the new phatic culture

In the reading New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture, Vincent Miller discusses the role social networking sites play in our society and the consequences these may have or are having on our culture. Phatic communication is described as "a term used to describe a communicative gesture that does not inform or exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to express sociability and maintain connections or bonds." Miller describes how blogging, social networking sites, and micro blogging are related to our idea of individualism. He believes because people are less connected by traditions, places, and history, we as people feel the need to create social bonds which are open-ended. Blogs, social networking sites, and micro blogs allow people to actively create their own "biography" and create social bonds based on self-disclosure and trust. "One aspect which is particularly important here is the assertion that self-disclosure becomes increasingly important as a means to gain trust and achieve authentic (but contingent) relationships with others. Giddens argues that late modern subjects gravitate towards relationships which engender trust through constant communication and reflexive practice." This practice of creating a biography can also be seen in other media forms, like television in reality TV shows where people sit down to watch the life of another and create bonds with the character over their daily life scenarios. Blogging too allows a person to tell their story to others and create bonds over trust, which can be seen through comments on the blogs. Text messaging has also become a way for people to stay in constant communication with each other. This communication is done not to attain substantive information, but to create the social bond. " Network sociality is an instrumental or commodified form of social bonding based on the continual construction and reconstruction of personal networks or contacts."

The information retrieved from these social networking sites like facebook, myspace, or twitter, is not telling a story but instead is a list with every item which all have the same significance. This is displayed in the news feed on facebook where users update their status giving up to date information on their location, and activities. "One can see this type of communicative practice as largely motivated less by having something in particular to say (i.e. communicating some kind of information), as it is by the obligation or encouragement to say ‘something’ to maintain connections or audiences, to let one’s network know that one is still ‘there." The concern with this type of communication is not the information presented but the process of creating trusting bonds with others.

Miller argues that this type of communication flattens are social bonds with one another by creating lists where everything has equal significance. Everything from having a baby to taking a shower is listed on the facebook homepage each with the same importance placed on the event. Friend’s lists also do this by listing someone’s close friends along with people the person sometimes doesn’t even know. This communication shows a shift from human centered relations to object centered relations, where objects like cell phones, blogs, and social networking sites, are used to keep in touch and create bonds without the need for face-to-face interaction. Licoppe and Smoreda argue that, "a new sociability pattern of the constantly contactable, one which blurs presence and absence, has resulted in relationships becoming webs of quasi-continuous exchanges." Object centered relations requires people to be in constant contact with one another, saying something, not because they would like to exchange information, but instead saying something to stay "present." "It is the connection to the other that becomes significant, and the exchange of words becomes superfluous."