Collective Meaning-Making on Social Media

The Potential of PONTE results for collective meaning-making?

In the PONTE project – Bridging Bubbles with Art and Smart use of Data - we are set up to combine a technology platform, narrative data collection and visual art to find novel ways to tackle division and radicalisation in communities on social media.?

The project repurposes and further develops an existing narrative data collection software, SenseMaker?. Through the software, we capture micro-narratives where the respondents apply meaning to their own stories. This enables them to make sense of their own experience and stories. We create an interactive environment in which people can reflect on their own or others’ use of social media and discover things for themselves.?

The first art-catalysed story collector yielded highly expressive metaphors and interesting results around how people use and perceive social media.?

What makes art prompts interesting?

An art prompt gives everyone permission to be playful. This triggers a more emotional, more creative response, and lowers the threshold for sharing narratives.?Art provides a level of abstraction and metaphorical thinking that allows people to contrast perspectives without devaluing an opinion or attributing blame for being “in the wrong”.???

Like fish in water and sheep in a field

In the PONTE story collector, the artwork catalysed a wealth of metaphors. Some of the metaphors conformed to the original “underwater world” shown in the art. Other metaphors made a leap to entirely different realms, like [People on social media are like…] “...sheep in a field: standing around doing very little but ready to pee and then run if anything actually happens.”?

Art mirrors back

Reflecting on the incoming stories, our artist reframes social media as a ‘free-for-all carnival’ where users enter the Hall of Mirrors. They expect to be entertained but forget or fail to see that their entertainment is a manipulated distortion of reality, multiplied by others in seconds.?????

These and other results are summarized in this short video here.?

Real-time shared making of meaning

The next stage of PONTE project development will feature a new type of interactive public space for creating shared meaning. Here, artists and participants can explore and interpret the collective patterns emerging from the self-interpreted stories in real-time interactivity. This could build up an awareness of how different (or similar) people with shared AND opposing views really are, in regard to social media use

This opens enormous possibilities for exhibition spaces, conferences, and other public or private spaces with high numbers of visitors. The visitor/participant will be able to engage with the exhibition, share anonymous micro-narratives about it, and make sense of it. The collective patterns emerging from all the self-interpreted stories on the public dashboard display the influence the visitors have on the exhibition through their engagement with the artwork.?

PONTE (Participative Open Narrative Transformation and Exchange)? is funded by the EU initiative Mediafutures.eu. For the Project, ECZ.Partners and The Cynefin Centre are collaborating with visual artist Annika Varjonen.?With Beth Smith, Dave Snowden, Bettina Geiken & Anne Caspari.

How do you see social media?

Take a spin with our story capture and stay in touch for more.

Join us for our live presentation at the MediaFutures DemoDay event next Thursday, 23rd of September at 11:50 CET.??

?With All images by Annika Varjonen, Visual Impact?

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“PONTE is part of the MediaFutures project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s framework Horizon 2020 for research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 951962”.The information reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.”