Juliano Spyer
i am currently finishing my phd in anthropology, studying social media.
Location england
Activity
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Juliano Spyer replied to Michele Patterson
Hi Michele, thanks for the message. It is rather difficult to talk about all the interesting things we learned through our field work, because these online courses cannot be very long. The good news is that all of us had the chance of writing books that allow students to follow their interests and find in-dept information about specific themes. These books are...
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Hi HIllary, the Why We Post book about social media in an English village mentions how locals attempt to erase class distinction on their photos. You can download the book free here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/social-media-in-an-english-village
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Hi Kevin, thanks for the message. I presented a lecture at a university about these findings and heard from students the same example you reported - of travelling photos used to display aspiration and upward mobility.
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That would be a very long trip! Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
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Jasmin and Velia, thanks for these messages. Our book about social media in Italy has a rich discussion about social status. You should take a look, you can download it free here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/social-media-in-southeast-italy
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HI Michelle, I was told once that young middle class people in the US post photos of holiday tickets they purchase. This could be viewed as a similar effort to expose one's aspirations through consumption.
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Hi Chelsea, yes, but they can reach content available online that they did not have access to earlier. Even if lower income people cannot always have a high end equipment, inexpensive Android phones are available. Interestingly, though, in my field site locals used the internet to learn, but this learning often did not relate to formal education. Even having...
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Hi Claire, thanks for the message. So your experience is that social media has exposed you to a wider range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Are these new relationships taking place only online or have they moved from online to offline?
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HI Helen, I'm glad the readings and the course are helping you rethink your ideas and points of view. As the text argues, inequality can be considered based on economic models. And yet it is useful to consider how specific people perceive their position in society and the actual limitations that exist for people to move to a different position.
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Julia, thanks sharing this very nice personal experience. Most Brazilian academics today are critical about this notion of "new middle class". They argue that what low income Brazilians experienced during the 1990s and 2000s is predominantly an increase in purchase power, but not actual social mobility. I dispute this claim as observing my informants in...
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hi Hilary, thanks for posting. Could you spare a bit of time explaining how did you notice that your social media friends that moved to the UK are different from you? I think this can become a rich and interesting case to discuss.
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fantastic example!
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I dont think Nell meant that people become vegetarians to show off, just that vegetarianism is more common and reflects a class background. Some people might show pride in not being cruel by contributing to the meat industry, others might act the same way because they have managed to buy a new car.
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hi Heather, the book on the Why We Post series made from the research in England talks a lot about social media and parenting. You can download it free here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/social-media-in-an-english-village
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what a nice ethnographic note this was. many thanks for sharing!
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You also made me think when you say that people in these countries see their jobs as something they need to do to pay bills. I recognise what you are saying and what others commented, at the same time this makes me think about new situations such as how a university degree has become rather common. On one hand college is discussed often in terms of channeling...
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hi Pauline, thanks for the interesting comment. I'd just add, as you also suggests, that it is problematic to talk in general about such big and diverse countries. I suppose that alongside with cultural backgrounds, you would also find in these places people of various socioeconomic origins and their uses of social media might be different. if you are...
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Juliano Spyer replied to S G
thank you for saying this. it is a great thing to hear!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Laurie A
HI Laurie, I agree with Nell and would also add that in relation to other Chileans, they might be seen as poor, but my impression is that they have better government support than those in the Brazilian field site: better schooling, better hospitals, earn more money, etc.
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Juliano Spyer replied to Eduardo Mórlan
HI Eduardo, thanks for sharing all this information!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Mahara T
HI Mahara, thanks for the comment. I should add that, in relation to the people of the settlement in general, porn, violence and humour are the main subjects of files circulating. What is interesting also is that the sharing of porn, for instance, is not always related with pleasure. Take a look at some of my blog posts as, given the local importance of the...
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HI Gail, thanks for the comment. As a fieldworker with some experience with low income Brazilian population, I would say men tend to be more outgoing with strangers than women. At least this was the experience my wife and I had. Even for her it took a while to develop relationships with other women.
Im curious to her what type of research or project took...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Ayala Oliveira
I am glad to hear that the research results resonates beyond the borders of the field site. thanks for commenting!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Janie Smith
hi jane, could you expand this comment? I'm curious to know what you mean.
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Hi Rob and thanks again for being so active here.
About Brazil, the general agreement among social scientists today is that the name 'new middle class' is totally misleading. Between the 1990s and the 2000s the country experienced a period of prosperity that reached particularly the most vulnerable. However, as anthropologist and historian Lilian Schwarcz...
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There is a Brazilian composer and artist that said once that "Brazil is not for beginners". Like other countries in Latin America - and specially in big cities - one can go from Upper East side New York to the poorest areas in New Delhi just by walking a few blocks. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to end slavery and according to some scholars,...
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you know, it is great to see that a project you worked on becomes useful and interesting to others. thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Mohbeena Ahmed
I think the point here is not to arrive at a "right answer", but to acknowledge that social media is understood and used differently by different people. I completely agree with you about the effects of social media being liberating, but i say this coming from my affluent educated background. At the same time, i also like to contemplate how this narrative...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Rob Brown
Hi Rob, this is a challenging question. I guess you are pointing to an important point anthropologists make about social mobility and inequality, which is that they don't exist in general. When we refer to inequality, the first thing that may come to mind is an economic divided which relates to different levels of access to education. However, if you ask a...
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Juliano Spyer replied to elena sokolova
hi elena, at first I also found the word 'normativity' a bit scary, but i guess the meaning, at least a broad meaning, can be simple. I'll let Nell correct me, but I understand normativity as the shared values about what is considered normal or not normal. In other words, what are the norms that groups of people embrace as being part of their identities. But...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Mahara T
it will be great to see you attempting to develop this theory further and being more specific, perhaps referring to cases that you learned about during the course.
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Juliano Spyer replied to lizie W
Fantastic. It will be great to know if our conclusions make sense in relation to what you know about the uses of social media in Latin America. Thanks for posting!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Eduardo Mórlan
yes, let's! welcome
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Juliano Spyer replied to Ayala Oliveira
and we are excited to know what you think about our conclusions! thanks for the message
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Hi Jim, you are pointing to something quite interesting.
Firstly, to answer your question: no one ever told me about being in debt, but they said that others were because they would spend too much trying to look goood and display achievement.
But at the same time as they attempted to display this prosperity, they made similar efforts to avoid showing...
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HI Anthea, could you give a bit more of detail about talking to people of other social classes online? I'm just curious to know how you met them and how you know they are of different socioeconomic background. Could you mention one or two examples?
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HI Richard, thanks for this interesting comment.
About cars, they are the most desirable item to locals as it represents that they have money and access to bank credit that most people dont. Actually motorcycles are the vehicle that is more within financial reach. But most still depend on public transport.
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Hi Peter, thanks for the comment.
The idea of online equality is not to say that they are equal, but that they are having similar phones and similar access to the internet.
I'm not sure if we can compare twitter popularity with socioeconomic inequality. A person that is wealthier and has more years of schooling does not necessarily have a greater online...
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thanks for this post. it is always strange - i find it strange - to have these revelations: on one side being progressive and open minded, and on the other having only or almost only contact of my own socioeconomic class.
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HI Siddiqah, in the Brazilian field site, it was rather common for locals to "friend" people from the settlement on Facebook. But very rarely these connections evolved to become face to face relations. They fear that in public the other will not want to be seen with them, so they pass by each other without looking. At the end, they say the friendship was fake.
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HI Caroline, could you elaborate your question a bit further. I just want to understand more clearly what you are thinking. Thanks!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Richard Welch
Hi Richard, It is also import to remember that we avoid generalisations. It is not about what social media does, but about what locals are doing with it in different places. Did you look at our discoveries in our website. Each discovery comes with caveats to indicate specificities. See here:
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In the same book, there is another chapter that could be useful. it's the one that examines the consequences of social media to inequality.
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Juliano Spyer replied to shela Hägglund
hi Shela, this is a very relevant question which we address in this course and also elsewhere - i'll include the links at the end. Adults of 30 and above participate on Facebook through "liking", making brief comments such as "LOL" and sharing memes.
see this discoverty on our site:...
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Hello Crisvalter and the other commenters. Firstly, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences here. It is a source of delight for me when participants react to the activities sharing their own cases.
We are constantly hearing about social media in relation to loneliness. Psychologist Sherryl Turkle published a famous book (Alone Together) a few...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Peter Scourfield
Hi Peter, "addiction" [vício] is a word locals often use to describe the fascination (especially young people) display for social media. When WhatsApp became popular, teenagers would sleep with the mobiles in their hands facing the screen so they could be woken to reply to any new messages. And yet, as I wrote on a previous comment, it is quite interesting to...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Richard Welch
Hi Richard, Bahia, the state where the Brazilian field site is located, can be delightfully friendly and welcoming. Consider visiting it.
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Hi Gianluca, I agree with you. Interestingly, my impression is that low income brazilians use the internet more that the affluent classes, perhaps because they have more needs to fulfil and also because of the dependence they have of networks of support. Some government services such as ambulance and police are not efficient so locals are constantly helping...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Marcus Wilson
Hi Marcus. She received pornography because it is a type of content that locals circulate in their internal networks. Pornography is one of the most popular types of internet content and it is a subject social scientists study in relation to topics like "revenge porn". So the difference there is just that porn arrives from one's personal relations as part of...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Richard Bradford
HI Richard and thanks for the comment.
One of the different aspects of how people use social media in this field site is that they are often communicating with neighbours, friends and relatives that live in the same settlement. They meet face to face all the time, so using the internet is not an alternative to people that cannot relate to each other in the...
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Hi shela, similarly to Chile, Brazil experienced several years of authoritarian regimes in the last century. Our last dictatorship ended in the mid-1980s. Since then, our institutions and political system resisted the impeachment of two presidents without falling back into undemocratic governments.
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Hi Margareth, the Brazilian site became in the last few decades a touristic destination, but those living in the locality are low income migrants that generally only access the region's hotels, restaurants and resorts as workers, mainly cleaners, cooks, watchmen, etc.
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Hi Trevor, thanks for raising this question as this was an issue debates prior from choosing our field sites.
Since we were interested in how people use social media, we decided it would be important to be able to see their online networks and to compare it with their offline networks. In other words, to contrast whether a Facebook "friend" necessarily...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Marcus Wilson
amazing exchange of ideas. in my field site in Brazil, texting was virtually ignored, expect by men who used it as a channel to invisibly contact lovers and potential lovers.
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thanks!
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Juliano Spyer made a comment
Such a great video. Congratulations, Nell!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Victoria Muldowney
wow, comments like this and others are so enriching as they reflect the conclusions the research brings in so many different contexts. thanks very much for having the patience to explain all this.
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Juliano Spyer replied to Fernanda Enríquez
Hola Fernanda! could you share with us some examples? Many thanks
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Juliano Spyer replied to Gizela Horvath
Nell, I found the reference to the documentary. Many thanks for the suggestion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_the_*$%26%25_Is_Jackson_Pollock%3F
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Juliano Spyer replied to Gizela Horvath
hi Gizela, i guess we all do that in one way or another. For instance, progressive middle class brazilians tend to defend political agendas that favour the low income population. They will support ideas such as giving greater protection to crime offenders that are underage and payment of welfare support to very vulnerable families. However, it is often very...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Mukta Chaitanya
hi mutka, do you mean that people of a higher caste will shame someone from a lower caste by mentioning their surnames is a post? is this happening on Twitter, where people do not have to necessarely be "friends" to interact? Or are these people using Facebook and interconnected? thanks for commenting.
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Juliano Spyer replied to Caroline Molloy
hi caroline, i think "posh" is an expression that has a similar effect as "stush"; perhaps it just does not sound like a slang because it has been incorporated to everyday language. i was also surprised the other day to find out (I'm Brazilian) that to ask whether a person is of "working class background" is perceived as rude here in England. Apparently, by...
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Juliano Spyer replied to frances patterson
hi frances, perhaps because i am not english, it was not clear to me the example you gave about people of higher status ridiculing others for doing things differently from what they see as right. could you give an example about this? many thanks
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Juliano Spyer replied to Annette Bernauer
hello annette, and thanks for the comment. i was not aware of this important issue in Australian society until recently I watched a BBC documentary about an English couple sent to prison in Australia. After they served their sentences, the couple eventually became affluent, but this was something quite problematic for them to deal with. I guess it would be...
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Juliano Spyer replied to FELIX KAPUTU
hi felix, and thanks very much for sharing this example.
i am wondering if what you describe is not actually what Jolynna presents, that is, social media being used to ridicule those that show off.
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Juliano Spyer replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
hi kate, now i understand what you meant on a previous post.
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wonderful example
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this is a complete off-topic comment, but i am curious about how places like Barbados apparently became predominantly middle class whereas other countries (Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba) have arrived in the 20th century with a greater degree of social inequality. I suppose the differences in size made a difference.
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hi caroline, i feel the same way!
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hi frances, yes, i think it is tricky to compare these two countries with the UK because here the middle class represents a greater part of society. and as you suggest, i would say the elite in the UK uses elite networks. I googled it and found this news story about private services...
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hi Victoria, i find it fascinating this kind of collecting behaviour; it is not something we do to fulfil ourselves, but as a result of belonging to a society and wanting to be perceived in certain ways. thanks for sharing.
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hi Luise, I am not sure I understood the comparison you are making with the UKś referendum. Are you saying that peopleś sympathies and affinities echo a certain affiliation?
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hi fernanda, thanks for the comment. could you share a bit more about the socio-economic background of the place in Mexico where you live? The field sites that Nell and I are talking about are working class, so it tends to be different in other situations.
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Juliano Spyer replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
hi kate, yes, this is part of Dannyś ethnography about social media in an english village. the PDF is available free: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/social-media-in-an-english-village
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hi Mukta, later this year you will be able to read Shriramś book based on this ethnography in Chennai. meanwhile, you can look at some of his posts in our blog. But i must say i was surprised with similarities between the brazilian, indian and turkish field sites http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/global-social-media/category/fieldsites/india/
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hi Emily, thanks for sharing. since you are comparing the current examples with the UK, you may be interested in checking out Dannyś book about social media in an english village. you can download the pdf for free here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/social-media-in-an-english-village
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hi Theresa and thanks for the comment.
you mention something quite important in your examples and that were very much alive in the Brazilian field site.
showing-off can both display aspiration (to be different and successful) and the very opposite, a disdain for the future exposed as an enjoyment of the present through consumption.
the two...
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so doing something similar to the brazilians in this field site, right?
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hi michael and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
in chile, the sense of community is stronger so people look down on those who portray themselves as special or different, particularly in cases that the posting express superiority. dwellers there treasure their ties and solidarity. in brazil, there are people shaming others because what is perceived as...
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hi gizela, i do the same thing. and i guess it is a form of elitism as the income is often associated with cultural and also social capital. dont you think?
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hi Наталия Хиноцкая, i have never been asked or heard about companies demanding to see the facebook pages of potential hires. could you say a bit more about this? could you share examples?
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hi mutka, thanks for sharing this story. i agree that we all are commonly moving inside different social circles and have particular ways of performing. for instance, each of us acts in a certain way when having dinner with older relatives and in a different way when watching a football match with friends. the topics of conversation change, the vocabulary...
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hi hannah, this experience you are sharing is important because the internet is often discussed as being this thing that brings people closer and yet, many like you say that they are not moving beyond their one worlds. thanks for sharing.
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hi eliana, could you develp a bit more your argument? are you saying that social media is not bringing together people of different socioeconomic classes?
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hi ivy, you say that reality and virtual are different words, but this means that what happens online is not real. why do we use virtual as synonym to online while phone conversations are also online but are not virtual? my impression is that the distinction between these domains exists more clearly among those who grewup with without the internet. to young...
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hi ahmad, sharing facebook passwords was a relatively common practice in the field site; a what that a boyfriend and his girlfriend show trust in each other.
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hi romi. this is an interesting point. anthropologically, we could argue that there are many different forms of literacy. for instance, the people of this Brazilian field site can communicate with each other verbally in codes as ways of creating privacy. this is not a trick some developed, but a feature of their ways of living in society. besides that, i meet...
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hi victoria, literacy is not a limitation for people to use social media. as you saw on the second week of this course, one of the key elements of social media use in poor nations is the circulation of images and videos. however, you are right in the sense that there is a difference between how more literate teens use social media in relation to the less...
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Juliano Spyer replied to Howard Doyle
hi howard, and thanks for commenting. could you give examples of what closing the gap online but not offline is? do you mean that people are having the same equipment, but not the actual knowledge and social capital to profit from this equipment?
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hi lisa, please, dont appologise! it was just an exchange of ideas!!
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Juliano Spyer replied to Tyrone Kelly
thanks!
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i was reading your post and thinking how awesome it is that we can conduct research, create a course like this and than have the opportunity not just to share what we know but to further it by learning and debating with the participants. many thanks!
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hi laura, i identify a lot to what you wrote and yet, a few weeks ago i was blocked from facebook (the system mistakenly deduced i was posting adult content as i shared a news piece about a rape) and i felt like just leaving the service at once. and yet it is increadible convenient as a tool not just to use as leisure (socialize, etc) but also do practical...
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hi tom, i have a very similar fascination. if you look around anthropology books, you will have a feast. not everything is readable or made to non-initiated, but there are collections aimed at large audiences. im linking a famous series. but i write that also aknowledging that what you mean and what i mean by strangeness is not necessarely best portraid in...
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hi all and very nice discussion happening here. let me throw a question here. before we had smartphones and social media, did people were more sociable with strangers on public transportation? i ask that because this lonelyness issue has been in discussionn for a while including in books such as Alone Together (Turckle), and yet i see photos such as the...
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hi julianne, i also use social media a lot to contact friends and family overseas. but having had 20 some years of my life lived without the internet, i feel we just adapt to each situation. i was an exchange student abroad for one year and very rarely I phoned home (because it was very expensive) so i wrote A LOT of letters to my closest friends and...
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hi lisa, this is a topic that generates SO MUCH debate! there are people and scholars too that argue the exact opposite. that social media made us more vulnerable, exposed and controlled. they argue our participation is now so easy that people participate without really getting involved on a cause, and that, on the other hand, governments found a way of...
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hi lauren, thanks for this very complete description of the many uses we have to social media. it is amazing that most of these things are not even a decade old. i watched a movie recently and at a point, the character, a hotel manager, wonder's where one of her guests are from. she knows the name of the city, but cannot google it!!!
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hi kristian, and thanks for this very complete and well explained answer. my impression is that the alternatives are somewhat exagerations that have the intention of forcing people to pick sides based in what each considers the main feature or concern they have about social media. and you will probably see through the other comments that people choosing...
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this is great, you can help us here!
