Online among Us. Experiences of Virtuality in Everyday Life

As argued by Joshua Meyrowitz, in his acclaimed book entitled No sense of place, media change the situational geographies of social life (Meyrowitz 1985). Meyrowitz claims that social roles and hierarchies are changing because the media provide options to transcend the boundaries of physical settings, thus making these boundaries more permeable. Meyrowitz’s discussion (written before and anticipating the emergence of the Internet and mobile technology in people’s everyday lives) points out relevant shifts such as the weakening of the relation between social situations and physical places and the blurring of the boundaries between public and private. This argument is illuminated in a discussion by David Morley (2000) on new media technology, namely the Internet, that connects private homes to public worlds and thus transgresses the boundaries of the private. The Internet has moved private activities such as television viewing, gardening, cooking, crafts and art work, which usually take place at home, into public discussion forums and various fan sites. This transformation has enabled people to meet and discuss across distances with others who share their passions, thus illustrating the deterritorialized nature of virtual space (Appadurai 1991, 192).