Web 2.0 y Redes sociales en la literatura peruana
By Américo Mendoza-Mori
1. Introduction
2. What is the Web 2.0?
3. Hypertextual Peruvian Literature: Blogs
4. Videos and Literature
5. The Facebook Experience
6. When the social networks arrive
7. Taking advantage of those tools
8. RELIT's Page
9. Conclusions and bibliography
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Introduction
The revolution that we call ’Web 2.0’ has less ten years but it has become an everyday issue in a very short time and many of us cannot imagine our lives without it. Not only because it had offered a new personal and social experience but also because it had been used as an economical, politic and cultural platform.
In this work I will try to show how that also had been used in the literary field in the Peruvian context and the influence and perspectives of it for the future. At the same time, I will not only try to explain the Peruvian literary virtual space, but test the effectively of the system also through a project (Red Literaria Peruana’s Page in Facebook) .
First is necessary to know the context of how the internet became a place (or non-place) of interest for the institutions and agents that in the beginning didn’t find a way to take advantage of it and now it looks as one of the most interesting markets for the present and the future. Enrnesto Laddaga explains the situation:
An increasing number of artists and writers presuppose that the space of circulation defined by print capitalism (public space of the classical type) is declining, while a different space of circulation (let us call it “Webspace” is extending and becoming the support for new forms of subjectivization and community formation. (451).
We will work considering this idea of ‘Webspace, where all the participants construct a subjectivation of themselves at the time they get involve on the different virtual platforms.
While this work is not focused on how literature gets economic profit with the social networks, is unavoidable to mention that this is an important element and many companies of agents join the network because of that. Money is not the only reason, is also a way to be recognized and become important; those Peruvian institutions and literary agents get in to this game of exposing their immaterial labor. Thus, by the time they participate and interact, they are ‘commoditizing’ their intellectual or literary work. We should be surprised that Facebook is seen as a “una empresa constructora en la enorme Webpolis , una compañía que vende publicidad basándose en redes sociales" (Kiektik Sullivan, 1).[i]
What is the Web 2.0?
Image from Alfresco The Web 2.0 started as a new internet era where direct interaction between users is the most important part: no more static contents. The best example of how things changed can be found on the blogs. Blogs offered to their visitor the opportunity of participate through leaving comments and opinions of the articles posted there. Then social networks appeared: platforms that offered even more possibilities. Dana Boyd and Nicole Ellison offer us a definition of that:
We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (1)
Examples of social networks are Facebook, Youtube and Myspace, platforms where the users have account and they are allowed to share information after the sign up. When they sign up they are also becoming a part of a particular virtual community. Facebook and Youtube have less than six years online and they control most of the social interaction on the web
Is not complicated to find a link because social networks, blogs and intellectual-literary work. Both consider creation, discussion and generations of ideas as very important elements. Adam Penenberg show that this just what happens on the web: “users, enthusiastically disseminate ideas, information, opinión, links to blogs, potos, videos, and Web services” (13). That means that the web is a proper context to offer similar real discussion spaces.
Those virtual networks are based in info-generation and they need constantly interaction. Penenberg´s proposal points out that the way how social networks and Web 2.0 work is through what he calls ‘viral loops’, a kind of rhizomatic reading where we are nothing if where not linked by somebody else. He makes a really easy question: pregunta es muy sencilla: “What sense of being on Facebook if none of your friends are?” (13). However, this ‘rhizomatic Reading is an illusion: we are immersed inside the universe of a portal (Facebook, Sónico, etc) and we cannot do anything against it. We depend on a platform. So, when institutions and agents want to participate in the social networks universe they need to convince people (users) to follow and interact with them. Is not just to ‘join the community, they have to construct attractive contents.
Not considering this Webspace 2.0 would be dangerous. 2/3 of internet participants use social networks[i]. We have to consider that just only Facebook has more than 300 million active users[ii] and about a billion o the videos are reproduced daily on Youtube. If Facebook were a country, it would the fourth biggest behind China, India an the United States. Just in the US, at least one third of the internet users update weekly their ‘status’ in a social network. With that information, how literature can avoid this ‘space’?
Is not only about to look for new mechanisms. Internet, allows to expose new agents and all we need is a computer. Thus, is possible to have more mediators, opening the possibility of descentralize traditional nodes of enunciation. Laddaga knows that and that’s why he promotes new ways of interaction in different art disciplines, where also collective work is sometimes even more important than the final work. With Youtube and Blospot was possible to have new ‘celebrities’ that we might probably wouldn’t know just with traditional media.
In some literary circuits there is still some prejudges about new technologies, while in other arts disciplines is more disseminated. How new technologies are manifested in literary practices, especially in creation? When Agustin Fernández Mallo writes about poetry, he shows that this genre is ankylosed if we compared with the plastic arts; “Quiza por primera vez en la Historia…se da el caso de que un movimiento artístico no tenga su correlato en la poesía. El poeta se ha quedado atrás” (26). And, not just the poets, but also the critics that is just beginning to learn how to adapt himself to the new technologies.
Taking a look at Facebook, could we call this platform an aesthetic product , and could be compare it with an academic debate of with a literary work? I looks like for now no, but its importance as a tool for dialogue is growing every day. Considering a question that Alejandro Piscitelli makes about another discipline: : “¿Puede hacerse filosofía usando el hipertexto?” (32), and the answer is ‘Yes’, as well as we could make it with the regular text.
In the United States, country where most of the internet companies are based, we can track how the Web 2.0 is not just a ‘curious’ tool but also has played and important role in society, like in the 2008 presidential elections ,when Barack Obama hired one of the Facebook founders to promote his campaign with young people. Also, since his term in the government started, the White House (and many other Government Agencies) launched a Twitter Account and a Blog. Is a new way to capitalize the anxiety of virtual users, letting them express with those tools.
As the same way that it happens in the first-world countries, is it possible that virtual media may become so important in Latin American? While not to many people have internet access in their houses, (compared with the 80 percent in the US), in countries like Peru the phenomenon of ‘cabinas de internet’ (cybercafés) spread in many cities, allows internet access to many people with a reasonable price. Thus, is not a mere coincidence that Peru is world- ranked 34 in the use of social networks[iii].
Peruvian Internet phenomenon are usually famous in the musical field, with ‘outsiders’ singers like La Tigresa del Oriente[iv] and La Pequeña Wendy Sulca[v] (who bécame famous on TV afther their uploaded videos on Youtube) and also some film projects like ‘12 Pack’ (a movie about peruvian surfers) that had the premiere on Facebook.
The fact that most of the internet phenomenon in Peru are related with entertainment doesn´t mean that are the only ones. In the cultural and literary area they probably don’t get millions of visits, but thousand of user participate and get involved in a social network and blog to produce literary work.
[ii] Información Oficial de Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Hypertextual Peruvian Literature.
Moleskine Literario, blog by Ivan Thays
The first approach to the Web 2.0 in Peru was through the use of blogs. Many people posted poems and stories, but also critic articles and literary agendas. The boom of the blogs was between 2004 and 2007. Some Peruvian well-known writers and academics like Gustavo Faverón, Ivan Thays, Rocío Silva Santisteban, Santiago Roncagliolo and recently Julio Ortega started to publish binnacles on the web. Faveron and Ortego don´t live in Peru, but their blogs allow them to have presence in the local discussion. Some of them, like Thays, realized that the next step to don´t lose the virtual interaction was join in the world of the social networks. His blog, Moleskine Literario now has a page in Facebook and Twitter.
Blog by Julio Ortega
Is a social network the same as a blog? Ricahrd Grassman and Peter Case explain that a social network is “a relational complex ma de up by subject positions that are mediated by an online platform whose purpose is to facilitate inter-subjective interaction” (177). A Blog, is mainly a virtual binnacle with comments. There is interaction, but there is not still the idea of ‘being part’ of a community. Some cultural blogs like ‘Gran Combo Cub’ and ‘La gran Combi were created as groups of people with the interest of making a ‘blog colectivo’, but those were not exactly ‘virtual communities’.
Social networks are also in Xbox and computer games like Second Life[i] were is applied the precept of making random people (who, at the beginning don’t have nothing in common) a part of a community. People from different cities, ages and lifestyles participate and become a part of a new heterogeneous virtual-body.
Before the appearance of Facebook, blogs were aiming to create this virtual community. Many independent journals use them to expose corruptions government scandals because they were banned by traditional media (Tv, radio). Peruvian Blogs used a platform to be connected: Perublogs, a website that tried to be like a social network of bloggers. Perublogs offered a ranking of Peruvian blogs. Many unkown people became famous in the literary field thanks to their blogs and the already know people found there an opportunity to show a new facet of them. For example, Ivan Thays, but also the scholar and professor Camilo Fernández Cozman (his blog became one of the most visited in Peru).
But, what happened with the blogs? They are still useful. However, why they started to lose popularity? The interface of Facebook was presented as more interactive but also more safety. In the blogosphere trolls, spam and anonymous comments were growing every day. However many academic debates are registered in blog like ‘El hablador’ (by former literature students) and ‘Puente Aéreo (by G. Faverón), both managed by literary critics. The innovation was based on switching from the traditional space and try to create a more democratic forum.
Facebook is more interactive and with more functions allowed to post more things. Since simple things (“I´m tired), posting events (my birthday party, a conference, a music festival) and being part of a debate in a more secure environment.
Suddenly, instead of receiving invitations to book presentations by e-mail, it was more easier to create and event on Facebook and share the invitation with contacts. Thus, many business started to create profiles in this social networks.
However still blogs keep one of the most important chapter of the history of Peruvian Literature in the Web 2.0 age and the protagonist was not precisely a person who was in the ‘literary circle’. A young journalist, Renato Cisneros started in 2007 (until February 2010) a blog called ‘Busco Novia’[ii] that became on the most visited in country, for office workers. The blog had a simple but popular thematic: stories of he conquered many woman, a kind of a Peruvian-urban and contemporary Don Juan. If was not the first Peruvian blog, was the first to show the effect of the Web 2.0 in literature. In 2008, Santillana Press made a book of the blog: Busco Novia: el libro del blog, and according to the author[iii], the original idea was just only to publish a selection of the posts from the blog, but then Santillana decided to include reader comments that were selected by readers. The final product was a Book 2.0.
In the early 2000, Terra.com also published every week one chapter of Jaime Bayly´s book Los amigos que perdí , but with a static format. Is with Cisneros, when the 2.0 show their influence in the ‘Peruvian-real world’. It is important to point out that Real and virtual world are not separated dimensions. They are linked and one influence the other.
What was not accepted because it was too ‘massive’ suddenly was impossible to avoid. Many people joined the 2.0 world, but not all followed the basic rule: interaction.
Most interactive blogs became the most popular ones. Many blog author though that posting articles was enough, but they didn´t realize of responding to the comments left by their readers. The ones who did it finally succeed and received more visitors.
[iii]Interview made by Marco Sifuentes for the blog Utero.pe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=173ZaOFLVpw
Videos and Literature
Webs with videos were also a good alternative for the discussion. The Web Porta 9[i], offered articles and also videos with interviews or discussions to many writers.
The decade of 2000 was as well the boom of independent publishers in Peru: Estuendomudo, Borrador, Tranvías, Matalamanga, etc and because of their small budgets they looked for alternative ways to promote themselves instead of paying for publicity in traditional media. Many of the created blogs and also videologs. Borradores Editores was the first group that made an internet transmission of the Lima International Book Fair in 2008. They made interviews to different writers, including Mario Vargas Llosa[ii], but also was the first publisher that made a homemade Video-Trailer in 2007 for one of their books: ‘El Círculo Blum’ by Luis Zúñiga. In 2010, the author of the ‘Libro del Blog’, Renato Cisnero also had a trailer (with more budget) for his first novel Nunca confiés en mí, published in Alfaguara[iii]. Borrador Editores also made another trailer and it’s probably that won´t be that the last one.
A Video Trailer for a book? Why not? Is there is a ‘libro del blog’, it is possible to have also a ‘libro del Facebook’ or ‘Libro del Twitter’.
Renato Cisneros' book trailer
The Facebook Experience
Facebook
Is it possible to talk about an aesthetic experience of Facebook? Facebook platform had the precedents of Myspace and Hi5 (in Latin America), who functioned as places to have a personal profile, share photos, music (specially MySpace) and be in touch with friends.
Every profile was and is an opportunity to show the best of ourselves. We can re-create ourselves. Is very improbable that somebody wants to upload ugly photos of share negative information. Those internet sites offer the possibility to expose ourselves to ‘the others’ in the way we want to. Is a kind of universe that pretends to rebuild us again
But the appearance of Facebook also brought new tools: the possibility of value the publications of our contacts and new feed of our friends. We can know everything they publish in real time. Those are tools that increase the possibility of subjectivation of the participantes. Is not necessary to find ‘other´s life’ information, the information comes to us.
The Facebook experience starts since we log in to the site. Before than a literary, politic or economic experience we feel that is a personal experience and a new source or information. For example, when I log in, the first thing I see if my friends are happy, is they started a relationship or if the like The Matrix or the music of Silvio Rodríguez.
As well as me, they want to show (or show-off) them through this platform. Facebook was no initially like that; they added the instant format from Twitter. Now, instead of talking by phone, is possible to know what happens in my social circuit in few seconds every times I log in and I don’t even have to find the information.
This necessity to show our lives and look for the others information could be sometimes a narcissist (and voyeurist) experience where the personal profile construction can be assumed as a way to improve of ourselves in the society. The extra exposition in the social networks can be also negative if we spend too much time there and also because some companies find their potential employees there before hiring them.
Veronica Palowski made a video caricaturizing the risks of being obsessed with Facebook.
The platform and their functions can distract us. Sometimes we use Facebook by defect.
“El hecho literario ha dejado de existir como fasinación; esa fascinación la producen ahora esos objetos no estrictamente literarios: computadoras, DVD, teléfonos móviles, pantallas, en las que la literatura, el texto, se ve relegado a mero vehículo o pretexto que nos conduce a esas nuevas “maravillas”; es más maravilloso el Iphone que el contenido que alberga ese iPhone” (Fernández Mallo, 75)
Is true that the virtual world has influence in the real one, but sometimes we may foget which one id the important one. Facebook allow us to send ‘gifts’ like roses to the girl we like, o to poke somebody; but all of those things are not real-real.
Every day is harder to differentiate the fine line between what it is real and virtual and if the form is more attractive form us than the essence of thethings. Facebook received more visits than Google in the US and has recently launched a application that pretends to merge Youtube, Twitter , Google and other webs in its system.
Thus, while we listen to a song in Pandora (internet radio) we can use the Facebook ‘Like’ button and see that one of our friends also like the same music.
Is this experience surrounding us too much? For Spivak this is how it works in our current capitalist system, “Globalization is the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere…The globe is in our computer. No one lives there. It allow us to think that we can aim to control it” (72).
In another example, we can see how a new from the Centro Cultural de España in Lima is offered in my Facebook profile. There are already 6 people who valued the same new.
Since this moment, we are creating ‘collective information’ but at the same time reinforcing the pretension of the positive aesthetic of the site. Alejandro Piscitelli created a workshop called ‘Proyecto Facebook’ where he posted the process of the seminar an he show this positive pretension of the social network: We post our best pictures, we ‘Like’ others’ comments, but get cannot dislike then (there is no button to do that).
Facebook offer us the freedom to ‘express ourselves’ but at the same time we have to agree many conditions to be part of it. Privacy in social networks is now a controversial issue even in politic debates[i]. But we have to keep in mind, that as a ‘viral loop’ today, it could be an old thing tomorrow.
[i]US Senate claimed for privacy in social networks http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=92b96ffd-3547-46bc-abc5-8d61dc39175a
When the Social Networks arrive
The first incursions of the social networks in the Literary Peru where through Facebook. At the beginning was rare to received a message with the phrase: ‘Editorial Planeta wants to be your friend’, but then we became used to it. Most of the independent publishers signed up to Facebook to post their book presentations and news.
Many publishers still have regular profiles, but some of them have switch to the ‘Page’ option, that allows them more option: for example, people can become ‘fans’ of them.
The ‘Page’ interface makes easer the interaction between users and companies-institutions. It is not necessary to have to ‘add’ o ‘accept’ every single person. The ‘Page’ also offers statistics of their participant users. It is possible to know have people are part of it, their age, sex, country and how often do they interact with the page.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
