Who else explores the world using Facebook Live?
March 30, 2018 6:16 AM Subscribe
I am obsessed with sampling the live streams of strangers (facebook.com/live). Who else does this, and why?
Facebook live is the most popular live streaming app. Fb provide a unique interface that allows you to look at some arbitrary(?) samples of livestreams from around the world (https://www.facebook.com/live). I have become obsessed with this. It provides a portal to the real lives of people from other places. I spend a lot of time in Brazil, in India, and in the Middle East, but today, being Good Friday, there are lots of streams from Southern Spain full of ritual, pomp, and wonders.
I approach this with particular anthropological and ethnographic questions. The ubiquity of the smart phone means that the access you get is not constructed by the usual editorial channels. Someone you view in Venezuela is under no obligation to accord with your prior assumptions about what someone in Venezuela might be like. This makes each stream an immediate challenge and puzzle. Who's eyes am I looking through?
While my strongest interest lies in studying chanting and rituals (both very well represented in live streams), I have broader questions about this. There is no good way to sample humans. Any attempt you or I might make will necessarily build in our prejudices, prior assumptions, etc. Live streams are not a pure sample, but the form of mediation, the smartphone, is fairly ubiquitous, and it offers a unique glimpse of random particular situations.
So questions: Who else likes looking at live streams of strangers? What do you look at, for? Does anyone know anything about how the streams that show up on the official map are selected from the much larger set of live streams? DOes anyone have any further expertise or insider knowledge about such streams?
Facebook live is the most popular live streaming app. Fb provide a unique interface that allows you to look at some arbitrary(?) samples of livestreams from around the world (https://www.facebook.com/live). I have become obsessed with this. It provides a portal to the real lives of people from other places. I spend a lot of time in Brazil, in India, and in the Middle East, but today, being Good Friday, there are lots of streams from Southern Spain full of ritual, pomp, and wonders.
I approach this with particular anthropological and ethnographic questions. The ubiquity of the smart phone means that the access you get is not constructed by the usual editorial channels. Someone you view in Venezuela is under no obligation to accord with your prior assumptions about what someone in Venezuela might be like. This makes each stream an immediate challenge and puzzle. Who's eyes am I looking through?
While my strongest interest lies in studying chanting and rituals (both very well represented in live streams), I have broader questions about this. There is no good way to sample humans. Any attempt you or I might make will necessarily build in our prejudices, prior assumptions, etc. Live streams are not a pure sample, but the form of mediation, the smartphone, is fairly ubiquitous, and it offers a unique glimpse of random particular situations.
So questions: Who else likes looking at live streams of strangers? What do you look at, for? Does anyone know anything about how the streams that show up on the official map are selected from the much larger set of live streams? DOes anyone have any further expertise or insider knowledge about such streams?
This post was deleted for the following reason: This needs to be more focused and less of a poll/survey-type question, please see here and here for more. -- goodnewsfortheinsane
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