An email from my father

 I believe an email can be persistent, visible, searchable, and spreadable depending on the kind of architecture or social media device one uses to manipulate it. Danah Boyd’s 2014 article  titled "It's complicated, the social lives of teens," reminds me so much of an email my late father sent to my older sister when she was in the UK for her bachelor’s degree. At the time I was in high school in Nigeria and my dad was about to take a medical trip abroad, so I wrote a list of things I needed for my high school prom which was to happen in a few months’ time, and I tasked him and my older sister to get my prom dress for me. Attached to the list was a cut-out from a magazine of a dress Beyonce wore for some award, so they would have an idea of the kind of prom dress I wanted. Quite frankly my father could not deal so he sent an email to my sister which said,

“Uju,

The attached is a scanned photo of Beyonce, which as you may be aware is Adaeze’s idol. I think she wants to dress like that for her prom and I suppose you were charged with the responsibility to find that type of dress for her in the UK.

Please deal appropriately.

Daddy. “

He died a few days before the prom, but I only got to see the email (over 10 years later) when my sister randomly searched her yahoo email and rediscovered the message my father had sent to her years ago. Immediately, she took a screenshot of the email with her iPhone and sent to me via WhatsApp. I got emotional and asked her to forward the email to me. Then I shared the screen shot on my Instagram stories and my WhatsApp stories as well, where I normally share posts about my late father. I got so many responses in the forms of likes, comments, and reposting.

In and of itself emails are persistent. The email my father sent to my sister endured and still does  and so does the email which she then forwarded to me. As Danah Boyd says, messages conducted through social media are “far from ephemeral.”

The email could also be made visible. While no one could access her private email to read the message, (unless it was hacked), the architecture of her phone enabled her to screenshot the email and then send to me. I shared the screenshot to my followers as an Instagram story, notwithstanding my Instagram account is private and only certain contacts can view my WhatsApp posts. Thus, my posts aren’t open to the whole world but only visible to the people I allow.

It could easily have been searchable. If I made the screenshot an Instagram post (rather than a story) and hashtagged #messagesfrommyfather or #afatherslove or #daddysgirl, it would have been easily searchable by a wider audience. Thus, one can see the extent of one’s ability to search for information on social media might depend on the type and or manipulation of social media app. However, in this instance, I chose specifically to make them temporary, by posting it as a story on instagram. If I posted it on twitter, it would still be there.

The email is spreadable.  Firstly, the email could be forwarded to anyone included everyone on her email contact list. But the architecture of phones and social media has diversified the way in which the content of the email can be spread.  Therefore, using the screen shot feature of her phone it was sent to me, and I spread it on social media: and so did the people who reposted my post. Talk less of those may have screen shot it. The possibility of the message’s ability to spread is endless.

While the above application of the four affordances serves a purpose of bringing back nice memories, other instances are not so pleasant. Unlike the above, the 1^st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America will not protect a speech such as defamation when the defamed can prove that there was a false and defamatory statement concerning another was made; it was an unprivileged publication to a 3rd party; the fault amounting to at least negligence on the part of the publisher; there was harm caused.  (RSA Tort of Defamation S 558).

The problem is that due to the architecture of the internet, technological devices such as phones as well as the architecture of social media platforms which enable spreading, it will most likely be there forever. The four affordances will serve as a disadvantage to a person defamed online.