Ben Light @doggyb

The Internet is

Made with Cats?

Disconnective Practice

Geographies of Disconnection Disconnectors Disconnection Modes Ethics of Disconnection Disconnective Power

Liking as ListeningDisciplines of Listening (Crawford 2009) !• Listening in • Reciprocal listening • Background listening !Liking - have listened, may continue to listen, as listening in, as reciprocal listening, as background listening

The Study - see: Light and Ormandy 2013, Light 2014.

views and opinions of South Asian women (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) aged 25-29

4 focus groups involving 39 young women

a Hindu Cultural organisation in Liverpool (Radna Krishna Temple)

the Preston Muslim Forum, (Hamara Centre), the Bangladesh Association & Community Project in Rochdale

a children’s centre in Rochdale (Deeplish Sure Start Children’s Centre)

‘Facebook is popular now with every culture. Facebook is the big one and a lot of people are on Twitter now as well.’

‘I use a lot of social media, another quite good one is YouTube (a few people say ‘yeah), if you don’t know what anything is or you don’t know a procedure, anything, YouTube’s got the answer from A-Z and it tells you all sorts of basics, people sit there and tell you and describe things and demonstrations and everything, so YouTube’s definitely a good one.’

‘Yeah you’ve got everything from recipes to childbirth (laughter). So it’s something dead basic all the way to childbirth because I know I went on it just before I was going to give birth, seeing what was going to go through.’

‘I’d rather Google it first than go to the doctors. I’d probably get more information there than the doctor would give me...’

Cultural Complications?

‘They’re not into Animals, the Asian community, very rare you’ll find out someone’s got a cat.’

‘You mentioned cats being the most looked up thing on the Internet but then is that, did you look at it whether it’s from the Asian background? How many of the Asian backgrounds own cats, and look up-I mean it’s very rare, generally, you’ll find.’

‘..within the Asian community as a whole I don’t think...pets as such aren’t really a big thing, not as it is in white culture, you know, you have your pets and your cats and your dogs and what have you but within the Asian community or ethnic minority I should say it isn’t that important to us.’

‘You do think though cats are really cute and that may be gender thing, women tend to like cats and they may be appealing. From my perspective as a British Asian, I found it hilarious, but the Asian community yes, I don’t think it will attract them…

I think cats are adorable and may appeal to women within the age range.’

Marriage and Sexual Activty

‘I don’t feel that it’s ethically right to do that to a virgin, to go through that sort of procedure.’

‘I think a lot of women in Asian cultures, if you’re not married you don’t need to go for it...so I think that’s a taboo attached with our culture, if you’re not married or you’re not sexually active you don’t need to go for the smear test, so ignore it. I think that’s a big one in our culture’

Linguistic Complications?‘It could be a language thing as well you know because they were talking about cervical screening and people only know about smear tests and maybe people are not aware that smear tests is cervical screening... If somebody is not very good at English they are not going to understand the concept of cats at all, that’s totally going to be strange, what’s going on there?’

Complications of Tone

‘...it doesn’t look that serious do you know what I mean...Like when I look at this, it doesn’t appear serious to me but it can actually get very serious, cervical cancer’

Cats are Evil

‘What about all the millions of people that don’t like cats and don’t hit on the cats on the internet?’

‘It will scare people that are scared of cats (laughter)...people have a phobia of cats so they will be like ‘no I don’t need to go on that site’ if it’s got anything to do with cats.’

‘I mean you know like for mature people, 25 and onwards, would they actually want to sit there and dress up cats, you know it’s like more childish, if you know what I mean. Like I could see my younger cousins doing that, one of them is 10; do you know what I mean? I don’t think older people will actually want to sit there and dress up cats, that’s my honest opinion, I mean I wouldn’t.’ (Participant 8)

‘It’s true like even the people in this age, they even don’t have time to sit and dress up and everything else, they may go on Facebook, they may go skyping, they check the mail and anything else, they go for the news but I don’t think so they are going for this one.’ (Participant 9)

Participation as a Waste of Time

‘If I’m sat on YouTube, if I’m sat on Facebook and then I go down and someone’s has posted a link and it says someone’s dancing ‘erm doing a Harlem shake or dancing on treadmill, I’d be like ‘hi why’s that funny?’ then there’s a website...you’re going to go on the website and then it’s cervical screening...’

‘You need to be consistent, like if it’s going to funny, it’s going to be funny you can’t just switch off from being funny and then serious.’

‘I think doing it in public like that it would interest me’ (Participant 1) !‘Then you could talk about it.’ (Participant 2) !‘..say if you’re on the streets of, say you’re in Manchester and you see cats dancing, will you not, how many of you will stop and say ‘what’s that about?’ (Participant 3) !‘Yeah, I would on the streets, ‘yeah.’ (Participant 4) !‘You would stop right and then and if a person come up, ‘er a woman come to you and said ‘look da da da, this is what we’re talking about’ here take a leaflet have a quick conversation with you would you not stop and- (Participant 3) !‘Yeah that would, if they were sat- ‘yeah if they were in cat suits and dancing about with something on their t-shirts saying you know ‘cervical screening’ or something maybe I’d go up to them or kids will maybe go up to them, watch them, talk to them and they might just give me a leaflet, ‘yeah I’ll be attracted to that but not on the website.’ (Participant 4)

‘I think we should stick a human in there...maybe stick a few young women in there’ ‘maybe if you had a group of women or something.’

‘I mean you’re focused, on focusing around cats, I think that, you could maybe use like the Bengal Tiger even because it’s more related to the Asian community as well, would probably attract like, if you are still focusing around cats or use something more like cultural, you know like the picture that you showed with the henna’ (Facilitator showed an example of a leaflet with an image of a henna painted hand on).

‘From a cultural perspective, maybe a tiger yes, or something in that style to try a give it a stronger image, like ‘be strong and go for the test.’ (Telephone Interview)

The Affective Function of Cats

The thumbs-up ‘like’ button, activated with a click, so popular on Facebook, is far less intentional than linking, as the connection they create is less a relationship but more of an affective association, requiring less effort (Lovnik 2011: 22)

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Affective processing - sharing content, making connections, ranking cultural artifacts, and producing digital content (Gehl 2011)

References: !Crawford, K. (2009). Following you: Disciplines of listening in social media. [Article]. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 23(4), 525-535.

Gehl, R. W. (2011). The archive and the processor: The internal logic of Web 2.0. [Article]. New Media & Society, 13(8), 1228-1244.

Light, B. (2014) Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Light, B. and Ormandy, P. (2013). Digital and Social Media: Impacts and Potentials for Cervical Screening Awareness. Salford, University of Salford Report for the NHS Quality Assurance Agency. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/65499/

Lovnik, G. (2011). Networks Without a Cause: A Critique of Social Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.