My orientation into SIS was heavily focused on networking. This ranged from the encouragement to take advantage of a valuable opportunity like 'You're in D.C.! Think of all the connections you could be making!' to the imperatives 'Make business cards and pass them out to everyone you meet." The latter was followed with instructions on how to get the UPS store to print them out for you with AU letterhead, perhaps promoting what networking had done for American University and UPS. Everything about DC, about graduate school, and our future was suddenly utterly dependent on who we knew or didn't know.
Networking though, as one quickly discovers is extensively cutthroat and (at least at AU) culturally exclusive. For example, the majority of School of International Service "networking" events are "happy hours" in loud bars, often advertised first on Facebook before anywhere else. In other words, "networking" in an official SIS capacity requires that one drinks, or at least can tolerate being around drinking and a bar atmosphere. To be 'in the know' about it also requires being a member of the networking site Facebook. This might be what Arsenault calls a "Formal" network; one that reflects high organizations and sets standards that all members must abide by to be considered part of it. That's not to say informal networks don't also have standards; drinking was often a prerequisite of socializing when I was in Japan, and even in the US being the only one who is drinking (or not drinking) creates a disruption unless your reasons for doing so are adequately explained (showing that you're not rejecting the standards of being part of the network).
All aspects of our lives are heavily governed by networks and the information they provide. This "informationalism" as Arsenault explains "is the currency of our network society," and without it people lack the ability to manipulate the network "according to their needs, desires, and projects." But to what extent can they manipulate the network, and to what extent must they allow the network to manipulate them?
It is totally true that to be “in the know” about various activities requires one be an active Facebook user, though it is not unique to SIS that networking events and other more highly organized activities are heavily advertised on Facebook. There is an implicit assumption that *everybody* uses the site and that invitations sent through it will reach more people than any other medium. Since I do not use the site, I am well aware of the various activities I have missed out on, after the fact, simply because I did not have access to the forum in which the invitation was circulated.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your last thought, perhaps the relationship between individuals and the networks they are a part of, and who manipulates whom, can be liked to Carey’s characterization of communication as a symbolic process that creates, maintains, and transforms reality, but which is simultaneously shaped by reality as well. Just as communication and reality cannot be separated from the other, neither can individuals be extricated from the networks they are entwined with.