[HN Gopher] Just here for the comments: Lurking as digital liter...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Just here for the comments: Lurking as digital literacy practice
        
       Author : horchid
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2024-05-13 06:52 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (newbooksnetwork.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (newbooksnetwork.com)
        
       | mostly_a_lurker wrote:
       | > neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts. In fact,
       | readers of social media are making decisions and taking
       | grassroots actions on multiple dimensions. Unpacking this
       | understudied phenomenon, Just Here for the Comments: Lurking as
       | Digital Literacy Practice (Bristol UP, 2024) by Gina Sipley
       | challenges the conventional perspective of what counts as
       | participatory online culture. Presenting lurking as a
       | communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power
       | structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital
       | qualitative methods [...]
       | 
       | Something is a bit strange about this presentation. "Grassroots"
       | is not the opposite of "passive", and likewise "participatory" is
       | not the same thing as resisting dominant power structures. If
       | anything, since lurking is something most people do most of the
       | time, that would suggest it is first and foremost a conventional
       | rather than radical activity (I mean this both literally and in
       | terms of the implied political positioning of the typical
       | internet lurker).
       | 
       | In any case, something can be understudied and worth studying,
       | interesting or uninteresting, and worthy of celebration or not,
       | whether or not it resists dominant power structures. If it turned
       | out most people lurked because they were usually using the
       | internet for information rather than action, and that it had
       | nothing to do with resisting power structures, that would still
       | be worth studying simply because it would be a major aspect of
       | how people use the internet.
        
         | digging wrote:
         | Yeah, to be honest this is a baffling description. I'm probably
         | similar to a kind of person they're talking about and I
         | genuinely do not understand what they're trying to say about my
         | lurking practices.
        
           | veyh wrote:
           | They probably want you to buy the book to find out.
        
           | sctb wrote:
           | This is about as bog standard as it gets for academic
           | language in the humanities. For example:
           | 
           | > But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts.
           | 
           | These acts are indeed passive, relative to the active
           | counterpart of writing or speaking. A basic academic move is
           | to reframe a concept in a more abstract, generalized, and
           | artificial context, within which you can argue pretty much
           | anything. The more insane and counterintuitive the argument
           | sounds, the more stylish and impactful it's perceived to be.
           | "Understudied" means that no-one has yet marketed this
           | particular flavour combination of intellectual schlock.
           | 
           | They're not actually talking about your lurking practices.
        
             | ogurechny wrote:
             | Anyone can make such moves.
             | 
             | The idea that reading is not passive is not at all
             | original. After all, authors are not "active" (and often do
             | not exist), and books can't read themselves. A reader's
             | head is needed for anything at all to happen, and that's
             | the only "active" part at a given moment. There's enough
             | words written about what's happening on the receiving side,
             | the mirror of someone's "creative process".
             | 
             | So called "passive consumption" should be defined as
             | repetition of the usual, unchallenging, satisfying work (as
             | opposed to trying hard to understand something). I have no
             | idea what the book is about, but it must better be critical
             | to a swindling which turns human beings into "dumb masses"
             | instead of being based on it.
             | 
             | Also, there's mechanical reproduction side to it. Recorded
             | music might be inferior to a concert in some ways, same
             | with printed pictures and photos. But written text is also
             | only a 2D projection of a conversation or performance. Many
             | thinkers in human history wrote very little, and even
             | actively disdained written accounts of their words. This is
             | how that active-passive rift can be bridged.
        
       | spacecadet404 wrote:
       | I lurk probably 99% of the time. Most discussions I see
       | (especially here), there are already comments that are far over
       | my head, and I have nothing original to contribute.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-05-13 23:01 UTC)