Marching amongst Friends: Exploring social interactions through the carnivalesque of zombie marching and practices of sharing on Facebook

Abstract

Much of the research on social interactivity with use of new internet technologies has focused on how these technologies are changing us and our ways of interacting. One perspective within this literature has demonstrated a tendency to polarize and criticize social interactions according to whether they occur on the internet or in face-to-face settings. Fearing the sociality the internet generates, this perspectives’ outlook has ramifications for the way we understand our social interactions within different spaces. Alternative to these positions, this study demonstrates that social engagement with use of internet technologies is not restricted to online activities. Instead, our interactions are being carried out in a number of spaces with the use of several registers in order to enable the generation of particular socialities and practices. This position is demonstrated through the qualitative ethnographic analysis of the embodied performances of the Epic Zombie Marchmarch! and the pivotal role of social networking website Facebook, in the organization, information, and mobilization of this march. Typically treated separately, this study demonstrates that these social phenomena were more intimately implicated than previously supposed. Utilizing participant observation, short and in-depth interviews, and online ethnographic methods; this study found that the mobilised group mimicked the imagery of conventional protest politics, while simultaneously distancing themselves from the politics of the “mob” through the politics of fun. Moreover, this study demonstrates that the use of Facebook in order to organize, inform, and mobilize, extended into practices of sharing after the march. Such practices queried the micro politics of public visibility through the register of Facebook and the micro politics of private self-directed sharing in personal networks. Show more