Paper for: Theorising Digital Society 2015, Uni Canberra Drawing from mixed-methods research into the Herper community (Maddox, 2015), this paper explores experiences and moments of serendipity to illustrate how the imbrication of networked digital technologies and social networks reconfigure avenues for social mobility. In 1973 Mark Granovetter proposed the timeless hypothesis that forms of social mobility, such as getting a job, were facilitated through ‘the strength of weak ties’. This lateral social process, revealed through a relational understanding of social networks, brought into focus how relationships may lever opportunities across trenchant forms of social stratification such as class relations. Networked digital technologies have transformed how weak-tie acquaintances are formed and maintained and reconfigured notions of social order to resemble ‘small worlds’ rather than the hierarchical organisation of the nation-state. This paper provides examples from the case study community to explore experiences of serendipity as a way to understand how such instances of luck, chance and opportunity are hard-wired into the open social structures of digital community.

1. Alexia Maddox
find me on twitter @alexiamadd
Serendipity
Social mobility, submerged
networks and the structural
pathways of unintended
consequences

2. Overview
❖ The aim, the argument
and the definition
❖ Technology, social
networks & social
mobility
❖ Serendipity, the flip-side of
risk
❖ Serendipity & submerged
networks
❖ Serendipity & social
mobility
❖ Concluding reflections
The case studyThe literature

3. the aim
This paper aims to bring
dispersed knowledge about
serendipity into sharp focus and
explore how the combination of
an internet saturated society has
forged lateral pathways for social
mobility into a structural
characteristic.

4. the argument
An often unacknowledged impact
of the internet upon patterns of
social organisation has been to
routinise alternative pathways
through which unpredictable
connections generated within
submerged networks produce social
leverage.

5. the definition
Serendipity is a result of the extension
of lateral social ties through self-
directed networking, to form structural
pathways where social interaction
resonates through the dense networks
of a digital community to produce
unintended consequences.

6. Technology, social networks and social mobility
❖ The rise of open social structures.
❖ Foci of activity groups as increasing the density of social capital.
❖ Social networks as ‘made small’, searchable and facilitating
navigation.
❖ Social mobility across social diversity.
❖ The pivotal role of weak ties and digital networked technologies.
❖ The power of submerged networks.

7. The case study community
❖ Mixed methods study: participant
observation, in-person
interviewing, online survey.
❖ People with interests in reptiles
and amphibians.
❖ Marginalised community.
❖ Occupants of the digital frontier.
Maddox, A. (2015) Research methods and global online communities:
A case study, London, Ashgate.
image courtesy of @aerosynlex

8. Serendipity, the flip side of risk
Social networks as a function for search, navigation and
connectivity.
“The community has a lot of nodes, and each person in that
community is like a spider with sort of eight legs linking up to
other nodes. But you have to hit the right node because there’s a
lot of empty space between the nodes, and you cannot…you
just don’t make the right links if you don’t know the right
people. And it can take a lot of time to find the right contact.”
Daniel, a scientist on a mission to source crocodile embryos.

9. Serendipity & submerged networks
Submerged networks, online connections and ‘the wildest five
years of my life’.
“To honest, it hadn’t even really crossed my mind until I had an
overseas reptile keeper stay with me. He brought with him videos
of his collections and animals back home. And he put this video
on telly and my jaw hit the ground. The video starts, he walks into
this room and flips the lid up on this box. A big black and white
cobra rears up on her clutch of eggs. She’s hoodin’ out and there’s
rattlesnakes going off and I just thought, “This stuff is amazing.”
Dave, amateur professional keeper.

10. Serendipity & social mobility
Self-directed networking, prior actions (symbolic) and the leverage of
weak ties.
“I got interested in lizards because a professor that I really admired
[emotional tremor] when I was an undergrad, was into lizards. And then
it was also a sort of natural inclination. When I was in Thailand as a
teenager, I got a lizard tattoo. It wasn't a big thing for me. I’ve several
tattoos and it wasn’t a big deal. But when I was speaking to this
professor...we were discussing things and he said about lizards and I
said, “Oh, I really like lizards,” [starts to speak faster and excitedly] and I
showed him this tattoo and he immediately went, [intake of breath] “OK,
you can work for me!”
Jill, postgraduate student studying lizards

11. Concluding reflections
❖ More thinking needs to be done about the
structural affordances of serendipity within
digital community.
❖ Further exploration of the personal ‘risk’
biography, self-directed networking and its
relationship to social mobility.
❖ Consolidating view of submerged networks as
structural pathways for unintended consequences.

12. Acknowledgements
❖ I am grateful for the support and engagement of the
Herper community in this research.
❖ This research was funded through a Deakin University
PhD scholarship and has continued to take shape based
upon the data collected during this period.
❖ The field of researchers surrounding digital sociology
have been influential, challenging and ground breaking.
This has been an inspirational field to work within.