The design of social hyper-connectivity: Video-ethnography of the uses of Mobile Social Network Sites

Julien Figeac (1) , Johann Chaulet (1)

1 LISST - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Solidarités, Sociétés, Territoires

This article focuses on digital sociability developed using smartphones and Mobile Social Network Services (mSNS) in daily commuting. A video ethnography was made involving 35 French intensive users of the Facebook app. This method is based on the combination of context-oriented recordings made with user-worn camera glasses with mobile screen capture data. These data reveal how smartphone usage patterns tend to be organized according to mSNS notification devices and how these mediatized forms of social stress lead users to develop " hyper-connected " digital sociability. By examining the distribution of users' attention between urban settings and screen-based activities, this video-ethnography highlights how these notifications affect the organization of visual forms of social coordination in urban settings. We analyze how social forms of visual coordination are not only structured by internalized social norms but also according to rhythms of smartphone apps, how they display relational stress and perform hyper-connected relational practices.

Mots clés: Smartphones; Social Network Services; Notification devices; Digital sociability; Urban Mobilities

Domaines: Sociologie

Julien Figeac, Johann Chaulet. The design of social hyper-connectivity: Video-ethnography of the uses of Mobile Social Network Sites. 66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA 2016): "Communicating With Power", Jun 2016, Fukuoka, Japan. ⟨halshs-01576897⟩