There's somewhere else to roam

"A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal a whole rail road."- Theodore Roosevelt

(Bluelyne, 2008)

This quote provides a distinct link to the network I have chosen to infiltrate and observe, GradCafe.com, "where something is always brewing", an online forum, blog space, chat room and poll booth specially tailored to university students. This network interested me not only because of its informative and instructive nature but also because it's a relatively safe and empowering online  place to vent frustrations, only caused by the stress of being a "hard-working" teenager. 

Persona within an online network is the most immediate piece of evidence as to who the user is, or who they want to appear to be. Nearly all GradCafe.com users were anonymous or had a fake username, so that  the comments about their universities couldn't be traced back to them . It's so much easier to express yourself, to give full and honest opinions, when no one knows your true identity. According to Prouty (2009) a flaneur is used to "describe someone adrift in the city, a detached observers strolling through the streets at a leisurely pace", this is the freedom of the users of GradCAfe.com. This safe environment of online networks as well as the empowered feeling of giving an opinion that is listened to by someone is its greatest appeal.

The virtual map you can travel around is so vast on the site, utilising online forums, blog spaces, chat rooms and poll booths. The main page starts from very broad topics such as "the menu", a list of broad study topics slowly winding down to extremely specific personal issues in the respective fields. The topics emboldened, or most commonly viewed, show the dynamics of users and their collective interests. As Dr. Theresa Petray acknowledged Google maps as Euro-centric (Petray, 2013), this site is clearly American-centric due to its northern hemisphere university calendar and most users from American Universities. The site is also easily navigated, with the network "map" used or laid out for the users benefit, giving an appearance of user power.

This power could be considered cooperative in that the users have access to all areas of the site, including making new topics and blog or "tagging along" on others. The appearance of the site also feels accommodating and empowering to the user. The only power held by administrators is a panopticon view of the users and the ability to delete user accounts if rules are broken. In the assigned reading, Barnes states"The flaneur is a suitable metaphoric vehicle for the 'witnessing' of this space because 'the flaneur moves through space and among the people with a viscosity that both enables and privileges vision."(Barnes, 1997) This, in relation to networking, is how users perceive their "travel" through virtual sites. They observe, comment and sometimes dwell but can easily move on to other sites, a wanderer through the virtual world. Therefore even if power is given or taken away from a flaneur, its consequence is not as strongly felt as it would be in the real world.

For more reading material on the flaneur, click here.

Reference List:

Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Cyber-Flaneur. Retrieved from: http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html 


Petray, T. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 3. Maps [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from: http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/  

Prouty, R. (2009). A Turtle on a leash. [Blog] Retrieved from: http://www.learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Roosevelt, T. [Quote] Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/46375-a-man-who-has-never-gone-to-school-may-steal


Image: 


Bluelyne, (2008). University Cartoon [Cartoon]. Retrieved from http://bluelyne.deviantart.com/art/University-Cartoon-174284644