Mary Chayko1 Book excerpt

Rutgers University Received: 26.09.2019.

UDK: 316.472.4:004.738.5
316.613.4:[316.77:004.738
DOI: [Link]

REALITY, EMOTIONALITY, AND INTIMACY

IN DIGITAL SOCIAL CONNECTING: THE
EXPERIENCE OF BEING SUPERCONNECTED2

Stvarnost, emocionalnost i intimnost pri digitalno-

društvenom povezivanju: iskustvo superpovezanosti

ABSTRACT: The below excerpt from Superconnected: The Internet, Digital

Media, and Techno-Social Life focuses on what I have learned about the reality,
emotionality, and intimacy of the digital experience in the course of interviewing
over 200 people and reviewing related research from a number of disciplines,
including Sociology, Psychology, Communication, Media Studies, and Information
Science. Over and over again, those whom I have interviewed tell me that digital
life is real life and is filled with activities and moments that have great meaning
for them. For more on the context for these interviews, my research methodology,
and the multidisciplinary research that I reviewed and synthesized, please see the
second edition of Superconnected, in English or in Serbian. And please note that
a third edition of Superconnected is slated to be published by Sage Publications
(Thousand Oaks, CA, USA) in 2020.
KEY WORDS: Internet, digital life, online relationships, emotionality, intimacy

APSTRAKT: Izvod iz knjige Superpovezani: internet, digitalni mediji i tehno-

društveni život govori o onome što sam saznala o stvarnosti, emocionalnosti
i intimnosti digitalnih iskustava više od 200 ljudi koje sam intervjuisala kao
i na osnovu analize relevantnih istraživanja iz oblasti sociologije, psihologije,
komunikologije, medijskih studija i informacionih nauka koje sam sprovela.

1 [Link]@[Link]
2 In September of 2019, I visited Belgrade, Serbia to launch the translation of my book
Superconnected (2017) into Serbian – Superpovezani (2019). I spoke about the book to many
audiences, including members of the general public at the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, a
group of teachers, librarians, and psychologists as part of the Digitalni Pogon conference, and
as the keynote speaker for the international academic conference “New Horizons in Culture,
Media, and the Arts” sponsored by the University of the Arts’ Faculty of Dramatic Arts. It
was a wonderful trip made more special by the opportunity to share my research into digital
social connectedness with so many people from a wide variety of backgrounds. I am happy to
have the opportunity to share some of my research in this volume of Sociologija as well.
514 SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LXI (2019), N° 4

Iznova i iznova su mi oni koje sam intervjuisala govorili da je digitalni život

zapravo stvarni život i da je iz njihove perspektive on ispunjen veoma značajnim
aktivnostima i događajima. Za više detalja o samom kontekstu ovih intervjua,
istraživačkoj metodologiji i multidisciplinarnom istraživačkom pristupu molim
vas pogledajte drugo izdanje moje knjige Superpovezani koje je objavljeno na
engleskom i srpskom jeziku (Clio, 2019). Ovom prilikom želim da dodam da je
u pripremi i treće izdanje ove knjige koje će objaviti Sage Publications (Thousand
Oaks, CA, USA) tokom 2020. godine.
KLJUČNE REČI: Internet, digitalni život, onlajn veze, emocionalnost, intimnost

Reality, Presence, and Proximity

Digital life is, simply, real life. The reality of living with technology,
especially in computerized/digital form, is sometimes described as an augmented
reality (Jurgenson, 2012a), which means that digital technology has enhanced,
or augmented, the environment to a significant extent. For people who live in
technology-intensive societies, this happens all the time. But the truth is that
even before the age of computerization, life has been augmented by technology.
From the earliest of times, human beings have created tools that would enable
them to build shelters, use fire, colonize the natural world, transmit information
to one another, and defend their territories—in short, to do whatever it took to
survive. As is discussed in Chapter 2 of Superconnected, the invention of spoken
and then written languages allowed people to make greater sense of the raw
phenomena they encountered every day and to communicate in increasingly
more abstract and complex ways across time and space. People have always used
tools and technologies to build and augment their societies. In modern societies,
all kinds of ICTs enable the transmission of concepts and ideas.
Online experiences, and the social connections and environments created
with the assistance of digital technologies, are a critical component of modern
techno-social life in which people’s responses are genuine, meaningful, and often
profound. When we are online, our brains and bodies think and feel and act.
We may experience bodily fatigue or pain, worry or be delighted, make a friend
or become involved in an altercation, strengthen a relationship or destroy one.
What a person does online has an influence on the rest of one’s life because it
is a part of that life, not a separate thing. It is important, then, to think about
and describe this environment in ways that highlight its realness—for example,
not to call the face-to-face realm IRL (which means “in real life” and wrongly
promotes the idea that the face-to-face sphere is more real than the digital).
In my interviews with people who find and form connections over the
internet, I heard many descriptions of how unexpectedly deep and authentic
these connections could become. For example, as a member of an online group
dedicated to religion told me,
I didn’t come (to this online group) looking for friendship, and am
surprised at how some of the regular posters have become real people to
me. Some of them just have a very personal way of expressing themselves
Mary Chayko: Reality, Emotionality, and Intimacy in Digital Social Connecting 515

that I’ve come to recognize, and sometimes, to like very much. This has
nothing to do with spelling or mental brilliance or even depth of faith,
for that matter. I think what draws me to some people here is their
authenticity and their willingness to be imperfect. But even the ones I
don’t especially like have touched my heart to the extent that I sometimes
worry about them and wish I could reach through the computer and
help them, somehow. In fact, now that I think about it, it is amazing how
real some of these distant, unseen, frequently anonymous message board
posters have become. But, of course, they are real! (Chayko, 2002, p. 114)
The authentic and deeply personal nature of the connections and
communities that are formed in digital spaces has been a common theme
throughout my research.
People also told me that they felt that they could get to know very well even
those individuals whom they encountered exclusively online, absent any face-
to-face interaction. In response to my request for a description of the “personal”
nature of the online relationship, one young woman mused,
How can it be personal? It feels like it is. If people said, “Oh, gee, do
you know so and so?” I would say yes. I wouldn’t say, “Oh well, I met him
once.” I’d say, “Oh yes, I know him.” (Chayko, 2002, p. 86)
Because online social connections are so often experienced as absolutely
real and deeply personal, it is but a next step to perceive digitally encountered
others to be present.
The internet and digital media facilitate the perception and experience of
proximity and presence in ways that transcend the physical. When connecting
online, those with whom we connect are often perceived to be “really there.”
This sense that the other is “really there” is called social presence. According to
the social presence theory advanced by communication scholars John Short,
Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie, a communication medium can provides
its users several ways to become aware of one another’s presence. They can know
one another’s qualities, characteristics, and inner states and begin to perceive and
experience one another as socially present (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). This
theory, which predated the internet and digital media, has since been updated to
explain the variety of ways that people can use these technologies to be cognitively
present to one another even as they are physically distant (see Chayko, 2002).
Feeling the nearness or presence of others across distances has been called
perceived proximity (O’Leary, Wilson, & Metiu, 2014) and, when electronic
media facilitates the connection, electronic propinquity (Korzenny, 1978; Walther
& Barazova, 2008). In a large-scale international study, professors of business
Michael O’Leary, Jeanne Wilson, and Anca Metiu found that colleagues working
hundreds of miles apart from one another communicated as often, on average,
as colleagues who were located in the same office. Additionally, colleagues
separated by distance felt the same level of shared identity and sense of cognitive
and affective closeness as those who worked together in the same location.
Individuals at work, the researchers determined, can form strong bonds despite
being separated by large distances.
516 SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LXI (2019), N° 4

Similar effects have been found when popular culture is the mediating
element among physically separated people. Sharing common interests in a
television show, movie, or type of music can bring about a strong sense of shared
identity and community among devotees. They, too, can come to feel that they
inhabit a social world with one another. Cultural products and franchises that
can inspire such involvement among users have an excellent chance of popular
success. Communication and media professor Henry Jenkins calls this “the art of
world making” (2006, p. 21; for more on this, see Chapter 9 of Superconnected).
With the advent of digital and mobile technology, however, members of any
group or “world” can enjoy ambient copresence—an ongoing but background
awareness of the presence or nearness of others (Ito & Okabe, 2005, p. 264;
see also Chayko, 2008, 2014; Gray et al., 2003; Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2002).
Portable devices allow users to keep their channels to one another open nearly
all the time if desired, checking in on one another often and even leaving “away
messages.” These short, frequent updates convey that one is “there” (see Park &
Sundar, 2015). It is becoming common for groups of people (especially younger
people) to stay in near-constant contact with one another this way via group
chats, texts, and tweets (see Chayko, 2008).
Social media and blogs do much to enable a sense of presence among
dispersed users. They allow the presentation of experiences and stories neatly
and simply. They provide opportunities for individuals to share ideas, enter a
conversation, and gain a sense of the presence of others in the conversation
or group. Core members of social media and blogging communities, the most
active participants in the group, are most likely to welcome new members or to
monitor and enforce (formally or informally) the rules and norms of the group.
Having had a stake in it the longest, they tend to take on the responsibility for
safeguarding and communicating the group’s collective memory and identity.
But even those who lurk in the group or participate less actively help to shape it
and can have their presence sensed (Chayko, 2008).
Often, ambient copresence takes place in spaces defined either formally
or informally as online “hangouts”—the kind of spaces in which people can
spend unstructured time with few (or no) obligations and responsibilities. Over
70% of U.S. adult internet users go online at least occasionally just to pass the
time or to have fun (Rainie, 2011). They may pass the time leisurely, lurking or
hanging out on a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, checking out a
discussion board, visiting a chat room, playing a game, reading a blog, spending
time in a Google hangout, or some combination of these. It is possible to spend
large amounts of time in such spaces, entire days and nights, just hanging out,
checking out what others are doing and saying—not necessarily interacting
with them but still sensing others’ presence in an ambient way, feeling a sense
of perceived proximity and community with them. “I just like being there,” one
woman told me, describing her affinity for an online hangout, “and I don’t know
why” (Chayko, 2008, p. 30).
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls these kinds of hangouts third spaces (1989).
They are places other than homes and workplaces—the first and second spaces—
Mary Chayko: Reality, Emotionality, and Intimacy in Digital Social Connecting 517

in which people spend time and relax, usually without a fixed agenda. While
Oldenburg focuses on casual offline places, such as coffee shops, pubs, beauty
shops, and the like, the concept is quite useful to also describe the kinds of informal
online spaces in which people simply hang out. And such spaces are plentiful.
Hangouts, both physical and digital, are important because they provide a
space for people to spend unstructured time in the company of others. They
permit individuals to engage different aspects of their lives and identities than
they do at work and at home. By spending time with those who are like-minded,
simply experiencing a sense of shared identity and culture, individuals can feel
known and accepted.
Presence in third spaces is optional and voluntary, and there are no
requirements. In them, people can get to know one another (or not) in a low-
obligation, low-pressure way. Spending time in third spaces can help people
relieve everyday stresses while they make contacts and feel a sense of community.
Being around others in this kind of environment can help people relax since the
kinds of obligations that exist at work and at home are absent. They can also
make the individual feel part of the larger society, part of the culture, connected
to others.
Lurking or participating minimally, or lightly, in third spaces can provide
the opportunity to be part of a larger dialogue, to gain a sense of others and their
conversations. It also provides that all-important, life-affirming feeling of being
“plugged into” or integrated into a society (we is discussed in greater depth in
Chapter 9 of Superconnected). Because it is so critical for people to feel connected
in this way, it is generally healthy to spend some time in third spaces, so these
spaces can be seen as good or “healthy” for the society as a whole. Spending
too much time in them, though, can certainly represent or lead to an unhealthy
escape from offline responsibilities.
Sometimes, to be sure, people do not feel the nearness of others when they
are online. They feel solitary, alone. But more often, they feel proximal and
connected, part of meaningful social worlds. And, as it turns out, the brain is
wired to consider these social worlds to be fully and completely real.

Emotionality and Intimacy

It is common for time spent online to have an intimate, emotionally
rich dynamic. Intimacies and emotions are exchanged profusely and nearly
instantaneously online. In fact, they serve as a kind of “glue” for the relationships
that form there. This “emotional glue” is especially important in the absence of
the “physical glue” that face-to-face interaction can provide.
Digital environments and the experiences created in them can be extremely,
perhaps surprisingly, intimate. As social creatures who desire interpersonal
closeness, human beings are highly creative in finding and forging intimacy,
including in digital settings. While a wide variety of types of relationships can
form online, spanning the spectrum of human intimacy, even the most fleeting
518 SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LXI (2019), N° 4

of relationships can be highly intimate when those involved disclose a great deal
about themselves and feel that they have come to understand much about the
other person as well. It is this kind of personal disclosure and understanding
and the positive progression of a relationship (even if it does not turn out to
be especially long term) that render it intimate and meaningful. Short-term
relationships can be highly intimate, just as they can be offline.
The human need and desire to form intimate relationships is so strong
that it happens all the time online, often without great difficulty. Mobile and
social media play a big part in this. Since many people take cell phones with
them wherever they go, they can use small bits of time to check in on others
and/or provide updates, whether by Facebook or Twitter or some other social
media platform. Interestingly, this is how intimacy tends to develop face-to-face
as well—in the small, everyday moments of connection as much as in grand
gestures and experiences. And with a device with which to connect and network
always at one’s side, it has never been easier to remain in constant contact with
others, even a large number of others, and to find that intimacy has developed,
sometimes quite unexpectedly and swiftly (see Chayko, 2002, 2008; Fortunati,
2002; Fox, 2001).
The emotions that arise in digital environments are those that sociality
inspires in all of its forms. Feelings of warmth, belonging, intimacy, even
excitement are commonly generated online. Fear, anger, and disgust are elicited
as well. A surge of emotion often arises when two or more people feel that they
“click,” whether online or offline (Baker, 2005; Chayko, 2008). This feeling can
be so strong and satisfying that to obtain it can be central to people’s desire to
use social media (Chayko, 2008; Chmiel et al., 2011).
I have termed these emotional surges the rush of human engagement because
they are generated in and by the human engagement so often sought and found
online. In my research, many described it exactly that way—as a “charge” or a
“rush.” People told me of crying real tears when learning of a tragedy online,
experiencing a surge of excitement upon getting good news or receiving just
the right text at the right time, becoming angered or enraged when a negative
comment was placed on their blog, or becoming downright giddy when an
online exchange became flirtatious or romantic. These waves of emotion can
provide “a rush that I really can’t explain,” as one online connector described it
to me (Chayko, 2008, p. 77). According to another,
It’s great when you find somebody that loves the book that you love.
The feeling is kind of “Oh, wow!” Or “Oh, me too!” . . . I think it’s cool.
I think it’s neat. And I like those kind of connections. And I have even
tried to sort of cultivate them. . . . [“Can you describe these connections
for me?” I asked.] Oh, they’re definitely bonds. (Chayko, 2002, p. 70)
In short,
Sometimes when I get back to my room I just move the mouse and go
to my favorite site and check my profile, and it’s like someone has left me
gold or something! (Chayko, 2008, p. 62)
Mary Chayko: Reality, Emotionality, and Intimacy in Digital Social Connecting 519

This rush of excitement can be similar to the rush one gets from drugs, sex,
gambling, chocolate, and other things that activate the pleasure centers in the
brain (for more on how this works, see Chapter 7 of Superconnected).
MIT internet scholar Sherry Turkle claims that people sometimes turn to
information and communication technology when they want to feel something.
They use the technology as a kind of conduit for emotion and use it to express
love, hate, fear, rage—basically any mood imaginable. People also go online to
moderate or to try to control their moods and emotions (see Chayko, 2008). At
the same time, media companies may be trying to influence our emotions as well,
whether by using algorithms to ensure that we see certain kinds of postings in
our social media timelines (as occurred in the famously controversial Facebook
“emotion contagion” experiment) or by encouraging us to “emote,” albeit in a
“nicely packaged” way (Polgar, 2017). “When these technologies have a power
over our affect, or emotional life, you have ask who is doing the emoting,”
suggests professor of philosphy Evan Selinger. “The more that Facebook can
trigger certain emotions, and if we’re unclear that they’re being triggered in a
rather contrived way, then to some sense we are outsourcing or delegating some
of our emotional life without being fully conscious with how that process of
delegation is working” (in Polgar, 2017).
Emotional responses in technology use is, therefore, a complex process. Of
course, all human interactions are complex, messy, unpredictable, and fraught
with risk. Examples abound of sad, unfortunate, even fatal outcomes of digitally-
influenced emotional responses—for example, relationships that have ended at
the suggestion of online infidelity or lives that have ended when online bullying
or public embarrassment became too much to take. Events that take place in
a digital environment have profound consequences for people and are, again,
undeniably real.

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