Eva Dale 0:01 From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host, David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work being done by faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. From departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials, mathematics and languages, among many others, the college always has something great happening. Join us to find out what's new now. David Staley 0:33 My guest today over Zoom is Jesse Fox, Associate Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University, College of the Arts and Sciences. Her research is concerned with the effects and implications of new media technologies, including virtual worlds, video games, social network sites, and mobile applications, but mostly - and these are her words - she pursues what she finds interesting about human communication. That's what I want to learn more about today. Welcome to Voices, Dr Fox. Jesse Fox 1:02 Thanks David. David Staley 1:04 Well, there's so many things that you're interested in and so many things we can talk about, I'm going to see how many of them we can get through and how many we can explore in a half an hour interview. I'd like to start first with your research into virtual reality, and in particular, the fact that you've been engaging in some myth busting around virtual reality. Jesse Fox 1:24 Yes, I am very excited as a person who's been studying virtual reality for fifteen or so years, at this point, to see, you know, the boom in virtual reality technologies; but, having had that history in the research and sort of coming at it from a different perspective than a lot of people are coming at it in the tech world, I like to remind people of some of the shortcomings, or the reality of virtual reality, if you will. This is about the second or third, you know, "VR is going to come save the world" cycle, and we've seen the marketing booms, we've seen all the same headlines, you know, that we saw in the 90s for the first round, and that we need to really have a realistic kind of grasp about what this technology is capable of at this point in time, and kind of, you know, build from there. So, don't assume it's going to radically change the world, just kind of accept it for what it is, see how it can kind of complement where we're at, and be a little more critical of some of the extreme, what I'll just call TED-Talk-y claims about VR saving the world. David Staley 2:29 So, what is it then? What is virtual reality? Jesse Fox 2:34 Virtual reality is not an empathy machine. You know, something to create empathy is not going to be so mechanistic, for one thing, and I think that's a dangerous road to go down, when people assume that they can just pop into a mediated environment and assume someone's experiences and suddenly become more empathetic. There's no evidence to suggest that that's the case. You have self report studies that are suggesting, oh, sure, you just showed me the stimulus, and now I'm going to tell you that, sure, yeah, that's great, that's cool, I feel better about those people, but we see no evidence of long term effects, or any, you know, significant improvements. And I think that that's a lot of the snake oil that's being sold right now, that this is going to be a magical cure all, and no medium has been a magical cure all for any of society's ills thus far. David Staley 3:27 Some of your research involves studying experiences of marginalization, discrimination, harassment, across online and offline contexts, and I'd like to hear a little bit more about this research. Jesse Fox 3:39 Sure. So, when I first started in the space, because I did come out of sort of a tech background, I was limited in my thinking. I think I really only thought about things from a technological perspective, and over time, I've realized the importance of really thinking about the medium or the technology is just part of a social process, and so exploring what's novel or interesting about the technology, but in the context of that experience. So, with harassment, you know, what's different about being harassed online? And so, from a, you know, scholarly, nerdy perspective, we refer to these things as affordances, so, what are these characteristics and these properties that, as we interact with these media, are kind of experienced and activated? And so, when people are on the internet, that's going to be an artifact of their experience, their history, their experience with using a technology, the experiences they've had online and offline: all those things are going to be synthesized in that space. And so, when it comes to harassment, you know, one thing, it's... you've seen this elevation that people perceive because of these affordances such as anonymity or a lower bandwidth. We can't see each other's nonverbal cues in real time, so we don't really get this impression that we're, you know, maybe hurting people's feelings or or being as nasty as we're being, and I think that that's what's really kind of interesting about studying harassment in these spaces, is the different ways it manifests and the different effects that it has on people. David Staley 5:11 These technologies, social media, these sorts of things: did they cause, sort of, the rise in harassment and discrimination, or maybe amplify something that was already there? Jesse Fox 5:22 That's a fun question. I actually have some theorizing around this where we sort of distinguish different effects, and so I would say in some ways, it is just amplifying it, in some ways, I do think that it is exacerbating it and that it is a fundamentally different experience, because it was very difficult in the past, in face to face settings, for example, the ways that we can terminate a conversations, the way that we can avoid a conversation, is very different than online. You know, if you got yelled at and harassed by a stranger on the street, the likelihood that that stranger is going to follow you around or that you're going to, you know, keep encountering them online, you know, when they have a semblance of your identity online, a handle, a space where you hang out. It might be easier for them, so, and that way is that sort of that exaggeration of it, or that amplification of it. But what's novel about these spaces is this sort of algorithmic factor, that now we have these systems of controls that are run by corporations that capitalize on and profit off of outrage machines, and they profit and benefit from things like harassment, in many cases, because that can generate outrage, because it generates activity and flurries and so forth, and that's why a lot of the companies are hesitant to regulate it, because if it was bad for business, it wouldn't be there. David Staley 6:40 What's been the impact on, sort of, offline behavior, any sort of sense of that? Jesse Fox 6:45 So, in my research, I've studied the rumination. So, what happens, not just in that moment online, where you're angry, but what happens 24 hours later when you're offline? How do you still feel? Are you still thinking about it? And we see plenty of evidence, it doesn't necessarily matter that it happened online, in that sense, because you are still experiencing feelings of upset, or feelings of being marginalized or feelings of being socially isolated. So, in that sense, there's a similarity. These are real experiences. They are internalized. They have a negative impact on our well being. And so, that's something that absolutely carries over into offline spaces, and because of how integrated society is online, again, you can't avoid it. This isn't something you can just turn off or unplug or, you know, destroy your account, because people will follow you around on the internet more easily than they will follow you around in real life. David Staley 7:36 As we record this, Elon Musk has just purchased Twitter for 44 billion, I think, and I wonder if you have any thoughts or reactions to this development. Jesse Fox 7:47 I've never been a fan of immature and temperamental little boys being in charge of anything. So, that's how I feel about Elon Musk taking over Twitter. This is a social platform, it's a place that has a lot of voice and a lot of control over the discourse and dialogue in this country, and having someone who wants to, you know, make inappropriate jokes and get their yayas out on the internet is not someone that I trust to be able to run that company well and efficiently, and then it's not someone who is making a positive contribution to the discourse in this country or in the world. David Staley 8:25 You said that you came out of a tech background. Tell us a bit more about that background. Jesse Fox 8:30 Well, I should say that I was trained as an academic in the world of technology. I grew up in Kentucky, so tech was not real big. I think that I have been attracted to technology because it is fascinating to me, it amazes me on a regular basis, but I don't feel that I get as entangled or ensnared in it sometimes as I see many people get entangled and ensnared, and I think that's because we lose sight of the bigger pictures of those processes, and thinking about ways that we can accomplish things without technology is as important as using technology to accomplish those things, so this complimentary approach. But I did my PhD in Silicon Valley, so, because when you're out there, you know, you're just surrounded by it, and you can't extricate yourself from it in any way, shape or form, you know, just seeing how, if you're not part of certain social communities online, then you're excluded from certain things. If you're not carrying around the latest phone, the looks that you're going to get, for example. So, technology becomes just really integrated in all sort of relationships and the culture, and it's just very, very fascinating to observe. So, because of that, like seeing that, having friends working in startups and, you know, just having it be such a part of the fabric of life, I think, really influenced why I remain fascinated by it and love, love looking at it in different spaces and places. David Staley 9:49 That's an interesting segue to another research interest of yours. So, I know that you examine the impact of media and technology, especially social media, on relationship development, relationship maintenance, conflict dissolution. Tell us more about this interesting line of research. Jesse Fox 10:06 This is one of my favorite... this is what I call the good gory stuff, so. David Staley 10:10 Okay. Jesse Fox 10:12 It gets real yucky sometimes, but when people like to kind of flippantly say, oh, you know, whatever, Facebook, eye roll, and then if I ask any person, they always have these relationships or something, a conflict, something that has emerged essentially because of social media that probably wouldn't have happened before. And the research I've done in the space has been like, oh, when something really important happened to someone, and I found out through a mass announcement, through their Instagram post, or their you know, or their Insta story or whatever, or they made a Tiktok about it, and that's how I found out, instead of them telling me personally, right? You know, that can create tension. Seeing your romantic partner engaging with or flirting with someone online: that wouldn't be visible normally, right? Like, if you weren't there, physically present when they were doing that, which they probably wouldn't do in front of you, you wouldn't have this visible perspective of this sort of interaction, which is perfectly normal. People in relationships also have permission to flirt, but you know, then it's visible, and then it seems kind of public, and then it has a completely different effect than it would if you'd observe the same exchange face to face. So, I think what's really interesting is the ways that these affordances of technology, these little things, are changing it, the fact that other people can see it, that it becomes visible, the fact that it becomes persistent, that we have these relational keepsakes that, I don't really know what my ex's ex looks like, or my ex's new partner looks like, or my current partner's ex looks like, I wouldn't know that usually, unless I knew them personally. But now, ooh, you can go and dig out the relationship history, and now you're, you know, jealous of someone you've never met who's maybe not even any longer in their life, and you're socially comparing yourself to that person. So, I think that stuff is really fascinating, because we have access to so much more information about relationships and our partners than we've ever had in the past. David Staley 12:05 So - I'm trying to figure out how I want to say this - so there's a lot of concern expressed about our surveillance culture. To what degree do people sort of voluntarily and maybe even happily participate in their own surveillance? Jesse Fox 12:19 Oh, well, 100%, we are the panopticon. It's been crowdsourced. So, I think people don't consider the consequences of surveillance. I think that, as a society, we need to be far more mindful of that, or people get this idea of, well, shrug, they already know all my business anyway, and you know, that's not the right attitude to have. We need to think about disengagement from corporate surveillance to the extent that we can, while still maintaining some semblance. But really, who's responsible here is we need legislation, and we need, you know, I'm very excited about Amy Klobuchar efforts in this area, I hope with Elizabeth Warren as well, coming after these big companies and kind of setting boundaries to surveillance that they can conduct, whether that's through recording our voices and creating a voice print that can uniquely identify us and recording things we say in our home, to tracking every single one of our locations and knowing all of our patterns, all of our rituals, all of our vices, and linking that to our credit card data and linking that to our electronic health records, that's a dangerous place to be, where that stuff can be used against you by people who want to profit off of it, or people who want to, you know, censor you or put in a box somewhere. David Staley 13:33 My sense - and I could be completely wrong about this - my sense is that the European Union is further ahead in terms of regulation. Is that true? Jesse Fox 13:42 Absolutely, absolutely. The Europeans are far, far ahead of us in terms of holding tech companies more accountable, limiting their power and control, limiting their ability to surveil people, treating children like children, that's a big thing in the U.S. So, tech lobbyists - many people don't know this - why can a 13 year old be on social media, essentially treated like an adult? That's wrong, that is very, very wrong. Children should be treated like children, they should be able to be protected by the law as they are in other spaces, and we should really be rethinking that the cutoff for that is 13, because that was a product of tech lobbyists. David Staley 14:21 So, you study relationship development, or the impact of media on relationships. If I'm connected with somebody on Facebook or LinkedIn or something like that, do you consider these real relationships, or these maybe a different kind of relationship? What's the status of the relationship? Jesse Fox 14:38 You know, we have a lot of weak ties, is usually how those are referred to. So, that goes back to some sociology and Granovetter and 73, that we can still kind of benefit from these weak ties that, you know, knowing, just knowing someone can sometimes do something. So, I think sometimes I think about these social, online, social networks, it's just a way of visualizing things, you know? Maybe in the 80s, it was having a Rolodex, and, you know, maybe before then, it was having your family crest or something. So, there have always been ways to kind of affiliate ourselves with other people, and if that's through keeping their phone in your phone book or on your cell phone, or if that is that visible tie online, I think those are all sort of those weak tie relationships, and that they can have some benefit to us, because otherwise we might forget them, or we may not have ways to contact them and by keeping them around, then you know that's a possibility for us to connect with them at some point in time. Eva Dale 15:33 Did you know that 23 programs in the Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences are nationally ranked as top 25 programs with more than ten of them in the top ten? That's why we say the College of Arts and Sciences is the intellectual and academic core of the Ohio State University. Learn more about the college at artsandsciences.osu.edu. David Staley 15:58 Well, since we're talking about relationships, I'd like to explore another of your interests, and that is the study of parasocial relationships, and you have to first start by telling us what's meant by parasocial? Jesse Fox 16:10 Yes, a parasocial relationship is a sort of pseudo relationship. It's a perception we have of a bond with a media figure, so someone we don't know personally, that we do not directly interact with, that acknowledges us when we interact with them. And so, you know, if you were a fan of someone, depending on your generation and your sexual orientation is going to depend on who people are attracted to, but I love reading old, you know, teen music magazines from like, the 70s and so forth and just, you know, seeing girls being like, oh, you know, the Jackson Five, and they're fainting all over themselves, or Leif Garrett, or whoever it was. And these things start pretty early, that we form these sort of attachments to these media figures, and even very, very young children who sort of believe that Grover or Cookie Monster is talking to them, so that's a parasocial interaction, and then that can develop sort of into this bond where we really do, kind of think of these people like we do our friends, like we get upset when bad things happen to them, even though we don't know them, and we get frustrated when they do things that, you know, tick us off. David Staley 17:17 Is this... is this a healthy relationship? Is this a healthy activity to engage in? Jesse Fox 17:22 I think in many ways, it's... certainly there's the boundary to a point where, if you're becoming an obsessive, stalking fan, or if you're living in a fantasy world where you think this person is really existing, then obviously that's pathological. But, you know, in most cases, these are perfectly healthy things there, it's normal. It's just like reading a book and bonding, you know, with a character. We can have these with real media figures and fictional ones, and so we experience a lot of enjoyment and transportation into these narratives and stories by sort of creating these relationships with characters, ad you know, that's perfectly fine from a media enjoyment perspective. These parasocial relationships can also be helpful for us if we are trying to persuade people to do things. So, you know, there's a lot of research that shows that by fostering parasocial relationships, for example, with people on a radio show, has been able to teach people, for example, in India, about different ways of considering gender roles and dowries and so forth. There's been some research on that, or in Africa, using these bonds with these characters to teach people about HIV and AIDS and testing and transmission, and in the U.S., also, with safe sex and teens and condom use and so forth. So, we can use these relationships with characters to send messages and teach people things in a way that they might be more receptive to than just someone, you know, standing at the front of a classroom with a chalkboard and pointing at stuff. David Staley 18:55 I know you're also interested in the impact of social media on body image, and I'd like to hear a little bit more about this line of research. Jesse Fox 19:04 Yes, I'd like to thank Frances Haugen for her whistleblowing in that area. It was kind of disappointing to see when there was a lot of, oh, we have no evidence of this, there's no research on this, and I'm like, hi, I've been doing research in this area since about 2015, including some experimental research where we have, you know, had people consume social media imagery and to see how that kind of impacts them, or having them get feedback on their images and how that makes them feel about themselves. And in our research, we've seen that getting negative feedback doesn't feel good, which is, of course, sort of an obvious thing, but you know, a lot of times the public demands very specific evidence of phenomena, and we can show from our research that having people give you negative feedback makes you feel bad about yourself, it makes women preoccupied with their bodies, it diminishes their self esteem in the short term. But one positive benefit we found in a study was that they were actually less likely to then do that to someone else. So, we didn't see evidence of, like a cycle of aggression. They weren't negative to other people after people had been negative to them, which we thought was sort of, you know, a good thing, that maybe people were thinking through that and being like that hurt my feelings, and now that I've had that experience, I don't want to do that to other people. David Staley 20:23 And do we understand anything about the causal mechanism for this, or...? Jesse Fox 20:28 Well, because it was experimental, we can sort of, you know, follow that chain and know that having that feedback is sort of the cause of that behavior, and when it's negative versus positive, and those sorts of things, so. David Staley 20:42 So, media and body image is certainly not new, I suppose, television and magazines have certainly had an effect on this. Is social media like these older media, or is social media somehow different? Jesse Fox 20:53 So, this goes back to our affordances. Well, two things: first of all, you know, on social media, you're seeing your peers, and we know that, especially for adolescents and emerging adults and that age group, we are very, kind of fixated on people of their same age who are like them, that those can be very powerful in the sense of, okay, well, fine, if that famous influencer has like, a million followers and has a super perfect body, no big deal. But, you know, when someone else in my class is getting a thousand likes on their photograph, well, that's something I should be able to attain. So, it makes us feel perhaps worse, because that is someone who's like us, kind of on our level. So, that social comparison, I believe, is probably a little bit more, you know, impactful because of that perception of attainment, or the fact that these are their shared peers who are offering all these accolades and compliments to someone while they're ignoring you or maybe even giving you negative feedback. So, it goes back to those typical sort of toxic peer relationships that we see feelings of judgment, feelings of being unattractive and feelings of being unaccepted and socially rejected. David Staley 21:59 Among young people, or are we seeing this across all age groups, all demographics? Jesse Fox 22:04 In my research, we've looked at this stuff mostly with, you know, emerging adults, so, then there is some work, kind of in the late adolescent realm, but. There is some research on older people who were comparing based on LinkedIn profiles, so maybe less about body image, but kind of the equivalent of LinkedIn, where people do also are comparing someone else's accomplishments and work, and that we do know that people, there's research on Facebook mom groups, and sort of what I like to call comparative parenting, where you're judging everything you're doing and you're judging every other parent, and there's just this constant judginess that doesn't make anyone feel good and doesn't really foster very healthy relationships among the group, because you're always trying to evaluate what someone does and critique it, rather than sort of saying live and let live. David Staley 22:54 So, I know another area of interest of yours is the way that we perceive and interact with anthropomorphic agents. Sounds really interesting, but you have to first tell us what is meant by anthropomorphic agents. Jesse Fox 23:06 Sure. So, anthropomorphism is this idea that we start attributing human-like features and characteristics to things. So, if I, you know, put two googly eyes - I'll put googly eyes on anything - so if you just stick to googly eyes on, you know, a park bench, I saw that the other day, all of a sudden, it looks a little bit more human. It's got eyes now, right? So that could be a very minor thing, up to highly realistic, like in a immersive video game, where people look almost real, that those are virtual characters that can look very, very anthropomorphic, so. And of course, now, we rely a lot on these conversational agents, these voice agents, where we're talking to and speaking to, whether that's calling customer service, speaking to your in home, corporate surveillance device, aka Alexa, you know, any of those sorts of things. David Staley 24:00 And what does this research reveal? What sorts of things have you learned? Jesse Fox 24:05 Our most recent work in this area was kind of distinguishing in what trade offs you sort of make when we're thinking about wanting to use these, because a lot of people in their heads are like, oh, well, it's just faster for me to just blah, blah, you know, into my phone, into Siri, and that's going to give me what I want. And what we find is that, actually, it's relatively inefficient, and if people just Google search on their own, they'd probably be happier with it. And that also, when we compare what people get out of a human conversation versus the Siri conversation, there's so much that's really missing in a lot of the common tasks we use an agent for. So, asking for the closest coffee shop, you're going to be more satisfied and more fulfilled with that conversation if you asked a human than if you asked an agent, and so, people see themselves as more satisfied. They're more likely to want to talk to a human after thinking about that, so I think that we have a tendency to default to these and I think that's not good. I think we want to think about who we're talking to, and I think we would all probably be better off if we talked more frequently to more people, even just to ask if it's where the closest coffee shop is. David Staley 25:18 We don't actually have conversations with Alexa or Siri? Jesse Fox 25:22 Exactly, and we don't have a relationship with Siri, and Siri doesn't remember who we are, and Siri can't really offer us a lot of the benefits that we can get out of a human relationship, including just a sense of specialness and a sense of reciprocity and of shared human nature. David Staley 25:39 Let me finally ask you about your work in crime coverage and missing persons. Tell us more about this line of research. Jesse Fox 25:48 This is sort of a passion project that I am embarking on with two of my former graduate students, where we found we all were very interested in sort of true crime, and so we have started by looking at some newspaper coverage. How are missing persons cases covered in the news? How are these things discussed on social media? How are people looking into these things? We have a new phenomenon of people, sort of, researching these things on their own on the internet. So, sort of this whole culture around this is really interesting to us and really fascinating, and it's sort of a, you know, we talk a lot about citizen science, and it's almost a way of citizen science where people are kind of investigating and looking into these things, and are there better and worse ways that media can help promote, you know, finding resolutions to these cases, because a lot of times they go on for years and years and years and so it's really hard to keep that salient media, but with social media, maybe we have ways to do that now that will be lower cost and that, you know, families can be more engaged in. David Staley 26:58 Do you have any preliminary conclusions? Jesse Fox 27:01 This is very, very early stage stuff, so this is definitely where the summer is going to be spent, is going to be getting immersed in this literature and looking a little bit more about what sort of details are kind of portrayed in these cases and what's helpful, and where we also see inconsistencies in this information in the media. David Staley 27:20 So, a lot of your work involves, not exclusively, but involves a lot of social media research. I'm curious, as a researcher, how do you study... how do you use social media? I have a student who's interested in sort of work in this area, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around how one actually engages in research into social media. Jesse Fox 27:41 I've been researching social media for so long that I like to tell people sometimes that... they're like, but you're not, you were never on Facebook, and I'm like, nope, sure wasn't. You know, you're not on Instagram, no, not on Tiktok, no. I do use Twitter a little bit professionally, but even then, it's not really for social connection. And I say, you know, what, if everyone who studied hardcore drugs was on them, we might not make very much progress. So, I'm coming at this relatively objectively in terms of, you know, I'm not trying to defend it, I'm not trying to attack it, I'm just trying to figure out what's good about it and what's bad about it, and how can we sort of use these things in a positive and productive fashion that helps us and benefits us, and how can we sort of mitigate the harms that come from it, so. David Staley 28:28 You can't even begin to calculate how many tweets there are, say, in a given 24 hour period - as a researcher, how do you study just the mass of tweets or Instagram posts or likes on Facebook? Jesse Fox 28:41 Sure. Well, there's a couple of approaches. Some people do the big data scrapes, you can write scripts and that's going to collect all that, and then you're writing programs or using some sort of a semantic analysis or linguistic analysis to sort of collate that information. As a communication scholar, I think that strips out a lot of the nuance. I also, personally, have some ethical questions about, you know, taking a bunch of people's information away from them, because whether or not you think it's public doesn't mean they think that, and research shows that people generally don't want other people taking their personal posts and using them for purposes without their knowledge. But, that is one way to sort of analyze that. The other way is just talking to people, you know, asking people personally to share their stuff, and getting their impressions and their perceptions of it, where you're getting a more engaged explanation of what's going on. And I did a recent study about relationship breakups, and I tell you that alone was remarkable about what is not visible on social media. So, the things that were removed or taken down, the things that were happening privately, the reasons behind posting are often very, very, very different than what looks like the content of the post. So, it's like, well, if I just ran this through a program, would probably be like, this person's life is wonderful and they're very happy, you know, smiley face emoji is how a computer would say that that person's life was and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm miserable, like, the meaning from this photograph is this, and this is why I said this. And when you get that backstory, you're like, whoa, you know, mind blown. But we know this because theoretically, people are inclined to make positive presentations of themselves on social media spaces, so. But it can give people a false illusion if they don't look behind that mask or that veil. David Staley 30:28 Jesse Fox, thank you. Jesse Fox 30:30 Thanks, David. Eva Dale 30:31 Voices from the Arts and Sciences is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences Technology Services Studio. Sound engineering by Paul Kotheimer. Produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Eva Dale. Transcribed by https://otter.ai