WRI-101: Voice, Noise, Sound, Sense.

Crawford’s piece, much like influential writings of sociologists, gives us a new framework by which we can come to understand the complexities of social media. By comparing one’s social media activity to a “voice”, we see that our voice and views can be further projected by the frequency in which we post on Twitter as well as the amount of people that see our “vocal manifestations” in the form of these tweets. Given such a social media platform, Crawford points out that there is an apparent demand for dialogue from user, politicians, and even corporations (85). However, dialogue is not always present as many view social media to serve the purpose of their consumption as opposed to projecting their voice. Crawford points out that these less active/inactive users are not “lurking” in the doldrums of social media websites, but they are listening (as active or as inactive as they please). Much like a radio, these participants may tune into and out of the “idle chatter” of social media – determining what is tweet/re-tweet worthy by their attention (83). This attention is what many corporations, politicians, and social media stars are after as they endeavor to engage these people to listen and advocate their causes with their voice.

Social media is ever evolving and has done just that since Crawford’s piece in 2009. Twitter, in specific, has doubled the character limit per tweet, allowed for embedded videos, as well as to quote tweets since that time. These changes have allowed people to have greater freedom in expressing their voice and given politicians and corporations more “tools” by which they can persuade their audience.

Crawford writes that “listening has not been given sufficient consideration as a significant practice of intimacy, connection, obligation and participation online; instead, it has often been considered as contributing little value to online communities, if not acting as an active drain on their growth”. This, in my experience as a social-media user, is very true. Whenever I see a particularly controversial tweet or post and feel compelled to take a glance at the comments, I am always surprised by what I see. People will comment their own various points of views on the matter suggested in the most personally attacking and demeaning way possible. Sometimes, these comments don’t even pertain to what the original post was about, almost as if the attackers just want to start a fight behind their screen of choice for no apparent reason other than kicks and giggles.

 

As a “budding sound student”, I wonder about the effects of debate through social media. When we engage others through our screens, we are effectively taking the voice, or sound altogether, completely out of the equation. My mother always warned me not to have serious conversations or send risky texts over the phone because of just how warped the recipients perception of the said message can become so quickly. Taking the voice out of a discussion makes it easier for the engaged to ignore the engager and instead focus solely on and push their own agenda no matter how unrelated it may seem to the original opinion.

 

Crawford’s views definitely hold up in 2018, maybe even more so as it has become alarming easier to hide behind a screen and ignore the other end as technology has only improved in the last nine years. Social media users need to re-evaluate how they perceive what they see and work on their listening skills. An absence of a voice has become the new voice, and if people of this new age need to adapt or communication as we know it will crumble.

In Kate Crawford’s “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media”, she shines light on how social media can be used to listen and speak in our modern society. Despite the fact that social media does not include significant sound elements, at least during this time, she claims that “paying attention online…[should] be considered practices of listening” (Crawford 79). She highlights how social media can be a very helpful tool when trying to stay up to date on news that could also be said to be similar to “tuning in” or listening to the news on the radio. Because of these similarities she shows how social media platforms are just another modern tool for conveying your voice and for listening to others speak. She talks specifically about Twitter and how many politicians and business owners can use this “stage” to inform their constituents or clients about their ideas. This type of speaking is solely conveyed through reading, however in our modern society this is an effective tool.

While some of the examples of social media platforms are a little outdated in 2018, Crawford’s claims are still relevant despite the 10-year gap since her publication of this piece. Social media platforms are in fact becoming an even more prevalent source of voice. Many high profile politicians use platforms like Twitter and Instagram to promote their agenda and to appeal to a younger demographic who normally are the people most likely to use these platforms. By “speaking” in a way that is more likely to resonate with a younger crowd, they’re able to find more active participants in government that they most likely would not have been able to access without social media.

Kate Crawford interprets sound with an entire new perspective in her sound study titled, “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media.” In Crawford’s discussion of sound she focuses on the listening aspect, categorizing listeners into individuals, politicians, and corporations. Taking it even further, she clarifies the three different types of listening; reciprocal, background, and delegated listening. By specifically classifying these modes of listening, Crawford defines the most dominant aspect of social media as she considers the positives and negatives of communication advancements. On one hand, new social media platforms have completely changed how the public utilizes their voice. An online presence allows any person to have a “voice” and to “speak up,” which is what Crawford defines as participating online. However, the public may not be benefiting so positively from the ubiquitous voice found in social media, which may be inaccurate and misleading. Additionally, this concept of “background listening,” which Crawford defines as listening without actually absorbing information, results in the inability to differentiate between specific facts and their validation.

This concept of “voice” stems from democratic politics, where every individual is entitled to their interpretation of truth. Crawford talks specifically about the political voice in social media, using Barack Obama’s Twitter page as an example. Obama practiced delegated listening when running for office in 2008, only posting about campaigns and not responding to direct messages or comments. However, when we compare Obama’s use of Twitter the to current President Trump’s use of Twitter now we see tremendous differences; whereas Trump practices reciprocal listening by having a very dominating online presence. These differences are important to note since different politicians use their interpretation of an online “voice” in different ways.

For me,  social media is a way to stay connected with the people I have created relationships with. A lot of the time I find myself being the “lurker,” which Crawford defines as someone who doesn’t actively utilize their online voice, but rather listens and encourages others to make online contributions. However, when it comes to my friends and family I am very active on social media and utilize my online voice tremendously. I suppose these differences in how people use their online voice is what makes social media such a diverse method of communication, especially today when the online presence is such an enormous aspect of society.

By this point in the day on a Sunday afternoon, it is likely that you’ve spent at least a little bit of time scrolling through social media. Whether it be Instagram posts of your friends or tweets about football, you’ve been exposed to a multitude of information. Have you been listening to this information? As Kate Crawford explains in “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media,” the way in which we actively participate in listening to social media “contributes to the sense of what is possible, as well as to the qualities of being” (79). Crawford touches on the ever-evolving landscape of technology and how it affects how we communicate over social media. She explains that, just as if we were to listen to one in a face to face conversation, we listen to the things people post about on social media. Essentially, what one puts out onto social media can be equated to their “voice.” Personally, I had never really thought about it in this context. I spend a significant amount of time on social media, but I don’t believe that I “listen” to what is being shared as attentively as I should, or the way I would if I was listening to someone’s physical voice. Crawford also brings to light the fact that, with social media one has the previously impossible ability of listening to the ideas and words of millions of other people, so our responsibility to listen becomes much greater. Nine years later and this point becomes exceedingly more relevant. Social media has grown tenfold since 2009 and millions more voices are being shared. So, just as the number of voices are rising, the number of active listeners should as well.

In her piece “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media”, Kate Crawford sheds light on the roles listening and speaking play in our use of social media. Social media is a constant in nearly every person’s life, and Crawford uses categories of individuals, politicians, and corporations to examine how listening and developing a social media presence changes; as well as three types of listening: reciprocal, background, and delegated. She mentions that even if we do not have a “voice” on social media, we still affect what others say and produce through our interactions on the media platforms. I do not see myself as someone with an active voice on social media and am more of a listener or “lurker” as Crawford might say. I simply observe other people’s posts as a form of entertainment and source of information. The thought of listening does not seem like it would be prevalent in social media, but this piece made me realize that everything I see on social media is something I am “listening” to. I am still taking in others’ thoughts and ideas, just through a different mode. Social media also allows me, and the rest of the world, to listen to more people than one ever could without it. Although this discussion was written in 2009, I feel that the ideas Kate Crawford touches on are even more prevalent today. Social media is only growing and will most likely continue to grow for the foreseeable future. This means that content makers will have a greater voice than ever, and it is our job as social media users to listen. I never thought of listening as having a role in my social media use, but I will now be much more aware of it in the future.

The effect social media has had on society as a community is immense due to how easily one can connect to millions of people on a certain subject, and the expansion of value it has brought to the voice. Similarly, in Kate Crawford’s, “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media”, Crawford demonstrates how social media has significantly changed the dynamics of listening and speaking for the world. Specifically, Crawford does this through highlighting that this current age could be viewed as the era that the world has been most connected to each other than ever before, providing the opportunity to listen to one’s voice unlike before.  For instance, “In my view, social media powerfully invoke an efficient listening subject, drawing together the divergent spaces of modernity in one location- while simultaneously creating a gap between this ideal and what is humanly imaginable” (80). Additionally, Crawford emphasizes how social media provides people the opportunity to be heard and gives the power of the speaker to document their beliefs precisely. For instance, Crawford discusses the rise of politicians using social media as a source to connect to their followers. As Crawford states, “In Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn’s Democracy and New Media, the authors argue that the internet ‘is politically important because it expands the range of voices that can be heard in a national debate, ensuring that no one voice can speak with unquestioned authority’ (81). Although the piece was published in 2009, there is a plethora of evidence to support Crawford’s claims. As time goes on, dependence to social media increases to the point where it is viewed as a necessity to some and it must be adapted to their lifestyles.

In “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media,” Crawford talks about how people on Twitter interact with one another.  Crawford talks about how listening isn’t usually associated with social media, but instead, the voice is associated with social media instead. She talks about her idea of  “speaking up” and how it has “become the dominant metaphor for participation in online spaces.”(80) Crawford talks about how there are mainly three types of listeners that use social media. The three groups are individuals, politicians, and corporations. When looking at how social media is used today, we can see how Crawford was right about these groups being the main users of media sites. Crawford talks about how corporations main use of social media platforms is to get a closer bond with the customers. The corporations are listening to the customer’s wants and needs, so they know how to adjust their products accordingly. In the present, we see ads being displayed to us everywhere we go on social media. Politicians are said to use social media to gain access to millions of potential voters information. Crawford also explained how Obama used social media “to send updates about the location and content of speeches and rallies before his election in 2008.”(84) Crawford talks about individuals as people who rarely listen on social media sites, and they are people who like to voice their opinions. The individuals who do not follow this norm and like just to watch are called “lurkers.” Even though the paper was made nine years ago, we can still see as a society how people are still not listening on social media. 

The state of civil discourse in the 2018 United States is really not so civil at all. Polarization has become the norm both in government and within society. Compromise and working together to reach a common goal have fallen by the wayside because citizens and politicians feel an internal need to be one hundred percent correct one hundred percent of the time. One of the driving forces in this trend is the growth of social media, especially Twitter. Twitter allows for the voices of many to be heard in a public sphere, but it also makes many users more combative. The weight of typing an accusatory or downgrading message to someone online is much less than that of physically saying the same message to that person’s face. As Crawford puts it, “online participation has tended to be conflated with contributing a ‘voice’” (Crawford, 80). While all these voices exist, it seems as if few care to listen to the voices that challenge their own. Users on opposite sides of the aisle are seldom understanding, compromising, or civil in their interactions with those of other viewpoints. Crawford writes that in 2009 many politicians with Twitter accounts actually had their staff manage the account tweet for them. Thus, not only are the leaders themselves not hearing the voices of those online, but they are not even giving their personal ideas. Today more politicians handle their own accounts, but tweets by politicians are often used to make a statement, not communicate with constituents. While speaking online truly does exist in today’s society, we all need to learn to listen a little better to all of those online and work toward compromise in a time when compromise has seemingly ceased to exist.

Kate Crawford, in “Following You: Disciplines of Listening In Social Media,” writes about social media, specifically Twitter, and how people interact on that website. She talks about how people, politicians and corporations use the site, in a way that is remarkably consistent with the way the site is used today, even though it has been nine years. She writes about how individuals write out their opinions and very rarely listen on this cite, people who do not participate in discussions, are looked down on, and called “lurkers.” This is true even now, most people value speaking, not listening, they hardly pay attention to what people say, and just react to volume. Crawford writes about how corporations use social media as a way to listen to their customers, this is like the other end of the spectrum, they actually do listen to people, and by listening to their customers, they are better able to adjust their products or change the way they conduct business into a way that better fits with their target demographic, therefore making them more money and keeping their customers satisfied. She then places politicians in a category entirely separate from the previous two, she writes about how Obama used twitter, not to listen to or interact with constituents, but to advertise dates and times of rallies, speeches and debates. She also writes about how there seemed to be more restrictions placed on him since he became president, it is shocking to see how different things are now, if only she could see how this president uses twitter. There is still not much listening going on, and it is a shame to think that we are stuck nine years ago.

Crawford talks about social media and the importance of the listener and audience in social media. The idea of “speaking up” and using one’s voice is often the most common an acknowledged way people participate in social media; however, “lurking” is also important for the continued growth of and participation in social media. The people who lurk are providing an audience for those “speaking up” to preform to and get reactions from, encouraging them to continue to share. Without people listening, social medias would die out; lurkers “contribute a mode of receptiveness that encourages others to make public contributions” (81). Twitter, as a social media, also plays off the idea of sound with its name; Twitter can apply to the “calling of birds, or the ‘idle’ chatter of humans” (83). The constant chatter of humans can be both entertaining and difficult to navigate and understand with “a stream of multilayered information” (83). One can have a tweet about a celebrity blog, political news, and a picture of a dog doing something crazy all in the span of seconds. This complex of information allows for many Twitter users to establish different types of relationships with the social media. Many will choose to share personal information while others choose to retweet other people’s thoughts or not post at all. However, all “disclosure made in social media spaces develop a relationship with an audience of listeners” (83). However, in 2009, when the piece was written, the norms of social media had not yet developed, leaving the relationship between audience and speaker unclear and difficult to define. In recent year, the increase in participation in social media has developed more norms. Corporations and politicians struggle to keep balanced communication with their audience with the growth in the platforms, so the expectation for constant responses has gone down. Therefore, they have moved to using their social medias for promotions and marketing. Individual users have also been able to set their own standard for how they are going to participate in social media. Lurking is no longer seen as a drain on social media; it has even been glorified. Many people openly enjoy, and even pride themselves in, being able to stalk other people. Therefore, the relationship between listener and audience can defined by the individual, breaking away from the idea of a norm. 

The human voice is something that we are constantly surrounded with, yet we never think of it as what it truly is. In the words of Mladen Dolar, the human voice “…functions as the bearer of an utterance, the support of a word, a sentence, a discourse, any kind of linguistic expression” (540). He forces the reader to stop, think, and look at how voice is used in the human sense, as a vessel to carry meaning. Dolar also touches on the individuality of the voice, which relates closely to Cavarero’s idea of the “uniqueness” of the voice. However, Dolar takes this idea of the voice being “like a fingerprint” and applies it to his original thought of voice itself being without meaning and “not linguistically relevant” (545). This is different from Cavarero’s idea of the singing woman and the king, because the singing voice, to Cavarero and the king in the story, has a relevance and joy, “enjoying the sound of the ‘vibration of a throat of flesh'” (521). It’s possible that Dolar finds the voice enjoyable, but in his argument, the voice is nothing more than “the instrument, the vehicle, the medium” to deliver the meaning, and the “jungle” of noise that is nothing more than just that (541). This is different from Cavarero’s argument because to Cavarero, the voice holds uniqueness and that uniqueness is something worth enjoying, something “alive and bodily” (521). It’s possible that the idea of enjoyable voice would just get in the way of Dolar’s argument on voice being linguistically not relevant, but it’s interesting to see how uniqueness can be looked at from two entirely different angles.

In her piece, “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media” Kate Crawford describes how the rise of social media has affected how people communicate with one another. Crawford focuses on the idea of listening and using one’s voice as it applies to social media. Crawford using these words to describe online experiences is not a novel idea. In fact, it is how most people would refer to their interactions on social media. It is interesting to use auditory language to describe something that is almost completely visual. As Sterne says in his introduction, hearing is inescapable but seeing can be selective. Crawford seems to be describing a type of “listening” that is selective. She seems to define listening as someone who is engaged in reading social media posts (ex. on Twitter) and interacting (by liking or commenting.) These small things are mimicking an in-person conversation. People not interacting with posts or just browsing through a few posts on their feed are engaging in “background listening” this is the kind of listening that is more selective. She describes it as someone reading pieces of tweets or just opening the social media page and drifting to and from it as you do other things. This is the equivalent of being present with someone talking but focusing on other things–you are only picking up on pieces of the conversation. She also talks about the idea of using your “voice” on social media. She describes how often when people say they want to use their “voice” on social media it has a political charge behind it. She seems to think that thinking about voice in this way is impersonal. This reminds me of Cavarero’s argument that says the words that people say are not unique but the voices that speak them are.

All of the things that Crawford described in her 2009 piece are still true in 2018, just worse. People are more distracted than ever because social media is more prevalent than ever. I find it interesting that she finds it impersonal when a politician or celebrity posts something on social media, and this is most likely because she is coming from a time where the most popular way for those people to communicate was on the radio or tv, but to me these famous people posting on social media feels like a personal connection to their followers.