Perfil de los entrevistados

relationships is presented in the study by Daniel Miller et al (2016) (see Chapter 3). In their attempt to define social media, Miller et al (2016) pay close attention to the ‘scales’ on which users fluctuate upon communicating and socialising at a given moment online. They conceived two main scales: the first one is the scale from ‘the most private to the most public’, and the second is the scale from ‘the smallest group to the largest groups’ (p.3). At the opposite ends of these scales, we find private, one-to-one communication/socialisation at one end, and public broadcasting or mass communication/socialisation at the other end. The study asserts that our engagement with social media has created this notion of online ‘scalable sociality’, or the ability of adjusting the scale of socialising in terms of reach according to the preference of the user at that time considering the polymedia context of today’s digital communication as well as our desire to achieve privacy. The Polymedia approach (Madianou and Miller, 2012) acknowledges how most people today use a wide assortment of social media platforms and that no one platform can be understood in isolation from the others. Therefore, within the context of Polymedia, users can “map different kinds of sociality onto the diversity of their social media platforms” (Miller et al, 2016, p.4). The use of a certain platform and the connotations of using it as a medium relates to the way another one is used and perceived, and is therefore a perfect illustration of the concept of ‘scalable sociality’. So a user might share some information on the public facing areas of social media such as a Facebook wall, for example, while choosing to limit romantic communication to private messaging, thereby adjusting the scale of sociality to a lower degree when convenient. For example, while a Skype video call might be preserved for the most intimate of relations, such as lovers at a distance, WhatsApp can be used for small group texting to close friends or to household family members. On a larger scale of sociality, Facebook is more of public facing platform that involves everyone a person knows from family members and distant cousins to work acquaintances and close friends, while Twitter could be open to even complete strangers. Miller et al conclude that “The best way to define what is popularly called social media but also includes prior media is thus to describe the new situation as increasingly ‘scalable sociality’” (p.3).

There is no uniform ranking of the scale of sociality on these platforms; instead, users select them according to their preferences and according to the platforms’ audience. Some might choose to have a private Facebook account, while others might use Skype group calls with several friends at once instead of only dyadic video calls. Scalable sociality is not only illustrated through Polymedia, but might be also observed within a single platform. For example, the functionality of ‘groups’ within WhatsApp enables the user to have a group designated solely for

family members, while another one includes only close friends. Topics discussed easily in the friends group might be disregarded in the family one due to the presence of parents. Just as well, the user might choose to restrict a post to a certain group of contacts on a platform through the privacy preferences, or even to directly send a private message through the private messaging system of that platform instead of using its public space. This is the advantage of scalable sociality: it gives users choice and control over the degree of privacy or the size of the group with whom they wish to communicate.

Scalable sociality is useful for dividing spaces of interaction on social media platforms into a public-facing platform/space such as the Facebook wall, which everyone can view, and a private platform/space such as the direct messaging system on Facebook or the dyadic messaging on WhatsApp. This divide is critical for conservative communities with shame-honour cultures in which people need to be aware of social surveillance and privacy to protect their reputations, as is the case in Saudi Arabia. The inherent tension between privacy and publicity is a matter of interest in many western studies, and it is a central theme in Elisabetta Costa’s research (2016), which links her findings together and constitutes the perspective through which she examines social change. As a conservative, mostly segregated community, the issue of privacy and publicity is of special interest for the users of Mardin when engaging online. She states that social media are comprised simultaneously of both very public and very private settings, as well as the many areas between the two extremes. She asserts that this is one of the main reasons why social change, when prompted by social media, “is not a linear and uniform process, [but is] rather… the combination of conflictual and opposite transformations” (Costa, 2016, p. 4). This is the case mainly because people in shame-honour cultures behave differently on public areas of social media platforms than the way they do on private areas.

Through observing the public spaces of social media such as the Facebook wall or the Twitter feed and the way they are being used in Mardin, Costa finds that Mardinian users of social media have devised a new mode of public space that is hyper-conservative and more traditional than the offline Mardin society. This digital public space “reinforces traditional groups such as the family and lineages as well as the individual” (Costa, 2016, p.4). One important issue that Baym (2013) refers to in her book on personal connections online is that social forces such as gender and culture persist in our online communication and in some cases are even strengthened when mediated. And while mediated communication introduces many new qualities, it continues to exhibit and reinforce the wider cultural forces that shape meanings in all contexts. On the public online space, Costa (2016) found that female users would portray themselves as good,

modest Muslim women who adhere to traditional values, omitting any aspect of their lives that does not showcase their conformity to gendered norms and Muslim morality. This seems to stem directly from the degree of surveillance that their images and posts are subjected to on social media by immediate family and friends, a surveillance that might not necessarily occur offline. For example, photos that show men and women in public settings together, such as in cafes or restaurants, are rarely displayed publicly on profiles as it may lead to gossip or misunderstanding even though these practices have obviously occurred in ‘real life’. Equally concealed on public- facing social media platforms are premarital romantic relationships and flirtations, even if they are known to close friends offline; these relationships are never carried out on the public areas of social media. Public facing platforms are also used as a public form of interconnectivity with the extended family and kin, in which narratives of happy relationships are shared publicly in the form of family photos or to send religious holiday greetings to extended family members.

In the traditional conservative middle-eastern communities, the line between public and private has always been attentively policed. Domestic intimate areas of the home, such as the kitchen or the family living room, for example, have always been restricted and protected from outsiders’ gazes. Therefore, women, considered belonging to that private domain, were expected to also remain concealed. However, in Mardin, Costa notes that images of these private areas started to pop-up on public-facing platforms, with, for example, everyday photos of the family sharing meals together displayed on the Facebook wall for everyone to see. Similarly, the study notices the “increasing visibility of women whose public presence has always been limited and controlled” (p.6). Yet Costa explicitly details that alongside these intrusive pop-ups of the domestic and intimate in public areas of social media, the people of Mardin still perform selves, relationships and values that adhere strictly to the traditional customs of their society. Highly conscious of protecting reputation within the community, Mardin men and women exhibit only what conforms to conservative and traditional social norms on public-facing social media.

In contrast, upon reviewing private areas of social media, Costa finds that it had led to new individual-based forms of socialisation as well as facilitating prohibited mixed-gender friendships and love relations. On the private areas of their social media, the men and women of Mardin were found to be creating and maintaining their own relationships as individuals away from the binds of family and society that contain their offline lives. While offline, these same individuals tend to be defined as members of kin groups, where their role, identity and demeanour are determined by gender or age. Online, however, Costa notes that social media, specifically its private areas, could be viewed as a liberating tool where users in conservative

communities are able to express repressed desires and create more individual-based social relations. And while this argument is true for both men and women, it is especially true for female users, who tend to have much less autonomy and whose choices are eminently determined by older male family members.

It was interesting to note how women in Mardin were offered a new opportunity through social media to meet new people and make new friends despite the restrictions on their offline movements. Costa chronicled how young female users often added strangers to their social media accounts and had private conversations with them. They had become skilled in navigating privacy settings to conceal these interactions from other friends and family contacts, or they would simply create a fake profile designated solely for this purpose, connecting with strangers away from the gaze of the family and friends. Even though this is not courtship or flirtation, but merely friendship, they still felt the need to hide it from others as it is considered morally reprehensible to communicate with total strangers.

Costa’s finding that social media has increased the autonomy and the number and types of friends users could have, especially women, is in line with Wellman and Rainie’s (2012) notion of our movement in modern societies towards ‘networked individualism’ (explored above), defined as the move from group-based networks to individualised networks. This development, however, is not necessarily at the expense of group allegiances, but perhaps alongside them. As Costa notes, social media was being used in Mardin largely to maintain contacts with relatives scattered around Turkey and abroad, inducing strong family relations and tribal ties that otherwise would have been compromised by this geographic dispersal. Nonetheless, amongst the new kinds of social relations that Costa saw emerging online, romantic relationships are central. This is something which I address in the next section.