ulises mejias

In my course Friend Request Denied: Social Networks and the Web I have my students play a game I developed to let them explore the dynamics of building a reputation online by giving and capturing attention. It’s also a fun way for students to get to know each other. I’m posting the game instructions and […]

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What follows is NOT intended to be a comprehensive review of the European Computing and Philosophy (ECAP) and the New Network Theory (NNT) conferences, which took place in the Netherlands this June (for good summaries of NNT, see the Masters of Media blog or Lilly Nguyen’s post). Instead, my intention is to briefly discuss some […]

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Here it is: PDF of the full dissertation. Right-click and choose Save As…
mejias__networked_proximity.pdf (1.2 MB)
I’m removing all previously posted drafts from this blog.
There are important differences that make this final version much better.
Abstract
Networked Proximity:
ICTs and the Mediation of Nearness
Ulises Ali Mejias, 2007
The network as a map of interconnected elements or nodes has become a favored […]

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Networks have become a powerful metaphor to explain the social realities of our times. Everywhere we look there are attempts to explain all kinds of social formations in terms of networks: citizen networks, corporate networks, gamer networks, terrorist networks, learning networks… and so on. Information and communication technologies—in particular the internet—and the structures they enable […]

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Can social media increase and improve civic participation? If so, in what ways? There’s a lot being said and written about the subject these days, but it is difficult to get a clear overview of the opinions. I attempt here to collect viewpoints both for and against the premise that social media is creating a […]

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Before we forget all about the label Social Software and move on to Web 2.0, 3.0, or whatever comes next, I think it would be useful to dwell a little bit on the use of the word ’social’ as applied in this term. What does it mean for software to be social? Intuitively, we know that Social Software is software that fulfills some sort of social function, allowing us to form social connections, and perform social activities that give shape to social groups. But as evidenced by the number of times I just used the word ’social’ to define Social Software, it is clear that what we have here is a tautology: by taking for granted what we understand by ’social,’ the adjective in question both provides an absolute definition and at the same time manages to define nothing.

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by Ulises A. Mejias
Abstract
Different meanings have been ascribed to the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘network’ throughout history, and particularly since the emergence of the internet. In this paper, I suggest definitions for these two concepts based on how social agency is distributed between humans and code, and outline a set of research categories for studying […]

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The relationships we form online with people we have never met in “meatspace” are real, to the extent that they involve real social transactions. But what kind of relationships are they? In what ways do they differ from actual (I use the word here to mean the opposite of ‘virtual’) relationships? Can online relationships affect and shape us in the same way?

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