We're all mapped in the end

Photo credit: Linkurious.us

Building off of ideas around power and place and space we are introduced the concept of maps and mapping. Generally if you think of maps your mind is brought to the traditional idea of a map, one that shows geographical layouts. Though one characteristic that is true of all maps is that they help us shape and navigate the spaces and the networks that we live and operate within (Kuttainen, 2017). Keeping in mind that places and spaces are what we make them, as in a place or space to one can be different to another, all maps share similarities in that they are designed according to the creator and users perspective or particular needs or ‘truths’ (Wood, et al, 2006).

Coming back briefly to the idea of place and space then building on it with the idea of the flaneur and the existence the flaneur in web based spaces. When thinking of the flaneur as an outsider or ‘lurker’ it seems obvious that they can exist quite easily in online social networks (Prouty, 2009). As this blog is looking more specifically at LinkedIn that’s what I’ll address. A flaneur can certainly exist on LinkedIn but from what I’ve made of how it works you couldn’t operate effectively as someone who doesn’t interact directly with their environment as it requires you to interact directly with people in order to fulfil its purpose of creating your own networked map.  Also if you look at the flaneur as an instigator or ‘troll’ who causes issues and then leaves, LinkedIn isn’t designed in the way where behaviour like this would be effective or even particularly possible.

The purpose of LinkedIn is quite simply to connect person (dot) to person (dot) and by doing so, open you up to other ‘dots’ and as such expand your map double fold and so on. On the idea of literally mapping your LinkedIn network, earlier on in the networks history they did include a feature where this was actually possible. LinkedIn would allow you to compose your ‘dots’ in a literal sense and see a visual representation of this. While this is no longer possible on LinkedIn itself there are still third party sites that allow you to do this, the photo in the banner is an example of this. The fact that after the in-house feature was disabled third party sites enabled this shows that people are interested in having a literal mapped representation of their LinkedIn network.

Lastly coming back to earlier in the blog, now that I’ve talked about the idea of LinkedIn linking people like dots, each network or map will look very different from each personal perspective even though they are more or less of the same thing. This re-affirms what wood et al (2006) said in their paper about how the same event experienced by multiple people will look different depending on what view or perspective they have.

REFERENCES

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, week 4 notes [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: http://learnjcu.edu.au

Prouty, R. (2009). A turtle on a leash,  

Wood, D, Kaiser, W and Abramms,B. (2006). Seeing through maps:Many ways to see the world, New Internationalist Publishing

Jean Villedieu ,Linkurious, (2014), LinkedIn inmaps discontinued: how to visulize your professional noetwork now?

, retrieved from https://linkurio.us/blog/linkedin-inmaps-discontinued-visualize-network-now/