Uudet kanssakäymisen ja -elämisen alustat, kuten sosiaaliset mediat, haastavat arvonannon sosiologiaa kahtalaisesti. Yhtäältä on kysyttävä, miten uudet kommunikaatiotavat vaikuttavat arvonantoon eli määritelmiimme siitä, mikä on merkityksellistä tai kiinnostavaa. Toisaalta herää kysymys, mitä arvonannon uusien formaattien kautta voidaan kertoa maailman muutoksesta. Pragmaattisen arvonannon sosiologian analyysityökaluja soveltaen tutkin, miten arvonannon prosessit rakentuvat eri formaateissa. Tutkimus jakautuu kahteen osaan. Ensimmäinen keskittyy arvonannon visuaalisiin formaatteihin ilmastoaiheisissa Instagram-kuvissa. Toisessa osassa tutkitaan arvonannon formaatteja deittailusovelluksissa. Yhdistämällä digitaalisen intiimiyden, visuaalisen analyysin ja pragmaattisen arvonannon sosiologian suuntauksia tutkimus tuottaa uuden tavan käsitteellistää ja tutkia digitalisoituvaa yhteiskuntaa. Sen myötä ymmärrämme paremmin tapoja, joilla osallistutaan yhteiskunnassa ja toisaalta sitä vallitsevaa algoritmisen arvottamisen logiikkaa, jonka puitteissa navigoidaan ja rakennetaan suhdetta itseen, muihin ja ympäröivään maailmaan. Arvonannon formaatteja on tutkittava ymmärtääksemme miten ihmisten yhdessä toimimisen tapa ja sitä myötä esimerkiksi demokratiamme rakentuu ja muuttuu.

 

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My dissertation project, "Formats of Valuation in Digital Culture," asks how living with social media shapes the sites, practices, and cultures of valuation. Drawing on the emerging trans-Atlantic tradition of sociology of valuation (Lamont 2012; Krüger et al. 2024), valuation refers to the social process of assigning and organizing worth - to ourselves, each other, and the world around us (Thévenot 2001; 2007; 2015; Lamont 2012; Krüger et al. 2024). In particular, the increasing “online-ness” of different aspects of our daily lives and society links to the sociology of valuation in two ways. On the one hand, we need to ask how new formats of communication mediate our sense of value, i.e. our definitions of what is valuable, important, or ‘worthy’, and how the digital formats are used to express these valuations. On the other hand, we need to find out what we can learn about the social world when we look through these new formats: for example, what do posts, profiles, and affordances in different social media tell us about values, ideals, and norms in our times?

The dissertation seeks answers to these questions from two empirical fields: visual climate activism on Instagram and online dating apps. These cases represent two different aspects typical of the wider ecology of social media and digital culture: visuality and intimacy. Drawing from a large dataset of European climate activists’ images on Instagram, the first two articles use a novel, ethnography-informed categorisation method (Maltezos et al. 2024) as a starting point for theory-driven analyses on the plurality of visual argumentation in social media images. The other empirical data consist of 30 interviews with Finnish dating app users, focusing on users’ own experiences of dating apps as sites of valuation through categorization of the self and others. In contrast to many contemporary analyses, both empirical cases focus on the everyday practices of social media users, still often overlooked in scholarly work on social media.

While the empirical data is gathered from Europe, both empirical cases represent and describe the impact that mostly US-based social media platforms have on culture, social lives, and politics globally. Understanding this profound development ongoing in our societies, the thesis draws from both American and European literature, particularly from the field of valuation studies, complemented by concepts and tools from case-relevant subfields such as visual studies, politicization theories, and critical platform studies. Bringing the combination of a long tradition of sociological theorizing and contemporary conceptualisations of digital culture to the empirical site of particular social media platforms contributes to a better understanding of our daily lives with social media. From the perspective of sociological theorizing, it pushes forward the ongoing discussion on sociology of valuation by shedding light on how social media platforms define the limits and possibilities of online experiences and encounters, often informed by standards of the mainstream audiences and profitability (Fourcade and Healy, 2024).

 

Lisätietoja / More information:

Juulia Heikkinen

University of Helsinki Research Portal

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