A critique of social tagging and Web 2.0 semiology

These days there is hardly a "Web 2.0" application that does not feature "tags" and does not display (somewhere) a variation of "tag cloud" visualizations.

"It is a saying among Divines, that Hell is full of good Intentions, and Meanings.
— R. Whitlock (1654)

Social tagging sets out to recast the whole "problem" of information discovery, search and retrieval into visibility driven not by relevance (whatever that may mean) but social network. Social tagging is not just a special form of meta-information but a strategic game. On the one hand it claims to allow a complete and fully conscious unstructured "cooperative" means to attach well intentioned extra-corporal meaning and their implicit social interconnections to information (including also non-textual multimedia objects) but its also in many ways a voting system. Those that tag by using common words set out to influence its visibility and potential influence. This is not a product of some systematic disruptive behavior— and I'll exclude for now a consideration of spamming or other exploits (which are not necessarily part of the system)— or aboration but precisely the function of tags: associating the commonality of the use of tags with a relevance of those objects so tagged. The rest are disassociated and effectively excluded. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public to see less of the whole and be driven to a few more concentrated contributions chosen by "public opinion". What remains and discovered via the sphere of tags is de-contextualized and re-purposed.

What are tags?

• Keywords/descriptors to describe (digital) objects
  
• Applied by users of the content
• Keyword or category label used as a index to find something
• Freely chosen (key)words used instead of controlled vocabulary.
• Created by users and not (information or library) professionals
• They are de rigueur for Web 2.0

An "uncooperative" game of visibility versus honesty.

The set of tags builds what is commonly called a Folksonomy. It represents a kind of social network connecting objects via their common tags. These tags or words, however, don't mean the same thing to everyone nor do people intend them to have common meaning. Words derive their commonality in meaning from those that associate with one another. In the social-tagging game people use common words to associate with one another rather than associate with one another and then choose a common vocabulary. Lacking an apriori social context there is no means to communicate shared background information and thus expect common semantics to emerge. What emerges is a social network about personal visibility rather than meaning.

Self-interest in social tagging means that people will tend to select terms not because they necessarily think that they are the most appropriate to describe something but words (tags) that increase their social standing or visibility. Choosing a popular tag, for example, will immediately bring one into the "club" of all those who also use the same popular tag. The larger the "club" the larger also its representation in tag clouds and thus the more visible they become. Should this "cloud" be very large, however, one is again lost in the sea. A strategy would be to select the least popular tag among those tags with the highest visibility: a small fish in a smaller pond. To support this strategy (willingly or not) most tagging systems happily provide visualizations of the most popular tags.

Collections of social tags: Folksonomy or Folksodomy?

Taxonomy (from Greek taxis meaning arrangement or division and nomos meaning law) is the science of classification according to a pre-determined system. Folksonomy (Folk from Germanic) means "the law of the people" or, in this context, more precisely a voice or words, sans context, of the people: "Vox populi“. This will to participate attests more to the will to belong to a social network and increase the visibility of the tagged object (not much unlike the concept of "friends" in some of the "people 2.0 networks") than the urge to voice an opinion. The content is almost irrelevant. A tag spread over a collection of objects is not a shared voice expressing the "belief" or "want" that the word describes how they feel about something but the collectiveness of those that express the tag. Meaning and communication is estranged to the fringes and replaced with a false feeling of belonging. One speaks to belong rather than to say something. Words lose their power to create a focus and are replaced by membership.

The consequences for Society 2.0

By eroding the significance of the word and shifting significance to membership, visibility by "vote" and consensus by mob (Wikipedia) the role of the word and clout of the intellectual falls. While the Internet and Web 2.0 technology might have laid a claim to a democratization of information it has concentrated information not only more in the hands of a few, reduced the diversity of voices and increased the barriers to be be heard [see also: Ten years ago (information still stranded on a deserted island) ]. Ultimately the separation between individual and society inherited from the Enlightenment is being eroded and cast off and with it the logocentricity of human thought and, perhaps eventually, the fundamental perception of autonomy and freedom of the individual. Folksonomy and "Wikipedia" may claim economic reasons for their adoption but these costs to the "public sphere" are high. Aberations such as "Cash for comments", "instant message ads" and even "tag spams" are just parasites on the body of its festering corpse.

In Progress......