Affordances in Social Media Research

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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics

Communication theory: bridging academia and practice

2 ratings

National Research University Higher School of Economics

Communication theory: bridging academia and practice

2 ratings

This course is about communication on various levels. Over these 9 weeks we will cover a number of theories, cases and applications in the field of communication science. We will start with the foundational concepts of communication theory, defining what the theory is and going through a number of approaches to communication itself. Each week you will have a test to check on your progress and understanding. We also have a final text in the end of the course and a little bit of writing. As Oscar Wilde said, if you cannot write, you cannot think. If you cannot think, others will do thinking for you. So we find writing and reflecting pretty important for our classes. Along the course we provide you with in-class materials: lecture presentations, articles and additional readings. If you really want to get into the topic, don’t avoid this extra work. Although a substantial part of this course is theory-based, communication theory has a very practical application. Communication is an underlying process which creates and develops relationships, communities, societies. We communicative on a daily basis via a variety of means and channels. In our globalised and increasingly interconnected world, communication skills are essential in both the personal and professional spheres. It is our goal to leave you with a contextualisation and conceptualisation of communicative processes that will poise you to hone your own communicative skills — in other words, to put theory into practice.

From the lesson

Social Media

Social media in general can be considered as a quite new phenomenon. In this lecture we discuss the way how emergence of social media influences the society and the social order, go through the main characteristics of social media and distinguish what makes it popular among the larger audiences.

Affordances in Social Media Research8:10

Meet the Instructors

Olga Solovyeva
Lecturer
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design
Maria Mordvinova
Head of BA Program in PR and Advertising
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design

As we already discussed,

what is the group communication within the social media,

and how we can think,

and how we can interpret the drivers for

the user engagement within the online communities.

Let's now move on to the social media and the affordances which it provides to us,

as for users and the framework which can be helpful to understand

the nature of social media through the research as we are doing research here.

Now let's go online and let's take a look on the Facebook for example.

What do we see there, first of all,

it's updates from the online communities we are following,

these are updates from people we are following,

and from those who are part of our social network and the friend list.

But as for my personal experience,

I'd never get enough of likes from people who are part of my previous workplace.

When I post some stuff,

a ball was going on at the University,

which pisses me of, f honestly,

and then I come to this people,

they would just tell me that they never saw

this news online and they never seen this post,

that's why, they did not reacted to it somehow.

This is the algorithm of the Facebook and

this is the algorithm how it structures our news line,

what should we see first,

what should we see next,

and what we should never see.

And these can be considered as one of

the affordances of a particular social media, this hidden algorithm.

But there are many more.

What can we do, what are the possible actions which we

can perform on the particular social media?

Can we post pictures,

can we upload videos,

can we share information, can we like?

Or there can be different sorts of like,

for example we can super like something.

Let's take a look at the concept of affordances.

Initially, the concept of affordances was brought by Gibson back in the late 70's.

And it does not really apply to the world of

social media or the world of human-computer interaction whatsoever.

And nowadays, we define affordances as the clues to

the ways that people understand and negotiate technology in everyday lives.

These are the possible actions which I can

perform and the way how do I perceive these possible actions,

as a part of this sudden technology.

Originally, it was the term or the concept itself was founded in

ecological psychology and it was based on the perceived properties to perform actions.

How do I see myself or how do I see my surrounding performing

certain sort of action and how will I interpret these actions?

Norman, Donald Norman, in 1980s

appropriated the term into the context of human-computer interaction.

He defined the affordances as it perceived in actual properties of the thing,

preliminary, those fundamental properties

that determine just how this could possibly be used.

Norman was concerned with what people saw rather than simply what environment can afford.

Is this like is just like or it can be something else?

How do I interpret the post?

Is it for me a part of the sole disclosure or is

just the update which I want to provide to my friends and surrounding?

While affordances according to Gibson were latent with the environment,

Norman argued that if these were not perceived,

they could not be classed as affordance because they could not be acted upon.

If I don't understand what I am doing with that technology,

it cannot be seen as affordance.

First, we can come to the realization how and why do we

utilize the particular technology or the particular tool in the social media,

in our context with the Facebook example.

So while Gibson's original concept of affordances emerged out of visual perception,

Norman's affordances were grounded in human-computer interaction

and particularly in the design elements of the online spaces.

This is why the concept of affordances is particularly interesting

for us in order to interpret what's going on in this field,

and in order to understand how we can perceive different media and social media websites.

If we want to dig deeper in the concept of affordances,

we need to understand this initial difference between what was first

and how do we adapt the term to the mediated environment.

As for Gibson, affordances were one of action possibilities, for Norman,

affordance is more about the users' perception of the action possibilities.

So basically, here, it was quiet reflective function

in a Gibson point of view, in the Normanian,

affordance would be linked to actor's past experience, knowledge,

culture and other variables which might appear within the communicated framework,

and within the communicative system the individual exist in.

If we apply the concept of affordances in our research or in our routine research,

without being a scholarly research,

we need to keep in mind all past experiences that might

influence the understanding of affordances and the perception of this.

What are the types of affordances that can be distinguished in academic literature?

First of all, we can see the action possibilities and the perceptions.

This is what we've already discussed.

Actions do not have to be performed and actions can be perceived differently,

which can be very important for us as we are doing our marketing strategy,

as we are thinking how to integrate social media platforms in our campaign.

How would users perceive these actions and how would they react to that?

Would it be this game,

would it be some other sort of activity,

which will make them engaged and integrate into the whole communicative campaign?

The next thing is distinction between

social affordances and the technological affordances.

Once again, the same post on Facebook would be perceived differently by

the technological structure of the social media and

what is the social meaning of this action which I perform.

And the last distinction is perceived affordances versus real affordances.

What are the perceived affordances?

They can vary from individual to individual,

and the real affordances combine the social and

technological simultaneously at the same time.

Summarizing here, let's make it clear what affordances are.

Affordances are the possible actions and the perceptions of this actions

which we can perform over the social media and their particulars surrounding.

It can vary from the human to human and

all the people perceive these affordances in a different way,

but still we can find the common understanding within some social groups.

And now from this point,

let's move on to the certain example and see

how the research in the affordances can help business

or how it can help to enhance the computer-mediated communication between customers and,

in our particular case, business.

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