Delete comment from: Epeus' epigone
Kevin,
You reference Habermas -- that's awesome! i came across a theory of triple contingency in social media, the idea basically that the "public" in social media is a "third" contingency. An audience not addressed by the twitter but whose "presence" is sensed, and which would contribute to the user sensing him/herself being seen. This would be nice to develop using perhaps Sartre, or mimetic desire, or some other mediated sociality theory...
I think this aspect of conversational media perhaps the least understood -- as an openly structured social medium, the presence and attention economy of the "invisible public" (danah boyd) is largely imagined. As soon as another user pays direct attention to you in twitter, or indirect (retweets or @name mentions), it's communication -- a relation has been established. In absence of that sign of attention, however, the "public" is an "at large," and how this motivates, incentivizes, appeals to users we don't well know. That it does -- that some level of interest in being seen, being visible, contributes to the medium is virtually certain. For social media do recapitulate mass media -- as a form of communication they do *also* reproduce, in their own way, a version of mass media, and thus some of mass media's social and cultural characteristics (from news production to celebrity and fame).
I've done a bit of speculating around the psychological dimensions of mediated interactions specific to twitter. These posts touch on those: the variety of ways in which people with different social competencies, communication styles, and personalities may experience twitter.
Apropos theory, I think Luhmann's social systems theory is a very compelling resource for social media theories -- tho he and habermas were in acute theroetical disagreement.
http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/06/twitter-etiquette-reading-between-lines.html
http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/06/reading-tweets-its-complicated.html
http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2009/06/if-you-think-twitter-is-weird-youre-not.html
Aug 15, 2009, 6:10:42 PM
Posted to How Twitter works in theory