Space and Facebook, week 5

Facebook becomes place from all of the users unknowingly giving it power. When people become emotionally attached to Facebook, using it everyday of their lives, they are in fact creating a strong sense of place in the Facebook world.  Dr Ariella Van Lyyn  in her lecture states that; “space becomes place through humans imposing meaning on it.” (2013) This is a clear example on how Facebook's space became a place through the interactions of humans. 

Since reading week fives readings on Place and Space I found it extremely difficult to get my head around Facebook represented as a place. the only similarity i noticed between Facebook and space was the constant interactions between individuals  by sharing photos, videos, blogs ect. to come together and connect with one another. Facebook turns the space of the world-wide web into a place. Facebook especially helps me interact with people from all around the world which is amazing in my case as I have friends from Europe from when I used to live in London. Now with the idea of place within Facebook I am able to interact with some of my closest friends from England in just one click of a button. Although Facebook is just a space to cure boredom and a chance to procrastinate, however the satisfaction I feel when logging onto Facebook and opening my home page is unbelievable, it helps me feel at home.

Because Facebook is not a physical place the role of language is significant as it creates the online world. Language in real life is only a tool, however in cyber space language is everything. Language creates all feelings that need to be expressed over the internet which i-Fu Tuan (1991) expresses. “it can direct attention, organise insignificant composite wholes, and in so doing, make things formerly overlooked - and hence invisible and nonexistent - visible and real.” 

Bibliography

Van Luyn, A. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place, Lecture 5: Stories and Places. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: http://learnjcu.edu.au

Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A narrative-descriptive approach. InAnnals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696.