Mediatized Sapiens: Communicational knowledge

Göran Bolin 108 the user from revealing his or her standpoint, and the simply refrains fromgiving voice to any opinion at all (NOELLE-NEUMANN, 1974). In a way, this also illustrates the social nature of social me- dia. This social nature was also noted by one of our informants. I felt it strange, and as I said earlier, I became al- most annoyed. Or frustrated maybe. /…/ I think that social media without these interactions removes a rather large part of ‘the social’, or how should I say? It is also interesting how rooted this is in people, and how important that bit is. I did not really know that. This type of reflexivity is not very common as media users navigate the internet in their everyday lives. It has to be provoked, or triggered, for example in an experimental situa- tion such as the one we arranged for our informants. Through this manipulation, users are sensitised to the role metrics play in how they approach social media platforms, and how they act on them. It is only through the disruption of the flow of the everyday that one can prompt people to think about such routine behaviour. Similarly, to how Andrea Mubi Brighenti sees metrics as ‘an atmospheric component of society’, we do not go around reflecting on our relation to metrics, just as we do not go around and think about the ‘air that we breathe’ very often. In late mod- ern ‘media life’ (DEUZE, 2012), the media around us are so naturalised in all our activities, so they appear to us as water to the fish, or indeed, as air to humans. 3. Conclusion: Metric mindsets and the meaning of measurement In the above, I have presented and discussed a meth- odological approach to study the impact of metrics on every- day media use. A special focus has been on how metrics impact on the mindset and social actions of users. This approach has included using software manipulation combined with tradi-

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