Tracing the Social Networking Flâneur

Within any social circumstance, there are individuals that choose to stick to the outer edge and become the ‘fly on the wall’ that just observes their surroundings. Prouty, in his article “A Turtle on a Leash”, describes this individual to be denoted as the flâneur (Prouty, 2009). With the expansion of the world and city streets becoming overcrowded, the flâneur has thrived at every chance possible. Being able to blend in with the flow of traffic and loiter amongst the streets, has been shortly lived as this concept of being a flâneur has flourished and died before modernism took over.

However, a resurrection of this concept is to be upon us. A direct correlation of the flâneur can be seen on any social networking site, especially YouTube, commonly being described as ‘the active lurker’. The active lurkers will continuously find themselves navigating their way through videos, profiles, and any other form of hyperlink connected to their original position. This occupation of navigating throughout YouTube creates this metaphoric map that tracks your every move and can be traced by anyone which can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. One aspect of the Cattail user interface, showing the files related to a particular user. Grey ovals obscure the names of users to protect their privacy. A. List of files uploaded by the user. B. One file has been selected for a more detailed view, or for download. C. More detailed information about the selected file. D. A menu of other possible actions. E. Link to a view of files shared to the user from other users. F. Link to files that have been shared from the user to other users. G. Link to recent events in the user’s social network. H. Link to a list of all public files (which can be viewed in order of popularity or recency). I. Link to collections with which the user is associated. J. Ability to share a file to other user(s). K. Ability to add a file to a collection. L. Ability to search all accessible files (public plus private files on which the user has permission) by tag or content.

https://www.parc.com/content/events/attachments/Muller-Updated-LurkersInCILurkers-paper3.pdf

  

On YouTube, after clicking on a few videos that are ‘recommend’ on the sidebar, it is not uncommon to see the same people commenting on each of these videos. The comments vary in discourse, and many of which ‘liked’ or ‘disliked’ by other users. But in these actions of commenting and liking, is how the lurkers draw attention to themselves within the online community.

As described by Kuttainem in her lecture on “Maps”, the notion of mapping is a way to reflect upon how we see “the world, or “our” world” (Kuttainen, 2016). Through excessive clicking on hyperlinks, and discovering videos from across the world which Ghoshal explores in his article over on TheNextWeb, the lurker becomes visible to the community. By this, the modernised flâneur’s steps can be traced, and charted to form a map of involvement within the social network, YouTube.

References

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002:  Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 4 notes [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu2004.jcu.edu.au

Prouty, R. (2009). ‘A Turtle on a Leash’ One Way Street http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html

Muller, M., David, R., Millen, N., Shami, S., & Feinberg, J. (n.d). We are all Lurkers: Toward a Lurker Research Agenda, 1-10. Retrieved from https://www.parc.com/content/events/attachments/Muller-Updated-LurkersInCILurkers-paper3.pdf