NORMS AS A MEDIUM: PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANALYSING THE PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

The concept of norms within philosophical texts is an ambiguous phenomenon. On the one hand, it could be viewed as a certain mode of perception, but on the other hand, norms themselves are an object of thought. Viewed from the phenomenological perspective norms determine the potential appearance of the object of perception. The aim of this article is to emphasize the role of norms as a medium and from the perspective of phenomenology. To do this, the article answers three questions; firstly, the question about the application of phenomenology (more specifically Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)) in the analysis of social media perception, secondly, the question about the separation of subjective experience from lived experience. This distinction is essential in the context of the study to understand what kind of descriptive forms can be expected from this type of study. Thirdly, the relationship between norms and normality and their presentation on social media is considered. In this context, norms appear as a medium. The article is based on the research project “Philosophical Analysis of Information Perception in Social Media.” In discussing norms as a medium, the article pays significant attention to theoretical evaluation of the method. When confronted with everyday experience it emerges as a multi-layered phenomenon that holds various contradictions, and in trying to understand them attention must be paid to the problem of thought-forming. Norms as a medium are understood in comparison with language. Language obscures itself in being there, but the moment it is studied it disappears into the abstraction of the word “language.” Norms, on the one hand, are presented as an object of reflection, but at the same time its’ form and boundaries of presentation are determined by the norms themselves. Norms are like a medium, like a screen through which what is happening is perceived.