Bewertungssysteme. Medienpraktiken im Umgang mit Fremden

Abstract

The contemporary social web differs from its predecessors in the early 1990s especially in one respect: Today, quantifiable valuation practices occupy a core position–most prominently depicted by platform activities such as Facebook’s like button, Twitter’s follower count or eBay’s feedback ratings, each of them attributing certain kinds of values to persons, documents, places and alike. Thus, the other typically appears with a certain value, i. e. with a potential function rendering otherness to a certain degree unproblematic for exchange. On the one hand, these practices and its symbols transcend situations and relationships–similar to the function of money according to German sociologist Georg Simmel–establishing a media system that mediates between strangers who may remain strangers. On the other hand, their communitizing functions appear to be evident as well. I argue this twofold function points to the strength of these valuation practices and their symbols: Platform activities are not simply media for a certain kind of exchange, they become media for certain forms of exchange. This, however, does not mean they might be conceptualized as a sort of empty signifiers that can be filled with any kind of meaning or function. On the contrary, it renders their role for sociality constitutional (at least online): When becoming ›social media‹ in terms of facilitating and fostering sociality, they enact a definitional agency and a specific kind of rationality for each situation.