Fall2015-Kumari

Using Zielinski’s Deep Time of the Media to Read Social Media Spaces

by Ashanka Kumari

In Siegfried Zielinski’s book Deep Time of the Media, he points to the tension between creativity and the interface. Specifically, he says that the “boundary between media users and media devices simultaneously divides and connects two different spheres: that of the active users of the machines and that of the active machines and programs.”¹ In other words, we must consider both our interaction with media as well as how media spaces interact with one another and create activity with which we can engage. Further, Zielinski sets us up to consider the interactions between people and web spaces such as social media.

While his focus is not specifically on social media, Zielinski’s ideas about the ergonomization of media spaces can be applied to our reflections of social media spaces. For example, consider Facebook. Founded in 2004 by then college student Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is the most privileged among social media spaces amassing an average of nearly a billion active users as in 2015.² Its power and influence on the internet standardizes our relationships, which often function heavily on and through Facebook. When someone does not have a Facebook page, for instance, building relationships requires a different kind of effort. Facebook’s power as a social space shows the success of its mission statement: “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.”³

However, this intent to give people a space to connect extends far beyond the Facebook website. Along with allowing users to connect with one another on their own platform, Facebook itself connects with other web spaces and applications (e.g., MapMyRun, Instagram, DuoLingo). These diverse sites often have nothing to do with Facebook at all beyond serving as a mediator or connection point. For example, when I upload a picture to Instagram, synced with both my Facebook and Twitter accounts, I have the power to share this image across all of these social media spaces with the single push of a button. Zielinski articulates this idea of co-dependence when he says “in the Internet, all earlier media exist side by side. They also continue to exist independently of the networked machines and programs and, from time to time, come into contact with each other.”⁴ Now, more than ever, media are in contact. Facebook, then, is a relational social media space in the way it serves as a communicator between media.

Zielinski’s concept of co-dependence further manifests itself in the way active participation on Facebook mediates other web spaces and apps. This necessity is particularly prevalent in the realm of present-day phone, tablet, and web games such as the Candy Crush Saga and Two Dots, which often include a Facebook connect feature that aids you in advancing further in the game. Through sending invites to Facebook friends or posting game successes to your Facebook wall, you can obtain game bonuses. Further, Facebook becomes a way to track and save game process beyond the game platform or apps like Apple’s Game Center. When we want to log into other websites or need to create an account for a game, we can now, often, log in using our Facebook credentials rather than creating new accounts and identities. Facebook continues its monopoly over our web activity by communicating with and connecting us to other web spaces as well as people. Facebook’s interface and conventions have also inspired other sites to exist similarly as its template is an intuitive form for users, which lends itself to Zielinski’s notion of “standardization and uniformity among the competing electronic and digital technologies.”⁵ Spaces such as Twitter and Instagram among others function like Facebook and connect us to other sites by allowing us to use the same log in information simply by connecting to our Twitter or Instagram accounts. By creating spaces that appear and act similarly to Facebook, other websites create a sense of familiarity to entice users. At the same time, these sites take and repurpose successful aspects of one another. For instance, Twitter’s hashtag model has been integrated into Facebook.

While Facebook is highly preferred by most internet users as a primary social media space, Zielinski’s move to think about media archaeology leads to the question of what happens to old media spaces? Is the standardization of social media spaces today necessary for sustainability? Rather than thinking of old web spaces as “dead media,” Zielinski leads us to the cyclic nature of media spaces, that is to say that new media spaces develop out of and maintain features of the old. Before Facebook, perhaps the most well-known social media site was Myspace. Myspace was founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris Dewolfe.⁶ At the time, Myspace marketed itself as “a place for friends” where users could “share photos, journals, and interests with [their] growing network of mutual friends.”⁷ While it operated under a similar motto as Facebook in its early days, Myspace did not maintain its dominance as a social media site for users to connect after the advent of Facebook. However, Myspace does not cease to exist. In 2011, Tim and Chris Vandhook along with Justin Timberlake took over Myspace and redesigned and reestablished it as “a place where people come to connect, discover, and share.”⁸ Today, the site focuses on musicians and serves as a space for artists to share their work. Providing “access to 53 million tracks and videos” making it the “the world’s largest digital music library,” Myspace continues to thrive as a website, though it is no longer a social media space in the same vain as Facebook.⁹ In fact, Facebook “talks to” Myspace as a way for users to connect to the site without creating a separate account.

Old web spaces like Myspace continue to thrive and inspire new spaces. New social media sites continue to evolve and reinvent Facebook and Myspace’s social models. Facebook’s more than 10-year existence and continual growth now serves as a model for and paves the way for these newer social media platforms. Zielinski’s notion that we should not “seek the old in the new, but find something new in the old” articulates this recyclical nature of social media spaces (3).

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1. Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Print. 259.

2. “Facebook Newsroom.” Facebook Newsroom. Facebook, 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

3. “Facebook Newsroom”

4. Zielinski 31.

5. Zielinski 9.

6. “About Myspace.” Myspace.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

7. Myspace.com accessed via web.archive.org

8. “About Myspace.”

9. “About Myspace.”