The Doubling of Place

Shaun Moores has used Paddy Scannell’s perception that broadcasting media (television and radio) create the sense of ‘double’ reality and projected it on to the Internet and telephone as well. To illustrate this, Moores introduces three accounts of different electronic medium usage to demonstrate the sensation of ‘doubling of place’

The first case is a public event, the funeral of Princess Diana, where a family interrupts their dailiness and their daily routine to ‘take part in’ Princess Diana’s funeral and to ‘show respect’. The husband closes his business for the day and the family spends the morning and early afternoon in front of the television in their breakfast room to grieve the loss of a person they did not ‘know’ personally. Moores uses this sense of ‘participation’ through the television broadcast to illustrate the creation of ‘doubling of place’, where all adult members of the family to some degree acted as if they were ‘present’ at the funeral.

The second case is the usage of Internet forums or ‘mud’ (a ‘multi-user domain’ or more commonly known as a chat room). Lori Kendall, an ethnographer, has investigated participation in a chat room which she refers to as BlueSky. Moores draws parallel between Kendall’s behavior and the habits she has when utilizing the forum and the analysis of television culture. Furthermore Moores observes that there are no boundaries when creating an alias to explore the forums as someone else and how these online identities are affected by the way the ‘real life’ person’s self perception and psychological state is. By leaving your ‘physical’ self behind and engaging others in an alternative reality gives the impression of existing in two places simultaneously.

The last case is one we can all relate to, it is a story told by sociologist Emanuel Schegloff about a woman talking to her boyfriend in a train carriage on a mobile phone. She speaks to her boyfriend about a crisis in a clear and loud voice, and all the other passengers give her the privacy by pretending not to hear her. During this conversation her eyes meet a fellow passenger and this distresses her. Moores describes this, as if the ‘bubble realm’ that was created around her by the mobile phone bursts and the two spaces clash.

Conclusively, although Moores makes strong arguments with support from excellent references, due to the fact that the cases represented were isolated incidents, I believe I disagree with Moores theories. Regarding the first case, I don’t think that the family who watched Princess Diana’s funeral did so with the primary intention to try and ‘project’ themselves there. Alternatively, the family may have been looking for comfort and compassion from others and felt that they may be able to do so by watching the funeral’s broadcast. In the second case, it is not outside human nature to pretend to be someone else by using their imagination. As long as culture has existed, people have always projected an imaginary avatar of themselves through books, games, storytelling or other sources of imagination. Therefore, I cannot agree with Moores that this is a new phenomenon which was only created by online forums. Finally, in relation to the last case, I found it difficult to agree with Moores theory that the woman on the train was only having a loud conversation with her boyfriend on her mobile because she was in a ‘bubble realm’ which made her believe that she was alone on the train. I don’t think it is realistic to rule out the possibility that it could just be in the woman’s nature to speak loudly in public on her mobile and have little regard for her own privacy. Moreover, I doubt if her boyfriend was physically there on the train with her, thereby eliminating the ‘bubble realm’, she would choose to speak any softer than if she was speaking to him on the phone.