New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture

TLDR: In this paper, the authors demonstrate how the notion of "phatic communion" has become an increasingly significant part of digital media culture alongside the rise of online networking practices, arguing that the social contexts of individualization and network sociality, alongside the technological developments associated with pervasive communication and connected presence, has led to an online media culture increasingly dominated by phatic communications.

Abstract: This article will demonstrate how the notion of 'phatic communion' has become an increasingly significant part of digital media culture alongside the rise of online networking practices. Through a consideration of the new media objects of blogs, social networking profiles and microblogs, along with their associated practices, I will argue, that the social contexts of 'individualization' and 'network sociality', alongside the technological developments associated with pervasive communication and 'connected presence' has led to an online media culture increasingly dominated by phatic communications. That is, communications which have purely social (networking) and not informational or dialogic intents. I conclude with a discussion of the potential nihilistic consequences of such a culture.

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Citation for published version
Miller, Vincent (2008) New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture. Convergence: The International
Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies, 14 (4). pp. 387-400. ISSN 1354-8565.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856508094659
Link to record in KAR
http://kar.kent.ac.uk/13028/
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Technologies
Journal of Research into New Media
Convergence: The International
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DOI: 10.1177/1354856508094659
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Vincent Miller
New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture
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New Media, Networking and
Phatic Culture
Vincent Miller
University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Abstract / This article will demonstrate how the notion of ‘phatic communion’ has become an
increasingly significant part of digital media culture alongside the rise of online networking
practices. Through a consideration of the new media objects of blogs, social networking profiles
and microblogs, along with their associated practices, I will argue, that the social contexts of ‘indi-
vidualization’ and ‘network sociality’, alongside the technological developments associated with
pervasive communication and ‘connected presence’ has led to an online media culture increasingly
dominated by phatic communications. That is, communications which have purely social (network-
ing) and not informational or dialogic intents. I conclude with a discussion of the potential nihilistic
consequences of such a culture.
Key Words / blogging / database culture / microblogging / network sociality / phatic / post-social
/ social networking
Introduction
After the first formula, there comes a flow of language, purpose-less expressions of preference or
aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious. Such gossip, as
found in Primitive Societies, differs only a little from our own. Always the same emphasis of affir-
mation and consent . . . Or personal accounts of the speakers’ views and life history, to which the
hearer listens under some restraint and with slightly veiled impatience, waiting till his own turn arrives
to speak. (Malinowski, 1923: 314)
eating a peanut butter-filled corny dog dipped in queso. mmmmmmm breakfast. 09:48 AM July 19,
2007. (‘Twitter’ communication from Happywaffle)
This article is a theoretical discussion of blogs, social networking websites and microblogs.
I argue that these new media phenomena are symptomatic and illustrative of both
technological affordances and larger socio-cultural trends. In particular, it will link the
content of two major new media products with certain ongoing cultural and techno-
logical processes which arguably can be considered problematic: namely a flattening of
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
Copyright © 2008 Sage Publications (London, Los Angeles, New Delhi,
Singapore, and Washington DC) Vol 14(4): 387–400
DOI: 10.1177/1354856508094659
http://cvg.sagepub.com
DEBATE
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social bonds as we move into ‘networked sociality’ (Wittel, 2001), and a similar ‘flatten-
ing’ of communication in these networks towards the non-dialogic and non-
informational. What I will call here phatic culture.
In that sense, this article has a critical element. Blogging (particularly personal journal
blogs), social networking websites and microblogs are used to illustrate these processes,
not in the sense that they are seen as inherently deleterious or malevolent, but because
these new media objects seem to articulate such processes particularly well.
There will be four substantive sections to this article, which will demonstrate the move
towards a phatic media culture thematically and chronologically. First I will focus on
blogging culture and its relationship to the social contexts of individualization. Second, I
will discuss the social networking profile within the contexts of ‘network sociality’ and
the rise of database culture. Then I will examine the most recent phenomenon of micro-
blogging within the notion of ‘connected presence’. In the fourth section I will briefly
discuss the encouragement of phatic communication within the context of marketing.
Personal Communication as Commodity: Blogging and
Individualization
In any examination of the emergence of a cultural object, it is important to examine the
context in which such objects have come into existence. Looking at the environment in
which blogging emerged, one of the most relevant sociological developments is the
concept of individualization. Thus, I would like to start with a very brief review of the
concept of ‘individualization’, particularly as popularized by Giddens and Beck, and its
potential relevance in the emergence of blogging (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002;
Giddens, 1992).
In general, individualization refers to a process in which communities and personal
relationships, social forms and commitments are less bound by history, place and tradition.
That is, individuals, freed from the contexts of tradition, history and, under globalization,
space, are free to, and perhaps forced to, actively construct their own biographies and
social bonds. Because of the increasingly disembedded nature of late modern life, a major
task of the individual is to continually rebuild and maintain social bonds, making individ-
ualization by its nature non-linear, open ended, and highly ambivalent (Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim, 2002). Within this context of disembeddedness, consumer society offers up
to the subject a range of choices from which to create biographies and narratives of the
self, in addition to a set of relationships that can be seen as somewhat ephemeral or
tenuous (Bauman, 2001).
Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy, discusses individualization
particularly within the context of human relationships, where he argues that in a context
of disembeddedness, trust and security becomes of paramount importance, and, for
Giddens, trust, like the ‘reflexive project of the self’, is something that must be
continually worked at.
In the case of intimate relationships, Giddens of course argues that the late modern
social milieu has led to a rise of ‘pure’ relationships: a social relationship entered into for
what can be derived from the other. Such relationships are seen as voluntary, and there-
fore contingent, and have an intimacy based on the trust of mutual reflexivity and self-
disclosure.
388 CONVERGENCE VOL. 14 NO. 4
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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 reflex-
ive practice. In other words, we crave relationships that allow us to open up to others,
and not just in the romantic sense, because in late modernity, the demand for intimacy
becomes ‘virtually compulsive’:
‘A given individual is likely to be involved in several forms of social relation which tend towards the
pure type; and pure relationships are typically interconnected, forming specific milieu of intimacy’
(Giddens, 1992: 97)
Clay Calvert (2004) pulls at a similar thread in his discussion of the rise of wider voyeuris-
tic and exhibitionistic tendencies in contemporary media, such as reality TV, tell-all talk
shows and tabloid news. He argues that there has been an increasing willingness to ‘tell
all’ or ‘expose oneself’ in the media, and that this is largely the result of several processes,
including an ever increasing need for self-clarification, social validation and relationship
development, which are satisfied through acts of self-disclosure.
Similarly, Mestrovic (1997) refers to this more widely as the development of a ‘post-
emotional society’. A society in which emotion, and more properly the obvious and overt
display of emotion, exists as a resource to be manipulated in the effort of self-
presentation. He argues that emotion is increasingly detached from genuine moral
commitment and/or from meaningful social action. Thus the overt displays of emotion
on talk shows, reality television, in politics and blogging are seen as part of a (cynical)
strategy of impression management to the outside world.
This easily links to the phenomenon of blogging. The desire to tell one’s story to the
world, to write about one’s personal experiences of, for example, emotional pain, or give
one’s opinions on world events through a blog sits quite easily in a contemporary society
in which compulsive intimacy has become a major way to overcome disembeddedness
and the continual reconstruction of social bonds.
Blogging, for the most part, is based on the notion that information is a commod-
ity that is used to build and maintain relationships. In personal journal blogs, it is personal
information, created through relationships of mutual self-disclosure, which attains a
commodified status. In the case of other types of blogging (political, news, technological
and the like), substantive information is the commodity. In both these cases, this exchange
is based on the logic of the ‘pure’ relationship: an exchange of substantive information
achieved through dialogue. This exchange creates tenuous, individually-oriented self-
defined communities or networks, which revolve around shared interests and dialogic
exchange related to those interests.
1
Social Networking and Database Culture
For Manual Castells (1996/2000; Castells et al., 2006), the disembedding and continual
deconstruction and reconstruction of social bonds implied by writers such as Giddens,
Bauman and Beck is epitomized in the new social morphology of the network society. A
morphology that is based less on hierarchical structures and spaces, than on flows across
MILLER: NEW MEDIA, NETWORKING AND PHATIC CULTURE 389
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Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

This article will demonstrate how the notion of ‘ phatic communion ’ has become an increasingly significant part of digital media culture alongside the rise of online networking practices. I conclude with a discussion of the potential nihilistic consequences of such a culture. 

Q2. What is the relevant sociological development in the context of blogging?

Looking at the environment in which blogging emerged, one of the most relevant sociological developments is the concept of individualization. 

Q3. What is the definition of network sociality?

Instead of gaining security through ‘trust’ and self-disclosure within the late modern context of mobility and disembeddedness, network sociality is an instrumental or commodified form of social bonding based on the continual construction and reconstruction of personal networks or contacts. 

Q4. What is the main argument of Licoppe and Smoreda?

Licoppe and Smoreda (2005), argue that the technological affordance of connected presence leads to a rise of compressed expressions of intimacy. 

Q5. What is the value of information in social networking and microblogging?

Within social networking and microblogging, the value of information is based more on the generation of large amounts of small bits of data, which can be analysed easily in the marketing process. 

Q6. What is the main argument of Lev Manovich?

Lev Manovich (2001) among others argues that the authors are in the process of a shift from narrative forms (as epitomized by the novel or the cinematic film) as the key form of cultural expression in the modern age, to the database as the prominent cultural logic of the digital age. 

Q7. What is the appeal of the blog?

While the appeal of the blog essentially revolves around a (diary-like) narrative of user-generated content (usually text) and the practices of mutual self-disclosure, sites such as MySpace and Facebook encourage networking and generic ‘updates’ on status. 

Q8. What is the powerful cause of a rise in database culture?

One of the most powerful causes of a rise in database culture is obvious: a plethora of information brought about not only by the Web, but the parallel process of the convergence of all media to digital format. 

Q9. What is the argument of Licoppe and Smoreda?

Their argument is 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. 

Q10. What is the main idea of profile building?

Profile building, while on the one hand enmeshing the profile/self in a network, is essentially the creation of a series of lists; markers which can be called up by others searching for people with similar interests. 

Q11. What is the purpose of social networking?

Social networking profiles push the networking practice to the forefront by placing more prominence on friends and links to others than the text being produced by the author. 

Q12. What is the definition of a society in which emotion exists?

A society in which emotion, and more properly the obvious and overt display of emotion, exists as a resource to be manipulated in the effort of selfpresentation. 

Q13. What are the main features of the blog?

Blogging features are present on these sites, but are usually marginalized and seldom used, and most text is now generated through passing comments, quiz results, or ‘wall’ facilities. 

Q14. What is the morphology of the network society?

A morphology that is based less on hierarchical structures and spaces, than on flows acrossMILLER: NEW MEDIA, NETWORKING AND PHATIC CULTURE 389at University of Kent on October 12, 2010con.sagepub.comDownloaded fromhorizontally structured flexible networks. 

Q15. What is the purpose of small communicative gestures?

Simply put, their findings suggest that there has indeed been a rise of small communicative gestures whose purpose is not to exchange meaningful information, but to express sociability, and maintain social connections. 

Q16. What is the meaning of network sociality?

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’. 

Q17. What is the meaning of the passage?

In contrast to narratives, the database form, as the foregoing passage suggests, is presented as a collection of somewhat separate, yet relational elements.