Affordances-in-practice: An ethnographic critique of social media logic and context collapse

Abstract

Drawing on data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in Mardin, a medium-sized town in southeast Turkey, this article shows that social media users actively appropriate online platforms and change privacy settings in order to keep different social spheres and social groups apart. Keeping different online social contexts distinct from each other is taken for granted as a way of using social media in Mardin. By contrast, social media scholars have extensively discussed the effects of social media in terms of context collapse. The article highlights how context collapse is the result of patterns of usage within Anglo-American contexts and not the consequence of a platform’s architecture or social media logic. It then suggests a theoretical refinement of affordances, and proposes the concept of affordances-in-practice.

Keywords

Citation

@article{affordancesinpracticeanethnogr2018,
  title = {{Affordances-in-practice: An ethnographic critique of social media logic and context collapse}},
  author = {Costa, Elisabetta},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {{New Media & Society}},
  volume = {20},
  number = {10},
  pages = {3641-3656},
  publisher = {{SAGE Publishing}},
  doi = {10.1177/1461444818756290}
}

TY  - JOUR
AU  - Costa, Elisabetta
TI  - Affordances-in-practice: An ethnographic critique of social media logic and context collapse
PY  - 2018
JO  - New Media & Society
VL  - 20
IS  - 10
SP  - 3641
EP  - 3656
PB  - SAGE Publishing
DO  - 10.1177/1461444818756290
ER  - 

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