GEOGRAPHIC CONNECTEDNESS IN ORKUT: Exploring relations between Territory and Identity in Social Network Sites

Suely Fragoso
Unisinos, Brazil suely@unisinos.br http://www.midiasdigitais.org

It is widely accepted that the development of transport and communications technologies was driven by the need to overcome spatial barriers that is characteristic of modernity and inherent to capitalism (Baumann, 2001; Harvey, 1999). Understanding modernity as the period in which time has been used against space leaves room for no other conclusion than that, under the pressure of increasingly powerful acceleration technologies, space has become progressively less important. According to this logic, the internet would be an ultimate technology, as, in a situation of radical dematerialization of economy, its global reach would finally have zeroed the friction of distance1, rendering space irrelevant for economic exchange (Gates,1995; Negroponte, 1995) and for social life as a whole (Virilio, 1995; Mitchell, 1995). Based on a history of the technologies of transport and communications, Harold Innis proposed that media biased towards time (understood as those which are durable in character) favour decentralization and heterogeneity, while media biased towards space favour centralisation and are suited to the effective government of wide areas2. In his further developments, Marshall McLuhan identifies electric media with the decentralising power of media biased towards time and, from this idea, derives a concept of global village contrary to the mass model. For him,
[m]any analysts have been mislead by electric media because of the seeming ability of these media to extend man's spatial powers of organization. Electric

This investigation has Benn partially financed by CNPq Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico, Brazil. The author is grateful to Jully Denise Rodrigues and Natacha Nonnenmacher Ktz, who competently supported the collection and systematization of all data presented here. Their work has been sponsored by Unisinos, CNPq Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfico e Tecnolgico and FAPERGS Fundao de Amparo Pesquisa do Rio Grande do Sul.
1

In this context, friction of distance nominates the increase in the cost of goods and services which derive from the need of transportation between the places of their production and consumption. The expression was coined by Bill Gates (The Road Ahead, 1995), for whom universal access to information, via ICTs, would give rise to a friction-free capitalism, in which the cost to produce and distribute any good would tend to zero and information about offer and demand would be equally available for all buyers and sellers. The result would be an immaterial economy in which geographical location of buyers and producers would not matter and middle-men would become unnecessary. 2 Empire and Communications (2007, first published 1950) and The Bias of Communication (1999, first published 1951).

media, however, abolish the spatial dimension, rather than enlarge it. By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale. It is a relation in depth, and without delegation of functions or powers. The organic everywhere supplants the mechanical. Dialogue supersedes the lecture. The greatest dignitaries hobnob with youth. (McLuhan, 1998, 255)

It is not by coincidence that this idea of global village emerges from McLuhans considerations about the telegraph and telephone, that have a network structure. Although he extends his considerations to television and radio, it was only with the popularization of the internet that large scale many-to-many communications really happened. Parallel to the decentralization and pluralism which result from millions of people producing diversified content and communicating with each other, the internet's international reach brings the idea that space has become irrelevant back to the centre of attention. The situation, however, is far from the announced global egalitarian interconnectivity, as access to the internet is far from universal3. Considering these and other limits, it is still possible to say that multi-user online communications systems and environments (MUDs, BBSs, SNSs, MMOGs4, etc) make possible for people to interact independently of their geographical location, favouring associations by affinity. The feeling of belonging tends to disconnect from territory as the development of communities based on shared interests instead of physical location becomes possible. Forty years ago, Licklider and Taylor (1968) had already foreseen this, and twenty five years after them the same idea grounded Rheingolds enthusiasm for virtual communities:
In a virtual community we can go directly to the place where our favorite subjects are being discussed, then get acquainted with people who share our passions or who use words in a way we find attractive. (...) Your chances of making friends are magnified by orders of magnitude over the old methods of finding a peer group. (Rheingold, 1993, online)

This type of rationale led to the conclusion that in the XXI century there would be no geographical separation as all people would be netizens in a single virtual space. When [v]irtually you live next door to every other single Netizen in the world, [g]eography and time are no longer boundaries. Social limitations and conventions no longer prevent potential friendships or partnerships. (Hauben, 1996, online). The absence of geographical obstacles allows for the creation and development of social ties based on other types of affinities. Wellman (2001) sees a correlation between this
3

As in June 2008, little more than 21% of the world population has access to the internet. (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2008) 4 Respectively, Multi-User Dungeons, Bulletin Board Systems, Social Network Services and Massive Multiplayer Online Games.

phenomenon and the historical transition which occurred at the turn from the XIX to the XX century, when community relations reached a new scale as the social ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity5 overcame the limits of immediate neighbourhood towards metropolitan areas. Space Strikes Back Edward Soja (1989) calls attention to the fact that, at least since the last decades of the XIX century, social sciences have privileged historical over geographical approaches and overrated the influence of time over that of space. Following this reasoning, it is possible to say that the conclusion that modernity is, more than anything else, the history of time (Bauman, 2001, p 129) derives from that emphasis on time in preference to space. For Soja, [m]odernization is, like all social processes, unevenly distributed across time and space and thus inscribe quite different historical geographies across different regional social formations (1989, p. 27). For this reason, we must be insistently aware of how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how human geographies become filled with politics and ideology (1989, p. 6). The persistent claims of universal access to the internet despite the obvious heterogeneity of the conditions of access in different regions is a good example, specially when keeping in mind the variations in the conditions of access show a direct correspondence between quality of access and the political and geographical differences amongst regions (Fragoso, 2004). Saskia Sassen (2006) goes in the same direction when she calls attention to the importance of local factors for the dynamics of globalization:
...much of what happens in electronic space is deeply inflected by the cultures, the material practices, and the imaginaries that take place outside electronic space. Much of what we think of when it comes to cyberspace would lack any meanings or referents if we were to exclude the world outside cyberspace. The digital and the nondigital are simply not mutually exclusive conditions. The digital is embedded in the larger societal, cultural, subjective, economic, and imaginary structurations of lived experience and the systems within which we exist and operate. (Sassen, 2006, p. 344).

This approach points towards an entanglement between online and offline spaces which is consistent with the behaviour of users in online communications systems. In daily life, references to offline life are common, going from age-sex-location in text5

The reference is the definition of community presented by Wellman in the same text, namely: networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity (Wellman, 2001, online).

based systems to refined three-dimensional models of physical places in graphical environments (as found in many regions of Second Life, for example Amsterdam or Buenos Aires). Manifestations that directly refer to countries and cities and take the form of interest groups in Social Network Systems, such as the New Delhi6 community in Orkut, or the So Paulo7 network in Facebook, are considered particularly interesting. The most obvious motivation for territorial references in multi-user systems and environments is absolutely practical: one asks sex-age-location with the intention of developing social ties which can be extended to life outside the screen, and this depends, or at least is made enormously easier, if all involved are geographically near. Identity and cultural motivations are also behind the presence of territorial links in online systems and environments. Common interests are more likely amongst people who share the same cultural background, and culture remains to a large extent geographically located (Hall, 2003). On the one had, it is expected that this factor will progressively weaken due both to the growth of technologically mediated interactions and to the increasing mobility of people (Urry, 2007). On the other, territorial binding is reasserted in the context of the "powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalization and cosmopolitanism on behalf of cultural singularity and people's control over their lives and environment (Castells, 1997, p. 2). In this last sense, the apparent objectivity and clear-cut boundaries of territory are a particularly interesting alternative for identity construction and, as such, represent a more subtle aspect of the permeability between online and offline spaces. Spaces continue to be places, where in-person meetings or passive observations provide a tangible sense of personal identity, a feeling of community, readilyavailable support in the form of goods and services, and a literally concrete sense of the past and a future (Casey 1997; Orum and Chen 2002). Physical space continues to contain and shape interactions, providing opportunities and constraints. (Wellman, 2001, online) This work sought to describe and discuss the identitary links users establish with representations of the physical world in online environments and their influence on the interactions that occur in social networks. The main premises have been presented and can be summarised as: a) the boundary between online and offline experience is far more permeable and subtle than the nomenclature (on/off) suggests;
6 7

http://www.orkut.com.br/Community.aspx?cmm=16237 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4046089422

b) this continuity, or possibility of continuity, does not allow for final differentiation between face-to-face and technologically mediated social relations; c) geographic references in online environments and systems are an important asset for the creation and maintenance of online communities; d) physical space, more specifically geographical place8, remains an important factor for the construction and sharing of social identity9. On the basis of these premises and keeping in view the characteristics of the system, in particular the appropriation by Brazilian users, we chose the SNS Orkut (http://www.orkut.com) as the empirical universe for the research. Universe and Sample Orkut was launched by Google in 2004 and rapidly became popular in Brazil. In 2005, nearly 75% of Orkut users were from Brazil10. In December 2007, more than 12 million unique users accessed Orkut in Brazil, which corresponds to more than 68% of all internet users in the country (ComScore, 2007). Some characteristics make Orkut a privileged place for an investigation with the focus we propose. First, the initial proposal included the idea of continuity between social networks online and offline, as stated in the original motto, Who do you know?, and inferred by the need to be invited by a previous user to join the system. Second, participation in Orkut requires the creation of a profile, organized in three layers: social, professional and personal profile. The profile includes specification of nationality11, ethnic group, city, languages, which are relevant for our research 12. Recently Orkut has sharpened its geographical focus as the definition of local now limits access to profiles from other localities, alters visualization options and changes search results for communities and other profiles.

This differentiation between space and place associates the word space to the abstract and depersonalised meanings of its Mathematical and Philosophical interpretations. Place, on the other hand, is linked to the materiality of geographical surroundings and of the socio-cultural construction. 9 By social identity we mean the inseparable facets commonly referred to as individual identity and cultural identity. 10 According to data available in Orkut community Orkut Statistics (http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=34264). This community was created in March 2004 and remains active in June 2008. The reliability of data available in this community regarding the mentioned period has been collected and checked in a previous investigation (Fragoso, 2006). 11 The field is country and therefore could also be interpreted as location. 12 Most information is optional, that is, a user can have a minimum profile.

Numbers summarising the indication of country are made public in an area of Orkut called Demographics. This allowed users to watch the quick growth of the number of Brazilians in the early months of the system. In June 2004, only four months after the launching of Orkut, there were more Brazilian users than users from the US in Orkut. In the following months, a nationalist dispute in which Brazilians aimed at increasing their presence in order to overtake the system took place. The fact that issues of identity were prominent in this dispute (Fragoso, 2006) is the third factor that makes Orkut particularly interesting for our research. This was made even more so by a hoax from the height of this dispute, according to which Google was making Orkut slower for those users who chose Brazil as a country in their profiles. One of the peculiar strategies adopted by Brazilian users in response to the hoax was to incorrectly identify their nationality. At the end of the invasion of Orkut, choosing other nationalities had become a popular Orkut game and it was common to find profiles of Brazilian users linked to countries considered exotic, charming and/or in need of solidarity. More recently, Orkut created the possibility of limiting access to your profile to users from specific countries or regions and indicating other countries appear to have become less popular amongst Brazilians users. The indifference with respect to their national identity that this behaviour suggests is contradicted by the scale of the 2004 dispute and, also, by the existence of an extremely large number of interest groups (called communities in Orkut) the names and descriptions of which emphasise territorial connections with Brazil, with specific Brazilian states or cities. In June 2008, searches for communities with keywords such as brasileiro, gacho or carioca often returned more than 1,000 results. The number of Orkut users who join these communities is also high, in the order of thousands. For example, in 21 June 2008 the community Eu amo ser brasileiro(a)!!! had 204.490 members, EU ME ORGULHO DE SER GACHO 85.292 and Ser Carioca ... 74.719. Communities with the word Brazil and with the names of Brazilian States in place of their corresponding adjectives had even more members (respectively Brasil, 1.253.187; Rio Grande do Sul, 322.053; Rio de Janeiro, 301.551 members). This indicated that the research sample could be constructed from the most popular communities amongst those explicitly linked to Brazilian places (to the country, the States, and their capitals). Searches were performed between 16 and 22 June 2008,

using 53 keywords corresponding to our criteria13. Only six keywords returned less than 1,000 results: Amap (711); Macap (990); Roraima (661); Porto Velho (621); Rio Grande do Norte (175) and Distrito Federal (129). Orkut makes it possible to see up to 996 results for each keyword. Amongst those, we selected the largest communities (sampling was considered finished when an abrupt fall in the number of members was verified. This resulted in no more than 12 communities for any keyword.). The result was a set of 247 communities, which will be referred to as broad sample. Name of those communities, number of members and URL were annotated. Within the first sample, the communities with the largest number of members were selected to compose what we called the restricted sample. Communities that had a name or description that did not indicate link to the corresponding territory were not considered. In unclear cases, the relevance of the community was verified in the subjects discussed in its Forum14. The resulting sample was composed of 53 communities. The communities belonging to the restricted sample were observed more closely and the date of creation of the community, names of owner, co-owners and moderators, language, place, category chosen and description of the community were added to the data formerly collected. Analysis Searches in Orkut used the name of Brazilian States and their capitals, plus Brasil, Brasilia and Distrito Federal as keywords. More than 1,000 communities were found in 47 cases and less than 500 in only two cases. The number of users linked to the 247 communities of the broad sample was high, on average 33,.621 (28,773 when the community Brasil, which has a much larger number of members than the others 1,226,257 was not taken into account). The second community in number of members was So Paulo (425,353) and the smallest
13

Twenty six States and their capitals plus Brasil, Braslia (the countrys capital) and Distrito Federal (the area in which Braslia is included). Two States have the same name as their capitals: So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 14 For example, the largest community for So Paulo would be So Paulo FC-Tricolor, with 842,618 members. However, this is not a community linked to So Paulo State or city, but to the football team. This community was disconsidered in favour of So Paulo, with 425,353 members. The description of this second community was dubious: Welcome to the So Paulo Community, the largest of Orkut in the category Cities and Neighbourhoods! Rules: see the detailed rules of the community... (Bem vindos Comunidade So Paulo, a maior do orkut na categoria Cidades e Bairros! Regras: veja as regras detalhadas da comunidade...). Thus, the community forum was checked and the selection was based on the titles of topics under discussion, which left no doubt that the group had a territorial link, for example Kassab e Serra, Corredor de nibus na Rebouas: planejamento zero, Qual a msica que tem a cara de So Paulo?.

community was MSN Mato Grosso do Sul (1,145). Amongst the 247 communities of the broad sample, 215 had names that indicated territorial links15. All of the communities in the broad sample have names in Portuguese. Communities in the restricted sample have an average of 87,571 members, 65,673 when the largest community, Brasil (1,226,257), is not taken into account. The largest members in the communities was a criterion for the selection of the restricted sample. The second largest community in the restricted sample is So Paulo (425,.353) and the smallest Eu Amo meu Mato Grosso do Sul (1,222). The majority of the communities of the restricted sample were created in 2004, four were created in 2005 and one in 2006. Amongst the 48 communities created in 2004, 42 date from the first semester (between January and July). Amongst the communities created in 2005, only one (Sou Paraba e no nego) has more than 10,000 members (21,835), and the average of members in the communities from 2005 is 9,860 (5,868 when the Paraba community is not considered). The community created in 2006 has 4,429 members. Four of the five youngest communities are amongst the seven smallest in the restricted sample, the exception being Sou Paraba e no nego, which is 37th largest. During the creation of a community, Orkut offers four levels of place definition: city, State, CEP and country. Twenty seven communities indicate only Brasil as their location and only two (So Paulo e So Luis do Maranho) are not linked to the country, only to the cities they represent. All communities in the restricted sample have Portuguese as their language, although two (Amazonas and Manaus) have English versions of part of their descriptions. Both belong to the same person and have the same moderators. The majority of the communities of the restricted sample are distributed between the categories Cities and Neighborhoods (32) and Countries and Regional (18). Three communities are in other categories: Amo a Bahia in Travel; Minas Gerais - MG in Government & Politics; Eu amo Natal RN in Others. The descriptions of the communities of the restricted sample show some well defined patterns and suggest six categories of content: (a) qualifying description of place; (b) official description of place; (c) community rules; (d) online interactions; (e) offline interactions and (f) offline services. Qualifying descriptions are the most frequent content, appearing in the description of 45 communities varying from neutral
15

The majority of others were related to football teams or churches.

(as Boa Vista capital of Roraima, as the saying goes those who drink from the water of Rio Branco always return16) to the most enthusiastic (for example Community dedicated to cearenses [from Cear], be they born in Cear or those who have given their heart to the best State in Brazil17). Expressions such as I love..., for those who are from..., wonderful land, best place are common in the descriptions. No community description has negative content. Official descriptions included historical and geographical data (as With an area equivalent to France and a population of 20 million inhabitants, the State has the second biggest economy in the country...18), links to government sites (for example, www.pbh.gov.br) or the Wikipedia (such as http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/alagoas). These were found in 13 descriptions, only two of which do not have a qualifying description as well. The majority of community descriptions (35) include rules guiding the behaviour of its participants, such as Obs. The manifestation of any type of discrimination against other States or advertising is not allowed, (THE TOPIC WILL BE ERASED, AND THE MEMBER DELETED)19 Seven communities, all from 2004 and with more than 10,000 members, have only a set of rules in their description area. Prohibitions and indications of proper places for certain types of content (as ADVERTISEMENTS FOR NEW COMMUNITIES OR LINKS HERE: http://www...20), are common and also references which suggest the existence of previous conflicts in the history of the community (for example PREJUDICED, THIS COMMUNITY IS NOT FOR YOU. GO AWAY. WE DONT LIKE YOU HERE!21). The description of only 17 communities indicate other options for online interaction, such as a channel or topic for chat (4), ways to make contact with the community managers or indication of a topic for suggestions (6), reference to advertisement of other communities (7) and suggestions of other networking sites (4) 22.
16

The original text in Portuguese reads: Boa Vista capital do Estado de Roraima, ja diz o Ditado "Quem bebe da agua do Rio Branco, sempre volta! 17 Comunidade dedicada aos cearenses, sejam estes os nascidos no Cear ou aqueles que se renderam de corao ao melhor estado do Brasil. 18 Com uma rea equivalente a da Frana e uma populao de 20 milhes de habitantes, o estado tem a segunda maior economia do pas... 19 Obs.: No permitido qualquer manifestao de descriminao a outros estados, propagandas (O TPICO SER APAGADO, E O MEMBRO EXPULSO) 20 ANUNCIO DE NOVAS COMUNIDADES OU LINKS: http://www...
21

PRECONCEITUOSO(A), ESSA COMUNIDADE NO PARA VOC! SAIA DAQUI! VOC NO BENQUISTO AQUI! 22 Each description can have content in more than one category.

Most often the indication of channels and topics for chat are directive and suggest that it is common that the members of the community use forum messages to talk in real time. Explicit indications of offline contact and relationships were found in the description of 9 communities only, being 1 call for 'Orkontros'23, 3 suggestions of local places and parties and 5 indications that members use the community to search for people they met outside Orkut. Advertisements and other offline services appear in 13 descriptions, in 5 cases being information about the place represented by the community, 2 mentions of calls for missing people, job offers, buying and selling goods, 3 links for information or discussion about local politics and 4 directions to advertising in the community. Discussion The number of Orkut communities with names or descriptions that include the names of Brazilian States and their capitals and Brasil, Braslia and Distrito Federal, was extremely high, reaching over one thousand in nearly 90% (88.67%) of cases and being lower than 500 in only two cases (3.78%). It is possible to say that there is a high number of spontaneous24 references to offline places in Orkut. The number of members in these communities confirm their relevance: more than 33,000 in average in the broad sample and more than 87,000 when only the most popular communities are considered (restricted sample). A high proportion (87.04%) of community names which include the keywords are clearly linked to the offline locations. Most communities in the restricted sample (90.56%) were created in 2004. Amongst those, 87.5% date back to the first semester of 2004, the time of the Brazilian nationalist movement in Orkut (Fragoso, 2006). It is, therefore, probable that the creation of these communities was motivated by a desire to express territorial identities. The fact that nearly all communities identified Brazil as their location and 50% did not indicate city, State or CEP reinforces this perception. Communities created in 2005 and 2006 were found to be smaller than the former ones, which could be attributed to their age. However, nearly two years had passed between the creation of the most recent community (Distrito Federal, 13 July 2006) and the observation, which suggests that the size of the community is not a function of its age, but, on the contrary, that the youth

23 24

'Orkontro' is a denomination for offline gatherings of Orkut users. Indications of country, city, State in the profiles are suggested by Orkuts forms. The theme of the communities, on the other hand, is freely defined by users.

of the community is due to a delayed penetration of Orkut in that specific region. The available data is not sufficient to confirm or discard this hypothesis. All communities in the broad sample (and therefore also in the restricted sample) have names in Portuguese. Only two have English versions of part of their descriptions, and both share owner and moderators. This suggests that Brazilians are the target public of these communities, which confirms their identitary vocation. This is reinforced by the fact that many descriptions have appeals such as for those who live here or for those who were born in.... It is also confirmed by the fact that, despite the most frequent location being Brasil, the majority of owners included their communities in a more local category: 60.37% belong to Cities and Neighbourhoods and 33.96% to Countries & Regional. Only one community (Amo a Bahia) is linked to the category Travel, what could indicate a non-identitary function. The name in first person ([I] love) and the description of the community (For those who love this hot and wonderful land25), on the other hand, suggest territorial identity. Qualifying descriptions are included in 84.90% of the communities, mostly with a positive tone. This reinforces the perception that the main function of the majority of those communities, if not of all of them, is to express territorial belonging. This is confirmed by the recurrence of expressions as I am/you are from...; I was/you were born in..., I/you love...; I/you live in.... The constant presence of community rules, frequently in capitals, and the references which suggest previous conflicts, indicate that activity in these Orkut communities is intense. That implies that, at least for a set of members, these communities are not mere identity labels (Tomasini, 2007), that is, simple static declarations of belonging. They are meeting places where people interact. Indication of channels and topics for chat appears in 7.54% of the descriptions. Although relatively rare, its presence indicates the occurrence of real time conversations26 amongst community members and reinforces the perception that these communities function as gathering points for people linked to the places they represent. Explicit indications of offline contacts and relationships are found in a small number of communities, only 16.98% of the restricted sample. In a single community there was reference to offline meetings for the members of the community, all other
25 26

Para os que amam essa terra quente e maravilhosa! Real time dialogue, as in a chat channel, is known to be common amongst heavy Orkut users. Experience suggests that these conversations have different characteristics when they take place in scrapbooks and in communities fora.

cases being suggestions of places or parties in the city or of local services. It is therefore possible to say that there are signs of permeability of interactions in online and offline spaces, but their number was not descriptions of the communities. Conclusion References to Brazilian States and cities in Orkut communities are frequent and it was possible to confirm that some (probably most) of these groups are meant to represent the places mentioned in their names. The majority of the description of the communities suggest that they are intended to function as gathering points for people who live or have lived in the represented places or, in some cases, people who admire or would like to know those places. This design confirms the permeability between online and offline experience, specially in relation to the construction and sharing of social identity. Another realm of continuity between online and offline social relations appear in the offer of services and the advertisement of parties and meeting places. Comparing to the signs of the identitary function, these explicit indications of social interaction appeared in few communities. However, the presence of rules in the majority of the descriptions suggests intense interaction among community members, specially as they frequently mention a channel or topic for chat and make reference (indirect in many cases) to previous conflicts. Thus, it is rather possible that few signs of interactions among users were found due to the design of the sample, which focused data about the communities and not about the interactions that take place in them. Future work intending to address social interactions in Orkut communities and their offline counterparts should direct themselves to the communities' fora. It could be interested to interview community owners and moderators and even some members in order to confirm (or not) the importance of the community for characterisation of territorial identity in a personal level. Those users could also shed some light on the permeability of online and offline social relations, how important territory is for them and the effectiveness of Orkut communities as gathering points. Bibliographic References
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significant and they were rather subtle in the

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