Mapping a Social Network

By Trent Colledge

Image from: Gigaom.com Facebook User Map

How do you spend your free time? Wandering through facebook? Just scrolling through your news feed to see what jumps out at you? Have you ever thought about what that might look like in real life? Picture this - you're wandering through the city mall, looking around and doing a spot of window shopping.

This isn't exactly a new concept. The flâneur; "someone adrift in the city, a detached observer strolling through the streets at a leisurely pace" (Prouty, 2009). Can you see where I'm going with this? No? Okay, well, basically this can be related to modern day society and the concept of social networks because that is what people do no Facebook. They scroll through their newsfeed and see everything that is going on, anonymously meandering through cyberspace without the original posters having any idea, much like Mike Whitney says in his blog where he is referring to publishers using articles to attract readers as they scroll through facebook. Getting back to the point, those scrolling through facebook are completely invisible unless they make themselves known.

You can look at this in a few ways. One way to look at this, from the concept of a flâneur and thinking about mapping, you can think about it this way: how would these people see the world? If these people were to create a map of their friends and their network, they would use the information that "reflect(s) how (they) see the world" (Kuttainen, 2015). Or what about this? How would this reflect their sense of space and place? They create a sense of space, somewhere they are comfortable with, somewhere with a sense of "security and stability" (Taun, 1977).

Once you start thinking about it, it's not hard to see the possibility of someone on social network mapping out their friends and family and the things they like - they can start working out things as simple as where they live or where they made such posts, with features like tagging the places you are, or you can even make another map that represents your space and place on a social network. It's strange, but it's just one of those things that our minds are capable of.

References:

Prouty, R. (2009) One-Way Street: A Turtle on a Leash. Retrieved on August 21. 2015 from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html

Barnes, G. (1997) Passage of the Flaneur. Retrieved on August 21, 2015 from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html

Kuttainen, V. (2015) BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place, Lecture 4: Maps [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved on August 21, 2015 from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Taun, Y. (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. London, England. Edward Arnold.

Whitney, M. (2015) A Friendly Giant: How Facebook is Using Instant Articles to Woo Publishers. Retrieved on August 21, 2015 from http://blog.mainstreethost.com/facebook-instant-articles-to-woo-publishers

Image Credits

Ingram, M (2010) Facebook User Map. Retrieved from Gigaom.com Facebook User Map