1. Finding a New Home:
Contextualizing the ‘Home Mode’ in
Online Social Media
RTF 393P Globalization and Social Media
December 3, 2010
Daniel Mauro

2. Outline
• Historical context of home movies
• Defining the ‘home mode’ of communication
• Social functions of the ‘home mode’
• Enter social media

3. Positioning ‘Home’
• Snapshots and movies
• Amateurism vs. professionalism
• Gendered consumer
• Standardized formats
• Film to video to digital media
1900
http://media.photobucket.com/image/kodak
%20brownie/sprouseart/brownie.jpg

4. Kodak promotional catalog DIY Magazine
1930 1948
http://8mm16mmfilmscollectibles.com/CineKodak30.jpg http://8mm16mmfilmscollectibles.com/HomeMovies1.jpg

5. Kodak advertisement
Instructional film
“How to Make Home Movies Your
Friends Will Want to See Twice”
1955 ~1970
http://www.adclassix.com/images/55kodakmoviecam.jpg http://www.archive.org/details/How_to_Make_Home_Movies

6. Sony Betamovie ad Sony Handycam ad
1983 2010
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/ http://www.pricecomparrison.net/Images/Sony
2439/3934863983_df1f0d8583.jpg %20Handycam.jpg

7. Home Mode
Communication
“…a social process within a specific context, in which signs are
produced and transmitted, perceived, and treated as messages from
which meaning can be inferred.”
Home mode communication
“…a pattern of interpersonal and small group communication
centered around the home.”
(Chalfen, 1987, p. 8)

8. Social Functions
• Structures familialism
• Ideologies of nuclear family
• Close social relationships
• Private vs. public space
• Reification and reflexivity
• Communication in home
Disneyland Dream
(Robbins Barstow, 1956, USA)

9. In Social Media
What is the impact of online social video sharing
sites on the home mode of communication?

10. New Community
Global audience
“The globalization of the intended audience may be a distinguishing
feature of amateur online video. The presence of the Internet has
added a new intent to the impulse behind home videography — the
intent to speak to a global community.” (Strangelove, 2010, p. 45)
Global context
“…cultural objects are restructured in such ways that local contexts
lose their powers of familiarization. …In the context of global media,
new types of unconsciousness emerge for both the recipients and the
transmitters of culture.” (Poster, 2006, pp. 35-36)

11. Home Mode in Social Media
• Transcontextual mode of communication
• Repositioning of private and public spaces
• Video sharing redefining social community
• Negotiates the geographies of ‘home’