Friday, 16 August 2013

The Modern Flaneur

(Hartian, 2012)
There are numerous social networking sites on the Web, and many of these sites are connected to other social networks. For example, I recently joined a social network called 'LiveJournal', which not only has its own personal website, but a twitter and Facebook page as well. "LiveJournal is a community publishing platform, willfully blurring the lines between blogging and social networking" (LiveJournal. Inc: About Us, 2012). Not only are members able to express themselves and communicate with friends, but also interact with the wider community. This community is not restricted to one particular place as seen in the physical world, but is a community shared between many different nations. 

For such an extensive reach and numerous interactions with other social networking sites, a map to know where everything is would be beneficial. It just so happens that LiveJournal provides a 'Sitemap' on the bottom of the page. This map contains links to all the different sections and applications of the website and therefore makes it easier to coordinate oneself through the various pages. However, it is not so comprehensive as to portray everything the site has to offer, such as the various journals written by members. Therefore allowing the visitor the opportunity to act as a flaneur, and meander or explore the countless journal entries while remaining anonymous. In fact, it is much easier for the flaneur to act in the virtual world rather than the physical one.

A flaneur - as depicted by Prouty (2009) - is someone who feels as much at home in the city streets as one would in the comfort of their own home. They observe the city and its residents silently from the sidelines. Now, the modern flaneur has it much simpler, due to the fact that they don't have to worry about being seen or miss out on interesting information that could easily be missed in the real world, due to the benefits of the internet and social networking sites that retain data. It is much easier to get lost in the virtual world because you can search further and faster than in the physical world, however this can be seen as an added bonus to the flaeur. It can be difficult to follow a map through the virtual world as they do not look like the traditional world maps as portrayed in this week's lecture (Petray, 2013), but are instead a collection of links to places you can go from where you currently are, and the places you have been previously. 

As explained in this week's lecture, maps are constructed for a particular purpose and can therefore take on many different forms. The way that the map is constructed shows who is in power by placing the power holder in the centre. In the case of the Sitemap on LiveJournal, the centre of the map is you, so you are therefore the one in power. This type of reader centred map is common in the virtual world.  

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1 comment:

  1. Unknown17 August 2013 at 09:49

    Nice post. Flaneurism is a cool concept. Nicely referenced.

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