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CHAPTER 1

Social Media, Emoticons and Process

Darren Ellis

In this chapter, I analyse notions of "personal information" and "emoticons" by drawing on some concepts form Whitehead's process philosophy. I will look at some of the ways that they are "prehended" through acts of "concrescence" to form as "actual entities" within the social media context. Interview data concerning everyday use of social media is drawn upon for the analysis. I conclude that personal information is often prehended as impersonal due, in part, to its marketability. Whilst emoticons may be prehended as more personal, these are pre-produced as universal and basic, qualities which tend to fix and strip away at emotion's affect related dynamics. This occurs through the multiple desires associated with social media, to simplify and qualify actual occasions.

Albert North Whitehead advocates what I refer to as a process philosophy attitude, particularly throughout his book Process and Reality. In this work, Whitehead introduced a body of concepts which are arguably useful for the humanities and social sciences today but can appear odd when first introduced. For example, a relatively simple term such as "society" is defined as 'a nexus with social order and an "enduring object", or "enduring creature" ... whose social order has taken the special form of "personal order". A society for Whitehead can refer to such things as: books, rocks, and cups; in other words, things which appear to have "temporal endurance". Although a society tends to be an enduring object it is additionally subject to change through an ordered series of "actual occasions". For example, Whitehead states that the life of man is a historic route of actual occasions wherein one is successively passed on to the next; for instance, the learning and forgetting of a language can be understood as an enduring object (society). Any aspect of what he terms 'a person's enduring character from birth to death' can be understood as a society.

Societies, then, have some form of temporal endurance and are made up of what he terms "actual entities". Actual entities or actual occasions are central to Whitehead's metaphysics. They are moments or 'drops of experience, complex and interdependent' which perish with every single instant, but unlike societies, they do not change. They are rather like snapshots in time and space. They are not the material stuff, for example, of Democritus's atoms, but 'the unity to be ascribed to a particular instance of concrescense'. 'A concrescence is a growing together of the remnants of a perishing past', for example the passing of aspects of an actual entity 'into the vibrant immediacy of a novel, present unity'. Concrescence therefore is rather like the mechanism through which process occurs. Generation after generation of actual entities succeed one another without end, but seem to continue to exist (as a society) through the datum that they transmit. What passes from one moment of becoming (an actual entity) to the next are what Whitehead denotes as "prehensions". Prehensions are the feelings of another entity or actual occasion. 'Actual entities involve each other by reason of the prehensions of each other'. In other words, prehensions are the feelings and experiences of another actual entity which are subsumed within the becoming of another actual entity, rather like a chain, or multiple matrices of chains of becomings. Prehensions, then, 'feel what is there and transform it into what is here'. However, terms like feelings, experiences and prehensions are not limited to human activity, Halewood explains 'a stone feels the warmth of the sun; a tree feels the strength of the wind'. Indeed "a simple feeling" for Whitehead is not to be understood in the same ways that we might understand the concept, but 'is the most primitive type of perception, devoid of consciousness'. So 'actual entities involve each other by reason of their prehensions of each other' within acts of concrescence. He explains that every prehension consists of three factors:

(a) 'the "subject" which is prehending; namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element;' for example a stone or a human.

(b) 'the "datum" which is prehended;' the datum of the above example of a stone's prehension could be for instance the absorbed heat of the sun.

(c) 'the "subjective form" which is how that subject prehends that datum'. It is worth noting here that the subject may have different powers (forms) of prehension. For example, although a stone may have the power to absorb heat it will not have the power to imagine heat.

The account of some of Whitehead's concepts, given above, provides a particular perspective leading to a particular process philosophy attitude, adopted here, to look at perceptions of social media, personal information and affect.

Sixteen interviews were conducted inquiring into everyday social media use. A range of people were interviewed and the only inclusion criterion was that the participants were adults and used social media daily. The interviews were concerned with how people use social media, the sorts of information they share, issues relating to security, trust and affect related activity. In the following sections, two themes of the interviews are discussed, personal information and emoticons.

According to Phelps, Nowak and Ferrell, marketers tend to distinguish between two types of personal information: market level or modelled data and personal or individual specific data. Modelled data includes information about the character of the consumer group, market segment, media audience, and geographic location; while individual specific data includes more focused information (e.g. names, addresses, demographic characteristics, lifestyle interests, shopping preferences and purchase histories). Phelps and colleagues suggest that there are five general categories generally used for marketing: demographic characteristics, lifestyle characteristics (including media habits), shopping/purchasing habits, financial data, and personal identifiers (e.g. names, addresses, social security numbers).

When interviewed, participants generally tended to adhere to these marketers notions of personal information. When asked the question 'What sorts of personal information do you put up on-line?', we got responses such as:

Participant 4: 'Personal information the only personal information I put down is where they ask you where you are from your name so me personally would say that that's probably the only personal information I put up.'

Participant 5: 'Just like the date of birth everything like that that's already there like relationships and stuff like that that's pretty much it.'

Participant 6: 'My name my date of birth and maybe my email will be visible.'

Personal information is relatively loosely understood here by the participants through a variety of what Whitehead would refer to as societies, for example birthplace, name, relationship status, date of birth and email address. Participant 4 suggests that the only personal information that s/he "puts down" is that which "they" ask for. The term they, here, seems to refer to the social media service provider (i.e. owners, administrators and designers etc.). The personal information that they ask for is in part driven by the desires of the marketers who will commodify this information.

The datum is abstracted and prehended by both the social media service providers and the user through processes of concrescence wherein fluid aspects of the self become frozen blocks of actual entities incorporating 'personal information'. These in turn are prehended by marketers for commodification. Participant 5 suggests that the forms of personal information that are posted are those that are "already there" or those which are predefined by the social media service providers. Participant 6 adds that it (some personal information) is made "visible" presumably for those who desire to obtain such information. Hence a relatively static data-double is formed, a datafication of the self, which is made up of societies of personal information. These "already there" societies tend to be thought of by the participants as relatively impersonal. The "stuff like that" that they capture is almost "already there" just requiring the final forms of data that the user produces to form the actual entities which fit into the given societies of personal information. This is rather like the user completing the product on a production line, to produce what Marx would refer to as a form of alienation from the self. Thus societies of personal information denote for users that which is ironically impersonal. It is that which is abstracted from the self, and used by others as capital.

The notion that personal information is construed as impersonal is further illustrated by Participant 2. In response to the question 'What sorts of personal information do you put up on-line?' Participant 2 stated,

Participant 2: Me I am not really one to put up personal information I would rather [pause] I don't like putting up personal information online.

Yet in response to the question 'In what ways do you communicate your emotions on-line?', the same participant stated,

Participant 2: Well you know you can for example you know Whatsapp my status on Whatsapp usually reflects my life yeah same thing as Facebook however you feel you write it on your status because status is how you feel at the current moment so yeah definitely.

The "status" entry on social media platforms tend to be less fixed than what is considered above as personal information. One does not tend to select from such a limited set of criteria, but it affords more open and dynamic expressions that can be updated at will. It may be considered an actual entity of the current, but already passed, moment. Indeed, Participant 2 states that it 'usually reflects my life', it is 'how you feel at the current moment.' The process of actualising a particular status therefore appears to be understood as more personal than the societies of personal information. Instead, one can reflect upon life, on feelings of the current moment that are ironically considered as different from personal information. Perhaps this has something to do with such fleeting moments as not being as commodifiable as the societies of personal information due to their qualitative and open-ended capacities. However, within this study, personal information was not always considered to be impersonal, as one participant responded quite differently to the question concerning personal information.

Participant 12: Erm the most personal stuff that gets up on-line are my emotions and thoughts and feelings at the time so it could be something like oh I'm so frustrated that I have missed the bus but then I wouldn't go deep into how I feel on Twitter or something like that.

Participant 12 portrays an understanding of personal information as similar to how Participant 2 above referred to status. Although interestingly the term personal information is not used in the response but personal stuff, not just information but "stuff", seems to imply a less formal and more transitory quality. This personal stuff includes emotions, thoughts and feelings experienced 'at the time' and hence captured in time and space through acts of concrescence of the prehensions which help produce particular kinds of actual entities 'that gets up on-line.' The actual entity that is portrayed as being concresced above is of a particularised emotion (frustration) relating to an affective activity (missing the bus). This provides an illustration of the process of concresence: a missed bus prehended, among many other affects (prehensions) producing personal stuff such as frustration — actualised on social media, in an interview, in a transcript, at a seminar, in an article — between an audience; but necessarily and purposefully lacking the complex and relatively infinite depth of the actual occasion (i.e. 'I wouldn't go deep into how I feel).' So certain prehensions are selected (which Whitehead denotes as "positive prehensions") for actualisation by Participant 12 and others deselected (which Whitehead denotes as "negative prehensions") as is always necessarily the case when humans communicate anything, but seems to be particularly so in relation to social media. The forms of actualisation afforded to users are limited by the infrastructure of the platform, among many other things. This form of actual selection is particularly illustrated through what I call 'the emoticonisation of experience'.

Emoticons can be thought of as qualifying and fixing affect, or what we refer to as an actual occasion, consisting of multiple prehensions. For example, the prehensions related to the missing of a bus can be encapsulated through an emoticon that is seen to represent "frustration". In this way, the complexity of the event is stripped, and in its place we have the seemingly stable form. In the following section I turn to look at participant's responses to questions concerning the communication of emotion on social media platforms and the use of emoticons.

Participant 3 [I: In what ways do you communicate your emotions and feelings online?] Erm statuses — smiley faces and photos. [So emoticons are helpful?] Yes. [Are you more open to expressing emotion and feelings online than you are offline?] Yes. [Can you describe why this is?] Because if your face to face with someone and your offline you are showing your emotions more whereas when you are online it doesn't have to be taken so seriously.

In the above extract, Participant 3 explains how the emoticon creates a form of desired deception. Rather than it expressing how s/he feels, it is used as a way of masking or obscuring feelings. When face-to-face this is more difficult to achieve. This process can be understood as a form of what Goffman describes as "face-work" or what Hochschild calls "emotion-work". Thus the use of the emoticon here is somewhat subverted as its static nature actualises the desired affectivity.

Participant 2: I would find it easier to express myself online reason being I get helped I've got emoticons I have phrases I have got all sorts of things to give me help in hand to explain the way I feel just in case I can't use just words.

The emoticon here, again, is used to reduce complexity. Stock phrases and emoticons are occasionally wheeled out to help "explain" feelings. A snapshot, or actual entity, here works as a visual representation of the experiences that are presently difficult to codify within the words of a language system. The prehensions are better represented in one static symbol it seems. Thus the reduced selection (negative prehensions) of basic actualised emotional expressions facilitates communication. It may not fully represent that which is prehended but it enables some form of desired effect.

Participant 4: [OK, are emoticons helpful?] What's that sorry emoticons? [You know — the little smiley faces] Erm yeah I believe they are I mean in terms of over text because you know you won't want people on Facebook to know what you're typing to people — you could say something with a smiley face at the end and it could mean different things to different people so in that respect yeah I think they are.

Participant 4 explains how s/he uses the emoticon to reduce the ambiguity of the text. It facilitates some form of objective comprehension of the statement being expressed. Here we find the actual entity (the Facebook entry for example) in this context, enhancing the desired meaning of the text.

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Excerpted from "Affect and Social Media"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Tony D. Sampson, Stephen Maddison and Darren Ellis.
Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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