Theatres of Failure: digital demonstrations of disruption in everyday life

Disruption regularly occurs in everyday life: public transport runs late, online accounts get hacked or faddish technology interrupts our experience of public spaces. These disruptions are sometimes called 'speed bumps' in our daily experience, giving insight into our expectations of a normal working order of everyday life. But mundane disruptions are not only events that occur and are then forgotten about. As I discuss in this thesis, we also demonstrate our disruption to those responsible as a form of problematisation (Callon 1986a), enrolling others into the disruption. As far as direct communication is concerned, these disruptions were once demonstrated between the disrupted party and the responsible entity via personal media such as letters, telephone conversations or emails. However, the uptake of social and digital media devices in recent years has meant demonstrations of mundane disruption have become networked, enlisting participation from broader audiences beyond those directly responsible. This leaves us with questions about the ontology and agency of the digital: is the digital a setting, an actor or an assemblage in the demonstration of disruption, or many other entities in addition? This thesis investigates how demonstrations of disruption are being reconfigured in light of the digital. I examine this phenomenon through theoretical standpoints in Science and Technology Studies, the emerging field of digital sociology and, ethnomethodology, which I bring to bear on demonstrations performed in three different field sites. The first is an ethnographic study of the situated practices of Transport for London’s social media customer service team. The second analyses blogs and YouTube videos that attempt to enrol publics in issues of cyber security. The last empirical chapter combines digital ethnography with an in situ breaching experiment to describe and analyse how people use social media to demonstrate a particular disruptive digital object, the selfie stick, in public places

Digital methods in a post-API environment

Qualitative and mixed methods digital social research often relies on gathering and storing social media data through the use of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). In past years this has been relatively simple, with academic developers and researchers using APIs to access data and produce visualisations and analysis of social networks and issues. In recent years, API access has become increasingly restricted and regulated by corporations at the helm of social media networks. Facebook (the corporation) has restricted academic research access to Facebook (the social media platform) along with Instagram (a Facebook-owned social media platform). Instead, they have allowed access to sources where monetisation can easily occur, in particular, marketers and advertisers. This leaves academic researchers of digital social life in a difficult situation where API related research has been curtailed. In this paper we describe some rationales and methodologies for using APIs in social research. We then introduce some of the major events in academic API use that have led to the prohibitive situation researchers now find themselves in. Finally, we discuss the methodological and ethical issues this produces for researchers and, suggest some possible steps forward for API related research

Ethnography, Objects and Reflexivity: A Case Study of the Selfie Stick

In her paper on Ethnography, Objects and Reflexivity: A Case Study of the Selfie Stick Jessamy Perriam focuses on how objects of a rather faddish nature such as the selfie-stick might be observed from a Science and Technology Studies perspective with the concept of disconcertment and an autoethnographic and ethnomethodological approach. The latter in terms of doing a breaching experiment. Perriam argues for the co-existence of discourses on the selfie-stick from strong rejection by journalists and the public to broad attention and wide use in everyday life. The former relate its use to narcissism and potential harm and the latter to its representations for social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. The selfie-stick and the specific images it produces may be understood as enabling a multi-layered socio-technical assemblage of (non-) human relations, existing in both material and digital field sites