The Unsaid
Here are some reasons I think of posts I want to make on Tumblr (though most apply to any social network or tool) and then don’t write them.
- I don’t find the time.
- I decide the post won’t be interesting.
- I realise I’m just saying “ditto” and click ‘like’ instead.
- I know the post will cause arguments I don’t feel like having.
- I can’t get the idea to come out well enough.
- I get sidetracked into writing a different post instead.
- I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about the topic.
- I change my mind or realise I’m wrong while writing.
The last one of these is the odd one out: it’s the only thing which would make the content of my unposted posts any less “authentic” or true than a posted one. Everything else is stuff I think but don’t end up sharing.
The unsaid poses a problem for social media researchers. As Rosie Campbell points out in this piece, the issue with wild data derived from social media is that it provides only a partial view of an individual. There’s a huge self-selection bias, Campbell says, in what people present of themselves on social media.
And she’s right, though I’m actually not that worried about what Campbell calls the “faux-” ness of social media. Any social context involves self-performance and once you understand that context you can make useful statements about the performance and the insight you get from it. A social media researcher should be no more blind to the context of social media than an ethnographic researcher is to the context of the kitchen or bathroom or what have you. Whether researchers live up to these standards is another question but there’s no theoretical barrier to it.
Except here’s where the unsaid comes in. Unmade posts can’t be analysed, by definition, so it’s tempting to construct a model of social media in which the unsaid is qualitatively less relevant (or authentic) than the said, as follows:
1. Posting nothing is easier than posting something (and more common, as any community manager knows).
2. So there must be barriers to posting something.
3. So when someone posts something, they’ve overcome these barriers, so it must be more important or meaningful to them than the things they didn’t post.
Well, maybe. But I think this is overlooking something important. When you’re contributing to social media you’re not acting in a vacuum - you’re knowingly making a contribution to a network of information which you perceive and understand through reading it. So your choice as to whether to contribute or not will be - duh! - highly socialised. At least four of the reasons I gave above for not writing something are based on my perception of my network, what they already know, what they don’t, how they are likely to react.
My not saying something doesn’t remotely mean I care about it less, just that I don’t see value in adding it to my network (it might mean I think my friends care about it less, for instance). I don’t know how typical I am in this level of thoughtfulness, but it seems to me something most social media users learn about, and set their own boundaries around.
How to tap into the unsaid? It’s very difficult. At the very least, though, it requires a better understanding of the networks individuals build and consume information through. What is said and done online is the product of these networks as much as the product of an individual. Social media is as much collaborative as expressive. Or in other words, if you really want to understand what someone said, you have to also understood what they’ve read.
