Wiberg M. - The Interaction Society[c] Practice, Theories and Supportive Technologies (2005)(en)

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at the Annual Meeting of the Western Speech Communication Association, Boise, Idaho, USA.

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Kling, R., & Scacchi, W. (1982). The web of computing: Computing technology as social organization. Advances in computers (vol. 21). New York: Academic Press.

Kling, R., McKim, G., & King, A. (2003). A bit more to IT: Scholarly communication forums as socio-technical interaction networks. Journal American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54 (1), 47-67.

Kraut, R. E., & Attewell, P. (1997). Media use in a global corporation: Electronic mail and organizational knowledge. In S. Kiesler (ed.), Culture of the Internet (pp. 323-342). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lamb, R., & Kling, R. (2003). Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research. MIS Quarterly, 27 (2), 197-235.

Levine, R., Locke, C., Searls, D., & Weinberger, D. (2000). The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.

McKelvey, B., Mintzberg, H., Petzinger, T., Prusask, L., Senge, P., & Shultz, R. (1999). The gurus speak: Complexity and organizations, A panel discussion at the Second International Conference on Complex Systems, October 30, 1998. Emergence, A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management, 1 (1), 73-92.

Minsky, B. D., & Marin, D. B. (1999). Why faculty members use e-mail: The role of individual differences in channel choice. The Journal of Business Communication, 36 (2), 194-217.

Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Muller, M. J., & Gruen, D. M. (2002). Collaborating within - not through - email: Users reinvent a familiar technology (Report No. 02-10). Cambridge, MA: IBM Watson Research Center, Collaborative User Experience Group, Project: Reinventing Email. Retrieved October 31, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/ publications.html.

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Newhagen, J. E., & Rafaeli, J. E. (1996). Why communication researchers should study the Internet: A dialogue. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Special joint issue with the Journal of Communication), 1 (4). Retrieved January 18, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http:/ /www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/rafaeli.html.

O’Sullivan, P. B. (2000). What you don’t know won’t hurt ME: Impression management functions of communication channels in relationships. Human Communication Research, 26 (3), 403-431.

Phillips, S. R., & Eisenberg, E. M. (1993). Strategic uses of electronic mail in organizations. EJC/REC: The Electronic Journal of Communicaton, 3

(2). Retrieved April 9, 1997 from the World Wide Web: http:// www.cios.org/www/ejc/v3n293.htm.

Phillips, S. R., & Eisenberg, E. M. (1996). Strategic uses of electronic mail in organizations. Javnost, 3 (4), 67-81.

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Schultze, U. (2000). A confessional account of an ethnography about knowledge work. MIS Quarterly, 24 (1), 3-41.

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organizations. Paper presented at the Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003), Amsterdam.

Endnotes –

Pertinent Reflective Journal Extracts

1Reflective Journal Extract No.1: The guidelines provided by Mikael (as book editor) clearly indicates an expectation the chapter would present “issues, controversies, problems” associated with the main thrust of the chapter and then provide “solutions and recommendations in dealing with them.” I wondered though, like Rafaeli did, if effects are the only focus of study? He argued “that some of the more important contributions of communication research are in a better understanding of what goes on, even without these ‘goings on’ necessarily getting anyone anywhere. Intended effects or salient dangers play an important part, but there is much more to studying communication than just documenting what it actually does to people” (Newhagen & Rafaeli, 1996, para. 30). I agree. Hence, understanding more about, and reflecting on, what occurs for people and their interactions with others at work as they use email encapsulates my aim with this chapter rather than the seeking of “solutions or recommendations” in dealing with the issues. However, I will include a brief exploration of some of the management implications that flow from my study at the end of the chapter.

2Reflective Journal Extract No.2 … Hope it’s clear that my research interests centre on understanding more about the social phenomena of email in an intraorganisational context and then telling engaging stories about it. One of my aims with the stories I tell is to craft a vicarious experience for readers that illuminates email as a component of organisational life complete with its inherent social complexity and richness. To this end, I include a range of extracts quoted from the ethnographic conversations I had with the study participants: some are quite succinct while others reflect more fully the rich flavour of the spoken conversations. My aim is to portray what was said as well as what was unsaid (for example, non-speech events such as laughter, pauses and even umms and uhhhs are sometimes in-

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cluded in these extracts). By providing such thick descriptions of the data, I seek to engage my readers with a sense of déjà vu. I am not seeking the truth about email rather I am opening a dialogue where others may find themselves in the text alongside me and the social world that I am describing.

3Reflective Journal Extract No.3 … Now that my chapter is written, I’m wondering how well it will ‘fit,’ particularly with the book coming from an informatics perspective. It’s a cross-disciplinary jump for me but I believe that such interactions help paint a more reflective picture of just what is happening. I emailed my concerns to Mikael about my chapter being appropriate and his response was “the idea with the book is to give an overall picture of the emerging Interaction Society enabled by modern information technology which is kind of a broad theme so don’t worry too much about the fit and the scope.” Then he said, “ Good luck.”

4Final Reflective Journal Extract … Well, I have now received the two reviewers’ feedback and the comments clearly show that the contemporary style of representation did not fit at all well. While support was evident that my work was relevant and appropriate for the book, both suggested I abandon the ethnographic writing style. The story-telling format was soundly rejected by both, as was my writing in the first person. The dialogue opened up by my journal extracts also seemed confusing and they were similarly frowned upon. However, some useful suggestions were made re positioning the theoretical framework more firmly within the IT ethnographic literature and advice re: teasing out the implications of the message web concept more specifically, particularly in the final part of the chapter was also helpful. So, what to do? Do I want to make significant changes to the chapter (in both structure and style) to conform to “the traditionally right way of doing things”?, to enable my chapter to be an acceptable contribution to this book. In resolving this dilemma, I’ve done some restructuring of the chapter (included a method section and I’ve also moved these journal extracts from the body of the chapter into these endnotes). One reviewer specifically mentioned an article about the publication process where the author discusses what battles to fight with advice to “only stick your neck into one guillotine”. The reviewer goes on to suggest that I “let go of the guillotine of the form of the chapter, i.e., the I-form as well as the

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‘storytelling’.” After pondering this for some time, I have decided that even though it is important to get my work ‘out there’ and legitimatised through publication, some battles are worth fighting — I’ve chosen to keep the ethnographic techniques I’ve used in writing this chapter.

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Social Exile and Virtual Hrig 57

Chapter III

Social Exile and

Virtual Hrig1:

Computer-Mediated

Interaction and Cybercafé

Culture in Morocco

Said Graiouid

University Mohammed V, Morocco and

Al Akhawayn University, Morocco

“I have indeed – praise be to God – attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and I have attained in this respect what no other person has attained to my knowledge.”2

Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Moroccan traveler

“Do you think that Ibn Battuta would’ve traveled the world if he’d had access to the Internet?!”

A cybercafé user

Abstract

This chapter explores ways in which computer-mediated interaction and cybercafé culture are appropriated by individuals and groups in Morocco.

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58 Graiouid

It argues that computer-mediated communication mediates the construction of cybernetic identities and promotes the rehearsal of invented social and gender relations. This inventive accommodation of the Internet (known among young Moroccan Net communicants as “virtual hrig”) makes computer-mediated interaction, especially through the discursive forum of chatrooms and email discussion groups, act as a backtalk to dominant patriarchal and conservative power structures. By using a qualitative ethnographic approach while sounding the depth of the “cultural noises” and incrustations, which are accompanying the expansion of cyber culture, the author also hopes to foreground the prospective implications of New Media and Information Technologies in a nonWestern environment. While it is too early to draw conclusions on the extent of the impact of new media technologies on individual subjectivities and group identities, the point is made that cyber interaction is contributing to the expansion of the public sphere in Morocco.

In a Friday sermon broadcast on Moroccan national television, the Imam (the Friday sermon preacher and prayer leader) focused on the contribution of the Internet and cybercafé culture to the expansion of spatial production in Morocco. He made the point that the cyberworld should be viewed as a workable alternative to sites of vice and moral deviance, which permeate the real world. Citing as a reference the mosque’s middle class neighborhood in Rabat, he deplored the absence of libraries, museums or other resource centers that could shield the youth from the risks of idleness and moral deviance. For theImam,itistheemancipatorydimensionofcyberspacethatmustbestressed. In a way, the Imam’s view is in tune with the perception of the important contribution of the Internet to the expansion of interaction and communication in the public sphere. The central argument on this side is that new information technologies are helping to dismantle traditional power structures by allowing previously disenfranchised groups to publicize their concerns.

Alongwiththisview,thereisaconcernamongthegeneralpublicthathighlights the risks of computer-mediated interaction on the affective and performative identities of Internet users. A therapist who runs a weekly section on sex education in a Moroccan daily newspaper reports the story of a woman who blames Internet chat for turning her 17 year old son into a homosexual: “I accidentally came across a letter in my son’s room [...] and that’s how I found out he was gay.I can’t believethat my only sonisa homosexual and it’s Internet chat which has turned him into one” (Harakat, 2002, p. 9). The author also

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reports the story of a thirty year-old woman who sought therapy to “survive” an addiction to Internet chat and an “emotional dependence” on virtual correspondence. The therapist explains that both cases support the argument that virtual exile provides an alternative space to the inhibitory world of everyday life. The argument here is that instead of regulating access to the Internet or passing legislation to ban access to cybercafés to underage children

— as some Moroccan parliament members have proposed — the alternative approach would be to sensitize the public about the risks of a “mindless addiction” to the world of computer-mediated interaction.3

These vignettes reiterate some ethical and psychological concerns that have traditionally accompanied the expansion of technological innovations. The freedom intrinsic to a new technology has often been bracketed between the promise of a more effective transmission and dissemination communication model and the anticipated risks of a ritual of interaction that could jeopardize the organizational order of lifeworld relations. In contemporary Morocco, the ongoing deregulation of telecommunications policy is mediating an expansion of the public sphere and reconstruction of gender and power relations. However, this liberation is also generating attempts by conservative forces to reproduce the dominant normative model of spatial production onto the emergent space of the new media and communication technologies.4

This chapter argues that virtual hrig is to be viewed as a grassroots alternative to the restrictive norms of the public sphere rather than an escape from real life limitations. Similarly, I contend that the construction of cybernetic identities provides disenfranchised communities with a resistance space to deal with globalexclusionandmarginalization.Cuttingacrossbotharguments,Imaintain thatcomputer-mediatedinteraction,especiallythroughthediscursiveforumof chat rooms and email discussion groups, underlines an expansion of the public sphereandcallsforthearticulationofacommunicativemodelwhosenormative conditions can reconstruct the divide between the public and private spheres and transcend the borderlines between virtual reality and social space.

I begin with some reflections on the method of approach to Internet research and computer-mediated interaction. In the second section, I provide a brief discussion of the expansion of Internet and cybercafé culture in everyday life of Moroccans. The third section attempts a description of sites in which virtual interaction may be reconstructing gender and power relations in Morocco. In the concluding section, I highlight ways in which Internet culture may be expanding the public sphere and rewriting the normative conditions of its development.

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60 Graiouid

On Method: Research and Internet

Culture

In The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Sherry Turkle (1985) argues that in an “ethnography of a science of mind,” the essential question is “how ideas developed in the world of ‘high science’ are ‘appropriated’ by the culture at large.” Turkle rightly states that such investigation “calls for a genre of field research with some special qualities” (p. 317). Though I have not borrowed from the clinical interview style, I maintain that an understanding of the interrelation between thoughts and feelings and computer-mediated interaction requires a special field approach. In The Anthropology of Online Communities, S. Wilson & L. Peterson (2002) review dominant research questions that have influenced the study of the Internet. Quoting Hakken’s insightful statement that the incorporation of popular rhetoric on technology in scholarly Internet research has created “multiple, diffuse, disconnected discourses which mirror the hype of popular cyberspace talk” (as cited in Wilson & Peterson, 2002), Wilson & Peterson go on to suggest that research be brought back from:

cyberspace and virtual reality into geographical, social spaces, to address a variety of issues such as the ways in which new participants are socialized into online practices, how gendered and radicalized identities are negotiated, reproduced, and indexed in online interactions; and how Internet and computing practices are becoming normalized or institutionalized in a variety of contexts (Wilson & Peterson, 2002).

Wilson & Peterson (2002) also call for a simultaneous interest in online and offlineinteractions“toaddressimportantissuesofthesocialroleoftechnology, the relationship between language and technology, and questions of access to technologiesintraditionallymarginalizedcommunities.”

In his study of cyberspace community organizing, Stoecker (2002) concludes that the Internet contributes to the construction of both weak and, at times, strong ties. Stoecker praises the Internet and computer-mediated interaction for their important contribution to the emergence and development of an internationallyorganizedoppositiontoglobalcapitalism goingas faras tostate

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Social Exile and Virtual Hrig 61

thatitis“difficulttosaywhetherthisinternationallevelofcommunityorganizing could have occurred without the Internet” and that “[at] the very least, it would have been a lot much more expensive and time-consuming for activists to find, develop, and coordinate mobilizable networks” (p. 153).

ReferringtotheIslamicportal“IslamOnline,”J.Anderson(2001),forexample, shows how this site services Muslims across the globe and plays the role of the traditional“Shaykh”byprovidingformalandinformalcounselonreligiousand mundane issues, especially for Muslim women in Diaspora. Anderson makes the point that:

the medium [cyberspace] affords a continuum not only of formats from counseling to religious ruling but also a continuum of interaction from silent and self-directed seeker to actively engaging the shaykh. Moreover, they are accessible internationally, effectively creating a new public that itself combines traditional elements with modern technology (2001).

In a more focused study, V. Mamadouh (2001) analyzes the role of computermediated interaction in the design and construction of a Dutch Moroccan identity. Mamadouh refers to Websites as “agenda setters and gatekeepers” because they mediate the construction of identities on the basis of selected content they propose to target publics. More generally, Mamadouh concludes that for young Dutch Moroccans, “the Internet may also provide ways to escape the closed group of peers at school and in the streets and widen their horizons while constructing a self-defined identity and deciding to which group(s) they want to relate (most)” (p. 262).

It seems that irrespective of approach or methodological design, most Internet research is now keen on transcending the dividing line between virtual and social reality, on one hand, and computer-mediated interaction and other forms of communication and networking, on the other. The online/offline dichotomy or the elevation of a form of interaction over others displaces the dynamic site where identities are negotiated and overlooks the important role of agency. Computer-mediated interaction is likely to extend to mobile phone and, at times, to face-to-face communication. It is now quite common in Moroccan cybercafés to see Internet users chatting on the phone at the same time as in a private chat box. What must be underlined is that online performances are not only simulated rehearsals in a disembodied virtual world but, for regular Net

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