Amitié et réseaux sociaux

firstmonday, numéro de décembre, premiers mots de l’intro de l’article de Danah Boyd:

“Meribeth looked at me with a puzzled expression, “she’s not my friend — she’s just my Friendster.”

Qu’est-ce que l’amitié dans “la vraie vie”, et cette forme nouvelle, autre, d’amitié virtuelle dans les réseaux sociaux?

When “my friend” is used to describe a person, it has performative
qualities. It is meant to signal a certain kind of relationship,
regardless of the speaker’s actual feelings. It can be used to save
face when concerning someone who is not particularly liked but it can
also indicate a more powerful relationship than exists because that
might make the speaker look important (e.g., “my friend Bill Clinton”).
While the term can be used deceptively, this is not always the case. It
can also be used to convey a meaningful relationship for the listener’s
attention. For example, the speaker may want to make certain that the
listener understands key relationships so as to properly adjust
whatever might be said about a third party (e.g., “His friend Alex…” so as to prevent, “Do you know Alex? He’s such a slimeball.”).
The speaker may also be providing an opening for the listener to ask a
favor, subtly hinting that there is a tie there that can be leveraged
if only the listener will ask (e.g., “My friend Pat works at Google…” so as to prompt, “Oh, could you ask Pat…”). Because this expression has multiple meanings, it leaves room for a variety of different interpretations.

When people articulate their relations on social network sites, they
are not simply projecting their internal model of tie strength. The

public nature of these sites requires participants to perform their
relationship to others, not unlike the examples given above. Based on
an internal understanding of the audience, participants override the
term “Friend” to make room for a variety of different relationships so
that they may properly show face. Their choice in how to do
this is deeply influenced by the technological affordances of a given
system and their perception of who might be looking.