Social media friends lists organize communities egocentrically around addresses

Evidence

Researcher danah boyd points out that the thing that distinguishes users of sites like LiveJournal is their ability to demonstrate their “public displays of connection” to one another. Viewers who want to see my friends on the system need only to “hop from one profile to another through a chain of Friendship.” Because the system allows for the organizing of people first and interests second, boyd explains, communities tend to be organized “egocentrically,” with a user’s Friends List constituting the audience she believes she is addressing when she writes. — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls, 184

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to boyd’s ‘public displays of connection’ concept and to earlier sociological work on imagined audiences and parasociality. — connects to: Social media metrics reduce complex relationships to visible status rankings
• DEFINE: Boyd’s ‘egocentric’ community framing — the Friends List is the imagined audience the writer addresses — is the chapter’s key analytic concept.

Broader Connections

• Social media metrics reduce complex relationships to visible status rankings #complicates (0.75)