All The World's A Stage

This essay (linked below) from culture 'zine Popmatters on social music site last.fm is intriguing reading for the researcher. It's making the point that in a social media environment even behavioural data - like the listening stats last.fm collects - becomes a performance. The last.fm statistics purport to show us the "truth" about our listening, but also act as a public record of our taste. As such, the temptation to sculpt them becomes irresistable.

The writer, Calum Marsh, looks to philosophy to define this effect: last.fm is a 'panopticon', an institution where we feel under surveillance at all times, and behave accordingly. I've seen this metaphor used quite a lot in social media, sometimes in an attempt to make it look a bit sinister. But certainly anyone who's ever written a blog will know the feeling of the "invisible audience", those hundreds of people who might be reading.

It's worth remembering the panopticon effect people sometimes talk about online community or user-generated data as more honest than the survey driven-stuff. I know what they mean - but it's easy to confuse spontaneity with honesty. Everything anyone says or does online is done partly with an audience in mind: to analyse it accurately we have to know as much about that audience as we can.

(link passed on by Martin Vovk of TNS - thanks Martin!)