Technologies’ Social Roles in Everyday Life: A Case Study on Media Practice through Facebook’s Check-ins

• Main Authors: Shih, Wan Ting, 石婉婷
• Other Authors: Wang, Su Mei
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/wrmj8t

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 新聞研究所 === 102 === The aim of the research investigates Facebook’s check-ins as a media practice that plays a crucial social role in everyday life. While walking in the city nowadays, a practitioner can convey his/her feelings, uploading stories and photos to social network websites through mobile technologies. A practitioner’s gaze upon spectacle of the city brings him/her complicated media experience in the media-drenched world, which turns a practitioner into a tourist and a flâneur. The study explores practitioners’ media consumption in everyday life. My empirical study focuses on three cases, who are heavy users of smart phones and in favor of check-ins on Facebook. The three cases situate in different social status and develope different social relationships through Facebook. By choosing ethnography as my method, I am a participant-as-observer who immerse in on-line and off-line field work. My findings indicate that smart phones and check-ins on Facebook provide opportunities and resources for practitioners. A keen adopter of technologies becomes an opinion leader, and her practice of check-ins brings her a fashionable image. The person who owns ordinary fellowship becomes an opinion leader in his peer group by acquiring technology skills. The practitioners use tagging and adjust the timing of check-ins to create social connection with friends. A practitioner, who is also a tourist and a flâneur, finds new feelings through mobile technologies when walking in the city. (1) The boundary between everyday life and tourism is not fixed, but weaves in a flow instead. (2) Geo-tagging symbolizes a hybrid space, in which contains virtual and physical information. (3) The practices of check-ins embody the tourist gaze. The sense of place is a flow, and practitioners may find warm or chill places through different media practices. However, the tension of interaction between people and technologies brings several unexpected troubles. The practitioner combats these problems by using tactics with agency, while he/she faces the power of structure which limits agency at the same time.