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On Display: Social Media and Status Politics in Urban Scenes

Sun, August 12, 10:30 to 11:30am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: Level 100, 103B

Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to develop a uniquely sociological perspective on the power of social media that places social relations and everyday life at the center. We proceed in two steps. In the first part, we present a model for understanding social media relationally through the lens of contests over status. We draw on the work of Norbert Elias, whose theoretical approach developed in works like The Court Society allows us to make sense of simultaneous changes in relations and sensibilities. In our Eliasian model, we identify the structural pressures exerted by the new interdependencies created by social media platforms as well as the sensibilities and practices they give rise to. A corollary of our perspective is that we regard social media not primarily as vectors of disruption and transformation, but as implicated in the maintenance of everyday social order. In the second part, we operationalize our model using both computational and qualitative methods, which we apply in the context of various urban scenes in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Computational analyses of a unique dataset of geo-tagged Instagram posts allow us to identify and locate various scenes that assemble at the interface of online and urban spaces. We then use classical fieldwork methods, especially interviews and participant-observation, to understand how the structural pressures of social media play out in various social settings. We present findings from studies focusing on different groups of young urbanites to illuminate how contests over status impinge on individuals, areas and places in the city, inducing desires and anxieties and reinforcing power and status hierarchies or creating new inequalities. We discuss how consumption, cultural life and aesthetics are involved in these processes. In conclusion, we discuss how contests over social status on social media are inflected by race, gender, location and class.

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