{"id":4675,"date":"2012-10-16T01:02:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T06:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/?p=4675"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:31:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T20:31:25","slug":"the-interweaving-of-digital-life-with-real-life-politics-on-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markdroberts\/2012\/10\/16\/the-interweaving-of-digital-life-with-real-life-politics-on-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"The Interweaving of Digital Life with Embodied Life – Politics on Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Once upon a time, it was possible to speak of digital life as something distinct from real life. But that time is no longer, for most of us, at least. Digital life has utterly permeated physical life for multiple millions of people who, because of digital social media and mobile technology, are never disconnected from the Internet or from each other. It becomes increasingly difficult to say that online experience is any less real than embodied experience (even though the word \u201creal\u201d comes from the Latin res<\/em>, which means \u201cmatter or thing. In fact, it makes less and less sense to think of our lives as divided into distinct digital and real domains. That\u2019s why I\u2019m experimenting with the word \u201cembodied,\u201d even though \u201creal\u201d still seems fairly popular.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Case in point: \u201cPolitical spats on Facebook spill into real life.\u201d<\/a> This USA Today<\/em> story by Laura Petracca documents what makes intuitive sense to me:<\/p>\n

\n

Most people know the social dangers of discussing politics at family gatherings, cocktail parties and the workplace. But the rise of Facebook brings about a tempting \u2014 and treacherous \u2014 territory to engage in such commentary.<\/p>\n

It takes just a few posts to inadvertently damage a friendship, put a rift in family relations, alienate a once-friendly neighbor or infuriate a colleague.<\/p>\n

Mix together a divided country and hot-button political issues and Facebook commentary can become an online landmine.<\/p>\n

According to Petracca, Facebook is playing a much more significant role in this year\u2019s election than in the 2008 election. Among other things, the fact that ten times as many people are on Facebook helps to explain this change. Yet, the peculiar non-physicality of Facebook communications can encourage people to post on someone\u2019s wall what they would not say to that person face-to-face. Fighting on Facebook has led to the loss of friendship, not just in the Facebook sense, but also in the embodied-life sense.<\/p>\n

Petracca considers various ways to avoid such unpleasantness. But what I find most interesting about her article is one more piece of evidence that demonstrates the interweaving of digital life with embodied life. Yet, this relatively new situation calls for careful thought about how we live in relationship with others, how we communicate when online, what we share and what we keep private, etc.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I\u2019ll consider another curious and sometimes disconcerting implication of our interwoven digital and embodied lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, it was possible to speak of digital life as something distinct from real life. But that time is no longer, for most of us, at least. Digital life has utterly permeated physical life for multiple millions of people who, because of digital social media and mobile technology, are never disconnected from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":4676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[358,244,17091],"class_list":["post-4675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-facebook","tag-politics","tag-relationships"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Interweaving of Digital Life with Embodied Life - Politics on Facebook<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Once upon a time, it was possible to speak of digital life as something distinct from real life. 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