual association via sameness and by the exclusion of individuals with dissimilar interests. Calhoun claimed that electronic communication technologies produce an intense impact in enhancing mediated relationships and transformation in community activities. He believed that ‘community life can be understood as a life people live in dense, multiplex and relatively autonomous networks of social relationships’.
The Internet and new media foster the loss of proximity in social contacts in favour of mediated proximity. A key feature of the Internet is the increased number of potential social connections that it can establish and maintain. For instance, Rheingold, discussing online sociability, rethought the notion of communities in the age of the Internet by using the concept of virtual communities. Rheingold defined virtual communities as ‘social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships’ and doing exactly what people usually do in real life.
Digital Cellphones and Youth Perception of Communication
