Researcher ORCID Identifier
Graduation Year
2023
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Anthropology
Reader 1
Seo Young Park
Reader 2
Elizabeth Affuso
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2023 Georgia F Bates
Abstract
Offering access to an expanded world of contacts, activities, and self-expression, the internet has been changing the traditional landscape of the college experience for nearly two decades. The manner in which students interact with the world around them is augmented and transformed by the affordances of digital social networks like Yik Yak, an anonymous, hyperlocal networking app that has found its main market on college campuses. A hybrid ethnographic approach to Yik Yak based on participant observation and in-depth interviews spanned from Fall 2021 to Spring 2023, engaging with concepts of place and affect as they were intertwined with student use of the app in relation to the search for community. Yik Yak’s hyperlocal, anonymous infrastructure and student’s social desires intermeshed to create an informal participatory culture of conflict and care geared toward producing affect and effects in the student community. Both on- and offline, the connections associated with Yik Yak were broadly ephemeral—defined by a desire to participate in the general student community rather than a commitment to personal relationships. Student experiences manifested the tension between anonymity and hyperlocality, with this form of community participation being further defined by lines of difference.
Recommended Citation
Bates, Georgia, "The Yak is Back: Creating Community on the Digital Bathroom Stall Wall" (2023). Scripps Senior Theses. 2038.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2038
Included in
Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Media Commons
