Counterculture vs technology: exploring fixed-gear cycling communities within the online environments.

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Master’s thesis - Zdzisław Heydel

Counterculture vs technology: exploring

fixed-gear cycling communities within the

online environments.

Student number: 12664138

MA New Media and Digital Culture

Date of submission: June 23rd 2020

Contact: zdzich.heydel@student.uva.nl

Supervisor: dr. Peter Dunajcsik (Maxigas)

Second reader: David Gauthier

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The following dissertation is an attempt to find, place and understand a relation between new media and technology with urban sports societies. The main case study of this paper is a Polish fixed-gear cycling group Ride Warsaw, which unites over 100 riders around the capital of Poland. The rapid growth of the society was partly caused by its appearance on Instagram having coherent and aesthetic content releases. The thesis answers the research question: what role does Instagram play in the development and reproduction of fixed-gear communities? It touches upon the theoretical debate about technological determinism, McLuhanism and media ecology. The paper attempts to question whether the content that is being published in new media is important and how can it matter. The text takes an auto ethnographic approach as it was written by one of the members of Ride Warsaw.

Keywords:

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Chapter 1: Introduction

On a summer Sunday morning in front of a locally well-known cafeteria ‘Stor’, located on a steep street in Warsaw’s Powiśle, centrally located and increasingly fashionable residential area consisting mainly of tenement houses rebuilt in the mid-20th century due to destruction caused by World War II. In a short period of time a group of cyclists arrive one-by-one either from the top or bottom of the hill. Everyone has a different bike but there are many similarities between the riders and their gear. Everyone gets a cup of coffee (preferably brewed with an alternative method), some people smoke a cigarette before they all start their group bike ride within and around the capital of Poland. When the group gets big enough, everyone is motivated, riders put on their helmets (those who wear them), and messenger-style bags and backpacks. Some of the riders have GoPro action cameras recording the cycling around the city. They all group together to pose for a picture, but instead of shouting something typical like “cheese” to get smiley expressions, they all of the sudden loudly shout “jebać!” (pol. “Fuck it!”). This exclamation made everyone smile even more. All of the riders jump on their bikes and vigorously, one-by-one start riding down the steep street. Later, many of the group pictures and videos, including the ones from in front of the cafeteria, and streets of Warsaw will be published on many private Instagram accounts, as well as on the profile run by the members of that local fixed-gear society and cycling club.

The community is called Ride Warsaw and it is a group of friends and local enthusiasts of fixed-gear cycling. In its essence, a fixed-gear bike is a road-like bicycle, usually with thin tires and a dropdown handlebars (that depends on trends as well as purpose of the bike), that is run on a single, fixed gear. What it means is that when the rider’s leg pushes on the pedals attached to the front chainring, the chain moves the rear wheel at the same speed. The rear wheel only stops when the chain is not in motion. It is a conjugate system, constructed in a way that the rider cannot just stop pedaling. In order to ride slower, he or she needs to pedal at a lower pace. Even if there was no leg movement, the chain is still running with the same energy as the rear wheel of the bicycle. The fixed-gears were originally used as the gear in track cycling, an official sport discipline based on racing on a circular track called velodrome. The track racing has different categories and different bikes are used in each of them, however always the fixed-gear system is in use.

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The structure of the bike is very simple, it is lightweight but also resistant for high speeds and forces. Therefore, the fixed-gear bike was taken from the velodrome or the race tracks into the streets of big cities where they were used mainly by the bike messengers whose task was to go from one place to another in the shortest time possible. This transition was initiated in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, when immigrants from Jamaica and Europe would bring their own old and brakeless track bikes and would use them to work as bike messengers and move around the city_{(Edwards and Leonard 62). Soon, the local cycling} scene would pick up this trend as the track bike allowed the riders to obtain high speeds, it was light enough to carry it on a shoulder if any obstacle was to be overtaken. The single and ‘unstoppable’ gear gave the need of being focused, predicting the behavior of other road users and their own moves. Riding a fixed-gear bike in a city is about being part of the traffic, but also about moving around beyond the set of urban rules, like red lights and one way streets. Therefore, a bike that was used for an Olympic sport was taken out on a street and introduced to a larger number of people. Usually, those who ride a fixed-gear bicycle tend not to find any disadvantages of this way of urban communication, although there are some challenges to be overtaken: as the drive of such a bike requires non-stop pedaling, after longer periods of time some riders observe problems with knee injuries. As the bicycles allow for fast riding, some find it simply dangerous when confronting with other traffic users. Experienced rides have full control over their bike, but that requires dynamic and often rapid maneuvers that might seem out of place for other people on the streets, especially car drivers. Over forty years later fixed-gear cycling is present world-wide and has also become a way of transportation and lifestyle, not only as a tool for bike messengers. Ride Warsaw is an amateur sports club that unites cycling enthusiasts, who do not only cycle for commuting but for a manifestation of a lifestyle represented by the bicycle and clothing, accessories, the ways of spending free time, or building their own bikes from scratch. Along with their presence online, the passion has been brought to platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where it is shared with other people. The movement of Ride Warsaw is strongly rooted online and is supported by their users who also participate there. Online participation helps the culture to grow, but it also changes it.

The following thesis will not be dedicated to cycling itself, but it will discuss the growth and the changes that online environments could influence on a society like Ride Warsaw. On a global scale it is a small society, although it works dynamically, is very active

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in social media and is recognized as the most active fixed-gear society in Europe (taking into account the number of group rides in a given year) (Interview 1). I will take into consideration the evolution of the group, its cultural location and most importantly its relation to the new media. The research question that the text aims to answer is: what role does Instagram play in the development and reproduction of fixed-gear communities? This will allow me to look at the process of group formation as well as its effects of the appearance on social media and how it may implement the way that the group would work and how people within it perform.

In order to answer the research question there was a certain methodological approach followed. First of all I personally was a member of Ride Warsaw and I base the story on some of my personal experiences, insights and observations. On top of that, there were two interviews undertaken with active members of Ride Warsaw who participate within the movement since its origins in 2017 and who are also responsible for content curation for Instagram and who also lead cycling trips around Warsaw. The interviews were the backbone of the research and the meritorical input for data collection and its analysis.

The following thesis is partly about the way that media allow for a culture to develop and grow, and the theoretical background of this text will be based on theories propagated by Niel Postman and other media ecologists. The literature review will also mention Marshall McLuhan and his take on the new media theories. The way that Ride Warsaw members coexist with Instagram shows that the technology has an impact on them and on the way that they perform. The theoretical issues with relation to Instagram as a medium designed to watch and upload audiovisual content refer to the texts of Lev Manovich who has contributed to the field of media studies with a detailed analysis of Instagram affordances, the content that is being published on that platform and the people who live in symbiosis with Instagram. Manovich’s input was valuable for understanding the concepts of ‘Instagramism’ and the ‘Instagram class’, which refer to the style and structure of Ride Warsaw.

In the thesis I will argue that even though people like Ride Warsaw members are determined by technology that changes their cycling and off-bike behaviour, the production and circulation of content produced during the cycling meet-ups are important for the group existence and its identity. The thesis will confront with Roman Eichler’s argument that one cannot identify such a thing as a fixed-gear group that would hold a unified sense of style.

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Ride Warsaw is an example of a society that is very influential on its members' style and the homogeneity is achieved and represented through new media channels.

The thesis will start with setting up the scene with the use of research based on two interviews and my personal experience. It will present the group’s beginnings, its relation with social media, describe the social aspects and describe the members of the society and their ideas. This will lead to a statement that fixed-gear is ‘the new skateboarding’, giving me a pretext to introduce a second urban sports society, whose public existence was also based on media and was raised in a way that could be associated with media ecology. Californian Z-boys and revolutionary articles by their Craig Stecyk will serve as a method to look at Ride Warsaw from a confrontational angle and to see aspects that make them unique with regards to media determinism, mediated culture growth and the international fixed-gear scene.

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Chapter 2: Methodology

The topic of this dissertation as well as the research question is based on my interests in the world of cycling, especially fixed-gear urban cycling. Therefore, the content and ideas for this paper are taken from my real life experience and number of years of observations. The initial case study of this dissertation is a Polish cycling society Ride Warsaw. The group’s public presence online is mainly based on Instagram. It is treated as a medium for communication, inspiration and growth of the group. The case study and its appearance in new media was confronted with ongoing debate in the media studies in order to answer the following research question: what role does Instagram play in the development and reproduction of fixed-gear communities?

The research question was firstly approached with setting up a theoretical scene. The initial food-for-thought for this thesis was the way that the media ecologists treat the medium as a place where a culture grows. To approach the problem in a theoretically chronological way, this text will firstly take into consideration McLuhan’s ideas that “Medium is the Message”, the basis of media ecology thinking. Later the media ecology theory will be introduced, followed by a brief introduction of the topic of fixed-gear cycling in scientific literature, that has a different opinion about the coherent in style fixed-gear societies, that the ones presented in this text. The theoretical part will be followed by data collection, analysis and discussion of the findings. It was important to remain in the frames of the theoretical background set in the literature mentioned above.

The data collection and its analysis was divided in three parts: first of all, interviews with two Ride Warsaw members followed by an analysis of all the data and information gathered throughout the conversations with these cyclists. Secondly I have embedded the collected knowledge within the theoretical concepts of literature review. The sociotechnical context of Ride Warsaw and an insight from one of the interviews suggested that cycling could be described as new skateboarding. This has led to a decision to base the analysis of this dissertation on a comparison between two different countercultures and the differences in their formation with the use of media and with the media ecology approach. Formation of skateboarding countercultures in the 1970s like Z-boys from Southern California, share similarities with the formation of Ride Warsaw in the way that the media was involved in the creation. It is not only about the similarities of the urban sports and both types of equipment

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having wheels that usually run on concrete, but the way that both sports, or societies around them were mediated as a unique way of spending time. This approach allows for understanding the differences and the unique aspects of Instagram helpful for the cycling community in Warsaw.

Data and information serving as the backbone of this thesis are based on the interviews run with people who actively participate in the life of Ride Warsaw, who are also responsible for content production and the group’s life in social media. As stated in the theory of scientific interviews, “A necessary precursor to a successful question-answer cycle is that both researcher and respondent have a shared understanding of the topic under investigation. Since all topics are multidimensional, respondents can orient to a topic in either a global or a more narrowly defined fashion (Foddy 38)”. The questions were formulated in such a way, to allow the respondents to look at the issues associated with cycling through the media perspective, despite their strong focus on the sport and social aspects of that group. The contextualisation was important, because “Unless all respondents attend to the same clues, different respondents are likely to interpret particular questions in quite different ways (Foddy 75)_{”. For the same reason, both recipients were asked the same set of questions} (Appendix B.2), allowing for widening the boundaries of insights and understanding of certain issues relating to the topic of the paper as well as to new media theories. Both recipients have different backgrounds, one of them is a film producer with a long and successful career and is one of the oldest members of the group, the other is a young film director and journalist deeply involved in the fixed-gear scene in Poland. They both have a slightly different perspective on the topic, that allows for an insightful comparison and wider scope of answers. For the sake of anonymity and ethical norms of the academic research, within the text the recipties are referred to as Interlocutor 1 and 2 and the interviews are referred to as Interview 1 and 2.

As the researcher is required to have “a clear understanding of the kind of information about the topic that will satisfy the theoretical or practical reasons for carrying out the research _{(Foddy 25)”, in case of this research the interviews were meant to be a side-by-side} insights to the autoethnographic approach that I have undertook. When living in Warsaw I was a member of Ride Warsaw and participated in many group rides, especially in the beginning of the group's existence. Additionally, till today I observe the group’s activities on Instagram and in general, I have very strong interest in the culture of road and fixed-gear

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cycling for the past decade. Autoethnography is being referred to as “research in which the researcher is a full member in the research group or setting, visible as such a member in published texts, and committed to developing theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena _{(Anderson 373)”. Furthermore, Anderson finds number of characteristics of the} ethnographic approach: “The five key features of analytic autoethnography that I propose include (1) complete member researcher (CMR) status, (2) analytic reflexivity, (3) narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, (4) dialogue with informants beyond the self, and (5) commitment to theoretical analysis _{(Anderson 378).” These guidelines were the key} milestones to be followed when talking about a cycling society that I have been involved in and to keep personal insights as autoethnography not as unproven information.

The information gathered during interviews, research data and my personal observations are supported within the text with a number of content that was published within the Instagram account of Ride Warsaw. I have used posts that are openly available for every user of that platform and number of archived ‘Instagram Stories’ that I have accessed through this account. These particular images were also available for the general public, but they were visible only for 24 hours after publication. The archive feature that Instagram provides allowed me to access these pictures. The figures embedded within the text work as evidence of my observations and to present elements like branding, cross referencing, aesthetics and visual statements of the content that Ride Warsaw produces. These photographs also work as a proof that this fixed-gear group has a unified style. The visual objects visible in this text were chosen because they work as a proof of my argumentation built throughout this thesis. I have analysed them using the Visual Analysis approach, which was defined as “an empirical (observational) and objective procedure for quantifying recorded ‘audio-visual’ (including verbal) representation” _{(Van Leeuwen and Jewitt 13). The analysis was undertaken in the} most objective way, aiming to get as many insights as possible. The pictures were captured with a use of the screenshot feature, depicting also all the meta data available on Instagram: description, hashtags, date, number of likes and the information who is ‘tagged’ on that picture.

The research undertaken for the purpose of this paper has a number of limitations. The autoethnographic approach was an advantage in terms of involvement and understanding of the described issues, however at times I have found it challenging when thinking about the major subject of the text. It is not a thesis about cycling but about the new media phenomena

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represented on the examples of cyclists’ and skaters’ appearance in different media. Furthermore, the interlocutors of the interviews are also strongly focused on cycling itself, not within the world of new media and some of their answers were not particularly referring to the issues helpful for this particular dissertation. The interviews were held in Polish, the native language of the interlocutors and me so it is possible that some of the data and useful insight might have been lost in translations. Additionally, I personally know the people I have interviewed and thus some of the information from the conversations have some personal and insight context making it harder to understand for others and to be used within the analysis.

The interviews were held online with the use of Zoom video conference, however only voice was recorded. The interview procedure was undertaken following academic research standards, including anonymization of all of the respondents and keeping the data collected separate from any elements of their personal data. Both interviews were undertaken on a voluntary basis and the interlocutors were happy to help me within this project as the both are responsible for its growth within social media and real life. Both of them were introduced to the topic and procedure with the use of information brochures containing all the information with regards to potential ethical issues. The input from my interlocutors was very useful even though their data was anonymized.

The initial idea for the topic, case study and research question of this desiration was deeply inspired and motivated by my personal interests and involvement within the Ride Warsaw movement. I have participated in the first rides in the season of 2018, when the group started to grow and amd when it was started to be introduced to social media on a bigger scale. During one of the common rides I had an accident and broke my first bike there. This personal involvement is also joined with my strong interests in social media as a place for culture building, networking and cultural inspiration, especially on Instagram. I appreciate the strategic thinking behind Instagram content that Ride Warsaw members perform.

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Chapter 3: Literature review

3.1 Medium is the message

At the beginning of his book _{Understanding Media. The extension of man,} _McLuhan

states the iconic sentence that “medium is the message” _{(Mcluhan 7). It is a phrase that has} influenced and changed media and humanistic studies forever. McLuhan in his manifesto refines the role of technology and the new media with regards to human kind and addresses what, in his unwavering opinion, is essential when thinking of new media (every generation has different examples of the new media, for McLuhan it was television and radio, for us today it is Instagram and Facebook to name only a few). For him, the medium is the message, meaning that it is the technology itself that matters, and that it is technology that causes changes within the society. In this case the audiovisual content that is broadcasted, shared or published is “like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind” _{(Mcluhan 18). By that comparison McLuhan communicates that the actual image} or sound that is being sent to the new media users is eventually distracting, irrelevant and much less influential than the medium itself. The message that the medium sends out is the ability of changing human interrelations, activities and the means of thinking. It is “any change in scale, pace, or pattern that a medium causes in societies or cultures” _{(Gordon 104),} shaping societies and new generations, shaping human relations and activities. “It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (Mcluhan 9) _{. The theory being formulated in the 1960s remains the base of thinking about the} media, even though the form of communication and technologies that are fundamental for contemporary new media have changed_{(Tilley 191). The social media platforms over the last} ten to fifteen years have changed the way people think about everyday life, traveling, the way people think, and how they portray their lives. The idea of photography, filmmaking and journalism were reestablished and refined because people were engaged in social media. McLuhan predicting the power and the ability of innovation and technological diversity outlined that “media must be studied for their effects, not their content, because their interaction obscures these effects and deprives us of the power to keep media under our control” _{(Gordon 124), giving the technology the helm of change within the society.}

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This way of thinking, focusing merely on the effects of technology makes people associate Marshall McLuhan with the notion of technological determinism _{(Peters). This} association may seem controversial, as the technology determinism is a wide theoretical concept that refers to more than just visual media and historically roots back to the early days of human interaction with machines. The deterministic approach treats technology “as the prime mover in history” and the “human factors and social arrangements are seen as secondary”_{(Chandler “Technology-led theories”). Chandler describes this model of thinking} as “the billiard ball model of change” meaning that the determinists feel the need of understanding and describing mainly the change that has occurred being mono-casual in their research. Therefore, technological determinism involves reductionism that allows to “reduce a complex whole to the effect of one part upon another part” _{(Chandler “Reductionism”). The} deterministic approach is widely confronted and criticized. As Peters points out, “Whatever technological determinism is, it is one of a family of pejoratives by which academics derive their fellows for single minded devotion (or monomaniacal fanaticism) to their pet cause” (Peters 10)_{. This rather whimsical definition puts technological determinism in a context of} scientific adjectives that the theorists would not choose to call themself, but other critics would use this term to describe them. Marshall McLuhan was firstly called a technological determinist by Thelma McCormack, who also mentioned that he “underestimated our capacity to use technology without being influenced by it. Technological determinism, like all forms of determinism, is never able to cope with discrepancies” _{(Peters 18).}

In the case of social media, the ‘discrepancies’ are caused by twofold participation requirements that contemporary new media have nowadays. The demand for content production within the medium and the means of communication that are based on standardised platforms that require unplannable events that could generate a surplus useful and valuable for some third parties _{(Bratton) change the human relation with technology.} Therefore, it could be argued that the content visible within the new media is necessary to understand the phenomenon of the medium and its abilities for change, influence and community building. The content analysis allows for understanding the processes that occur within the platforms, the way that social media is constructed along with its relation with humans. Ride Warsaw, a cycling community from the capital of Poland, and the main case study of this paper is an example of the way that content creation and sharing on Instagram allows for individual and unique visual storytelling. The research has shown that the

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members of Ride Warsaw are dependent or addicted from technology, but mainly from the social processes that the new media afford and that are based on content and its visual aspect as well as its popularity in the network. The society was also built due to the knowledge and ability to produce pictures and videos that later published on Instagram would become popular and unite the group with a coherent visual style. The content in new media allows for a high level of participation within the technology.

3.2 Participation

Marshall McLuhan has established a distinction between different modes of participation with the medium. The idea of ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media derives from the high and low definition image. “High definition is the state of being well filled with data” (McLuhan 22), and so it does not require much intelectual action from the user, as a complex and understandable information is being delivered. The low definition media, McLuhan gives an example of a cartoon, “gives a little information and makes the user work on what is missing” (Gordon 129)_{. Participation is then the extent to which the medium engages users' physical} senses. Hot media are those of low participation, as all what is to be understood is delivered to the user - radio, print photography, lectures (high definition image). On the contrary, the cool media are those that require high participation in order to understand the picture that is being delivered by the technology and that requires high participation.

In the era of social media there may be a certain difference in the way of thinking about human participation and cohabitation with the new media. The online platforms that form the new media today, require high participation in the form of building networks, sharing posts and uploading pictures and videos, in other words generating data, parallely providing almost an infinite amount of hot media that do not require high participation of the users in terms of understanding the picture. At the same time, actions like continuous ‘scrolling’ of the social media feed requires the users to dedicate their time to the platform, also in order to build the database of online activities that later could be monetised and used commercially _{(Zuboff). Instagram for example is an online space that provides almost an} unlimited stream of pictures and short video clips, at the same time expecting the viewers to contribute from their side, building and contributing to the ‘aesthetic society’ _(Manovich). Instagram seems to be a medium that could be hard to pigeonhole as either a hot or cool medium. Lev Manovich in his texts on Instagram attempts to describe the relation with the

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contemporary youth cultures and this specific social medium. Arguing that the 21st century visual culture is shaped by ‘aesthetic society’, where “the production of beautiful images, interfaces, objects and experiences, are central to economic and social functioning” (Manovich 2)_{. Instagram is a platform, where the production of images occurs, but as there is} a big amount of production that provides a visual supply, on the other end, there is a big demand for certain types of digital content. That makes Instagram a place of high and low participation at the same time, as it is possible to scroll, like and share endless amounts of pictures, viedos, or Stories (content published in vertical format that is only visible for 24 hours), but Instagram also affords (or requires) users to take, edit and publish images to fulfill the visual demand that the platform has. Manovich introduces the notion of ‘Instagramism’ to highlight that Instagram has its own visual language. However, this particular movement is “shaped by millions of authors connected by and participating in Instagram and other social networks” _{(Manovich 4), which shows how many senders and recipients are at the same time.}

Therefore, Instagram is established as a new medium that does not match the clear distinction of hot and cool media because of affordances of an image broadcaster as well as a place where people can share their own content and thus highly participate in the medium. The important aspect of the medium is the fact that it is a content-based platform, requiring people to share audio-visual files online, so that other people have their personalized feed to watch and scroll through. Manovich mentioned that the key of Instagramism and participation within the platform are “content-creation skills and an understanding of digital platforms and styles of expression and communication _{(Manovich 5)”, suggesting that it is} not only technology that determines the shape of human culture, but there are also humans who shape the medium by producing adequate content. The adequacy is determined by trends and rules of the visual style that is present within the platform. The ability to produce images that are appreciated and loved require skills and knowledge of the medium. The representatives of the ‘Instagram class’ need to have these skills.

The term Instagramism is an analogy to the names of “modern art movements such as futurism, cubism, surrealism, etc. Like these earlier –isms, Instagramism offers its own vision of the world and its own visual language _{(Manovich 4).” Marshall McLuhan also draws an} analogy of his theory with the modern art movement, namely cubism. He says that “Cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the

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whole. Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced that _{the medium is} the message”_{(Mcluhan 13). One may have an impression that Instagramism does not follow} McLuhan’s ideas that evenly. It is true that since 2010 Instagram is sending its message that is influencing billions of people and changed the way that people communicate online, but because in its basics it is a platform for sharing user-generated content, it makes the content vital as well. Following McLuhan’s way of thinking, the content of Instagram is photography and videos, that shape the way that people communicate, shape the aesthetics and the way the information flows nowadays.

Although, the critics of McLuhan’s theories point out that “In his work the media were never really seen as practices. He ‘desocialized’ how media operate” and “excluded social, cultural, psychological and moral questioning” _{(Peters 18) and therefore he would not} treat the user-generated content as the influential and important factor of the new media. The research undertaken for this paper has shown that even though Instagram has influenced the way that the members of the cycling society perform their actions, their style and their means of communication, still the fact of simply publishing content online allowed them to build a strong society. Thanks to it, the Ride Warsaw members feel a strong connection with the group and have the chance to get appreciation for their non-mainstream lifestyle. Content production and observation allows for communication with alike cycling groups across the world and for making Ride Warsaw have a coherent visual style.

But the photography, communication and information need to originate at a certain point. In order to keep this machine of images running, people need to continuously produce content to share that information with others. Social media is the message, but it would not exist without the content. In the case of Instagram and other social media as well, the content is important and necessary. Lev Manovich draws the notion of “Instagram class” and refers to “millions of young people in many countries who use Instagram in systematic ways to create visually sophisticated feeds” _{(Manovich 4). He talks about groups of people whose lifestyles} run around social media and Instagram. Apart from continuous scroll and popularity metrics, the lifestyle is about images. And thus the content of the medium is important.

3.3 Media ecology

The social aspect of contemporary new media mentioned when thinking about Instagramism, could be referred to the notion of Media Ecology which is a school of thought

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based on teaching and ideas by Marshall McLuhan. “Media ecology should be recognized as a complex and systemic meta discipline that transcends both the science of communication and ‘McLuhanism’” _{(Islas and Bernal 190). Niel Postman, the precursor of Media Ecology} has established the definition of media ecology, firstly by explaining why he would make such a biological metaphor. Postam refers to the Petri dish as a laboratorial “substance within which a culture grows” _{(Postman 10). In this case he means the biological bacteria culture,} but moving the metaphor forward he points out that if the word “substance” could be replaced with the word “technology”, and then the definition and the principle of Media Ecology could be formulated as “a medium is a technology within which a culture grows; that is to say, it gives form to a culture’s politics, social organization, and habitual ways of thinking” _{(Postman 10). Juxtaposing a background for culture growth with the term} “ecology”, Postman suggests that he does not only think about the media separately, but it is important to also think about the interaction between technology and humans and how that relation gives shape and form to that culture.

Discovering further the already mentioned relation between McLuhan and Media Ecology, Paul Levinson in his essay on that relation draws an analogy taken from chemistry: hydrogen and oxygen are necessary for the existence of H₂O, but they are not sufficient . For the school of Media Ecology, McLuhan was “a center of gravity” and a “moral compass” (Levinson 17)_{. Levinson argues, that without the ideas of McLuhan’s, it would not be} possible to undertake a “study that sought to explain how the nuances and great sweeps of human history are made possible by media of communication—how media determine the thoughts and actions of people and society, in a “soft” way” _{(Levinson 17). Media ecology} partly includes the values of the media determinism and looks at the changes that the new media cause from the perspective of cultures and communities and how they are affected or changed by technology. One of the keywords that is used when describing media ecology is ‘consciousness’ and what is the role of media in shaping it within humans. This in essence is a reference to McLuhan’s “ medium is the message”.

Media ecology is perceived as a complex and wide discipline, also because for years it was never constituted in a form of one publication. Since its origins in the 1960s, “the academic foundations of media ecology have been passed down primarily in the form of edited volumes” _{(Cali, n.p.). In 2017 Dennis Cali has published a book “Mapping Media} Ecology: Introduction to the Field” in which he provides a wide overview of the subject with

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references to many authors and scholars who have contributed to the field. The book contains a chapter that outlines primary themes of media ecology: Consciousness, Technology, Change, Balance, Environment, Culture and Interconnectedness. These divisions and characteristics allow Cali to run an overview of how media ecology is constructed. The most visible aspect of it is that the practise follows the principles of media determinism and the question of how technology shapes human kind. Taking it from McLuhan, media ecologists seem to be following the effects of the medium, instead of its content, observing the technological changes from different perspectives and for a long period of time. “Media ecology, then, is the study of the interrelationship of people, media, culture, and consciousness, and of the changes that occur among them, and of their symbiotic alteration of human environments” _{(Cali 9).}

Media ecology claims that “human beings stand at the center of a media environment” (Cali 6)_{, shaping their consciousness, awareness of the surrounding media and getting them} used to it. Since the founding of Media Ecology the world has experienced an explosion of different media using the center position of humans, making them participate in different ways. Media Ecologists observe the aspects that the new media change in the human environment. Cali in his periphrasis brings in a question: “how does the introduction of a new medium in culture and society change human behaviour and social mores?” _{(Cali 31). As} discussed by Manovich, Instagram for example has changed the way of thinking about taking pictures, but more importantly establishing groups of people that gather within and around the new medium. “Modern media biologists recognize that humans and machines are intertwined” _{(Cali 26). When it comes to Instagram, users can produce content that allows} them to express their feelings as well as to follow and meet certain trends as well as belong to different communities. Therefore, the aspect of media ecology in times of social media might be the affordances of community building within the medium. When thinking of the people of Manovich’s ‘Instagram class’ it is important to know that “they use these skills to have meaningful and emotionally satisfying experiences, to meet like minded people, to maintain relationships with other people, or to acquire social prestige” (Manovich 4).

The human - technology relation with regards to Instagram is rather complex. The application at its beginnings required people to publish squared-framed images offering the users a vast amount of filters and editing tools to add the images a certain look. Along with the growing popularity of the platform, different affordances have changed. Instagram

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follows the needs of its users trying to fit in current preferences and trends. That is done to keep people’s attention and to constantly attract new customers, but it also follows the statement of media ecologists that the human is in the center of technology. The initial idea of Instagram was to make people simply share photographs online. Due to its high popularity the medium has changed the way that people think about the content that they produce and how they think of photography, marketing and social relations. Nevertheless, Instagram is not a desocialised medium, in a sense that it makes the content crucial, to build an emotional connection between the users and the platform. Ride Warsaws in an example of a passionate society which builds quite strong connections with the visual aspects of Instagram photography and videos. The growth of that culture within the medium was possible due to the emotional connection between the fixed-gear cycling (or the bicycle as an object in general), strong and healthy interhuman social relations and visual content.

The more images and videos are produced and published within the social media, the bigger attachment people have to the process of producing the feed and to the platform itself, making users to turn their interests, hobbies into some form of content to broadcast it in big quantities. This allows for formation of different cultures of people who have the same interests. Social media is the technology within which a culture grows. The specificity of these cultures is the fact that they go beyond just being online. The cultures that grow within the petri dish of social media are often representations and figuration of a culture that consists of real people who use new media to express their interests , communicate and to be involved.

The major case study of this text is a Warsaw based fixed-gear cycling group Ride Warsaw. It was found by a group of friends to initially enjoy weekend afternoons to ride bicycles together. Subsequently the group would grow along with meeting new people who also were fascinated by urban fixed-gear cycling. Along with its growth, the group was gaining a visual style on Instagram, starting from private accounts later to have one of its own. With the use of new media and following a certain visual key, Ride Warsaw has become the most active cycling community in Europe. Firstly Facebook, then followed by Instagram allowed for community building, as the group members “use these skills to have meaningful and emotionally satisfying experiences, to meet like-minded people, to maintain relationships with other people, or to acquire social prestige _{(Manovich 4).”}

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Cali looking at technology with regards to Media Ecology says that it is a “vehicle that functions as an environment that shapes human consciousness (23).” Ride Warsaw is run by technology of human relations, technology of Instagram and social media as well as by the simple technology of track bikes used on the streets of Warsaw.

Fixed-gear cycling does not have a large coverage in academic writing, there are however some attempts to describe this social and sport phenomenon. Roman Eichler wrote an essay on the relation of fixed-gear cycling and urban spaces. The text observes how a fixed-gear cyclist resists many of the affordances of a built environment and related conventions that routinely structure public interaction _{(Eichler 240)”, taking alleycat races as} an example. These races are probably the only structured element of that urban sport, requiring the participants to finish the race in the quickest possible way, collecting stamps from every check-point of the race. Because the riders are supposed to go as fast as possible, they tend to break every possible rule of public traffic, often putting themselves and others in dangerous and very dynamic situations. The text also talks about the context of exclusivity within the sphere of fixed-gear riders and how “a bike that shares the puristic look and the maximal reduced gearing with the fixie but has freewheel and brakes, has become a globalized eye-catching lifestyle accessory _{(Eichler 242)”, raising up the issues of} authenticity of the culture and urban sport, as the ‘original riders’ - bike messengers do not accept that kind of imitation. Therefore, Eichler claims that the mainstream has pushed fixed-gear cycling to the place where “one cannot claim that there is such a thing as a homogeneous group of fixed-gear riders or corresponding clear laws of style (243)”. The case study of Ride Warsaw as well as the idea of Instagramism show that the reality works just the opposite. Communities on Instagram that have both an online and real-life version are created because the members follow a certain, unified style. The founders of the group admit that one of the keys to building a strong community was inclusivity, although the visual style of the group and the amount of content published made the group big. Technology determinism makes people think of passion and its representation in a certain way, and the content that they produce make them share the love for the sport and other activities. Ride Warsaw is a strong example of technology based culture growth with the social and human factors seen as primary, not secondary as in the technological determinist approach.

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Chapter 4: Research findings 4.1 What is Ride Warsaw?

Ride Warsaw is a semi-organised cycling society consisting of people who love to ride their bikes in an urban environment, who like to perform this activity together with like-minded people and who share enthusiasm for their passion via different channels online. Most members of the group ride fixed-gear bicycles and they are not interested in slow rides on bike lanes in the city center and nearby parks. This section of this urban sport is about rebellion cycling, usually using bicycles with no brakes, going between cars, without stopping at the red lights, often breaking the rules that apply to vehicles on the road. It is a way for people to vent the need for higher adrenaline and breaking the rules, spending a great time together at the same time. At first it was a small group of enthusiasts that would meet every Sunday at a given time at one of the squares in Warsaw to cycle from one cafeteria to another, ride towards a nearby lake, or to see some abandoned buildings around the city. The whole concept was based on friendship, as both the riders and the coffee makers were friends. It was a simple way of spending a casual Sunday in an active way with some surplus of adrenaline included. Along the way more people would join the club and after some time there were regular rides a couple of times a week with many people joining them. From the first cycling meeting, during every ride a vast amount of pictures and videos were produced.

Social media was always in the backbone of that cycling group (Interview 1). Even though the very first rides were mainly participated by friends, there were attempts to give it a more organised shape and form, starting with opening a Facebook group. Instead of sending private text messages it was easier for the organiser to share a post about another group ride, so that everyone gets the information at once. The Facebook group became the first place where all the pictures and short videos from the group rides were shared. That was the first step of the process of growing and increasing that cycling culture. It was a private group where continuously more people would be added in. In parallel, there were many people involved in the fixed-gear scene in Warsaw who found this group attractive and decided to join for the rides. Before Ride Warsaw there were a number of similar, but less successful cycling communities and after their termination people would join the new, partly digital sports club (Interview 1). Nowadays the group has its own Instagram account (Figure 1) that depicts the lifestyle, bicycles, people who join the rides and activities beyond cycling like drinking coffee, street art and many more.

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4.2 Content and social media

For approximately one year and a half there was no official open profile online that would represent Ride Warsaw on Instagram (Interview 1). Nevertheless, from its beginnings there was a vast amount of audio-visual content produced around the group rides and meetings. There were many pictures, videos and posts published on private profiles, available for a limited number of viewers. The content was skillfully built in order to attract the attention of other people and to show how the new society rises. After shifting the attention to the Ride Warsaw profile the content went more viral being available to people from the outside of groups of friends and people interested in cycling. After two years of running, Ride Warsaw can be called the most active cycling society in Europe, with around 140 members within the Facebook group and with circa 140 common rides within these two years (Interview 1). New Media followed the foundation and development of the group, indeed providing the substance for the culture to grow.

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One of the reasons why Ride Warsaw became such an active group is the consistent process of content publishing to build awareness, group formation and adopting a visual style. The relation between Ride Warsaw and Instagram is the continuation of running private feeds that were used initially. Ride Warsaw has Instagram style within its DNA (Interview 1) and there is a certain intended aesthetics of the Ride Warsaw image online. The pictures are mostly taken in a vertical format to fit Instagram Stories size, usually there are no filters added and any decorative frames used. The style itself is interesting because there are no official guidelines of how to run the feed. It is done intuitively because the members of the group are native to the medium and understand how to run it to get a certain effect and how to remain within frames of certain aesthetics. Ride Warsaw is therefore an example of Manovich’s Instagram Class of people running a social media profile is part of the coexistence within the group. The awareness on what to publish and how to guide the visual representative shows the importance of the content when creating a culture within new media.

When observing Ride Warsaw on Instagram one could determine a certain trend of pictures that was also confirmed by one of the founders during the interview: the profile tends to aim into the golden mean between ‘family friendly content’ and aggressive and vulgar images associated with counterculture urban sports like fixed-gear cycling, as this might be unappealing for some. For Ride Warsaw members it is vital to show smiling people (boys and girls) in between their bikes, the culture of the streets, along with fascination of the urban spaces, active lifestyle and alternative activities like speciality coffee brewing methods (Interview 1). When asked about the impact that technology has on the group, the Interlocutor 1 stressed that the technology, mainly Instagram, might be addictive, as during the rides people post images and videos in real time, every time when possible people check their effectiveness and how the posts and Instagram Stories are doing in terms of views and popularity. This, according to the Interlocutor 1, is caused by the need of being noticed, appreciated for doing activities that are rather unique and exceptional, and “fixed-gear cycling is quite exceptional” (Interview 1). Paradoxically, this case of technological impact is quite exceptional, as “the community itself is rather analog” (Interview 2). The bikes that members of the group use are usually very basic, there is not much electricity included in the riding itself (GPS computers, power meters and other metrics readers are usually not in use). The only software that also affects the group is Strava, an athlete performance monitoring app, but it is also used due to its social affordances of giving ‘kudos’ for other athletes'

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activities and route sharing. The media that are important for Ride Warsaw members are those that allow for sharing content as that allows participation and appreciation for others (Interview 1).

4.3 People

When talking about Ride Warsaw with its members it was possible to notice certain characteristic and common points of the people who participate within Ride Warsaw. Interlocutor 1, who was one of the first participants of the group rides around Warsaw mentions that Ride Warsaw is egalitarian. The group is not closed for new members, there are people coming from different countries who found out about the group either online or from other riders. There are people who can afford expensive gear and travel the world with their bikes, along with students who can barely afford coffee or pizza after the ride. Today, it is a society of different people who have enough time to ride their bikes together (Interview 1). Furthermore, there is no exclusivity for those who ride other bikes than fixies. That is also a reason for the group’s size and success.

Both interlocutors build the image of the group members as a counterculture society. First of all treating cycling as a way of being, not only as a sport discipline or commuting method derives from their leftist worldview. In general, Ride Warsaw members have counter capitalistic views, some of them come from disadvantaged families and smaller cities, some of the cyclists have no stable employment (Interview 1). The group consists of filmmakers, journalists, bike mechanics, bike messengers students and people with many more occupations, who treat bicycles and cycling as an important part of their lives. Even though the group allows for many different people to join the group, especially people who ride normal road bikes or other bicycles, it is still associated with fixed-gear. Interlocutor 2, a very active Ride Warsaw member, says that even though the society is quite diverse and “colorful”, it is indeed the reflection of the fixed-gear culture in general (Interview 2). He refers to other international communities for instance in the USA and Canada (the second one depicted in a documentary film “Mourder of Couriers”), and as he puts it, “we all look the same” (Interview 2). People from different places with similar interests create small groups in their local areas, at the same time constantly drawing style, inspiration and ideas for various types of content from each other.

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4.4 Ideas

This distribution of ideas based in the same group of enthusiasts and sports amateur would not be possible without the members actively participating within the new media. One could say that the medium (internet, social media, Instagram) determines the way that the inspiration is spread between such societies as Ride Warsaw. What is important to understand is the fact that these groups are niche in the whole pool of visual representations of interests and passions within the contemporary new media. Therefore, the very specific and almost custom content on Instagram, among others, allows for societies and counterculture sport clubs to form and to grow. In general, every member of Ride Warsaw before joining the group was present on social media, most of them on Instagram. This picture-sharing platform is also the way people decide to come for a common ride and meet new people (Interview 2). Thus, Instagram was a good way to be a foundation for such a culture to grow. Interlocutor 2 speaking about fixed-gear cyclists in general mentioned that “it is possible that about ten years ago some of the cyclists might have had some authenticity issues with publishing the cycling content online. Nowadays it is a natural way of communication and promotion of the cycling movements” (Interview 2). According to Interlocutor 2 the connection with social media is inevitable, because the group evolves, people come and go, some of the members have left Warsaw and in general from a small group of friends the group has already 130 members and that is mainly due to the appearance in new media. He says that Ride Warsaw finds the balance between working as public marketing campaigns and alternative and very exclusive squat communities. He recalls it as “being in a penumbra”: it is a slightly closed and enigmatic group, although in general the group constantly wants to have new people joining the rides and the cycling society itself (Interview 2).

Interlocutor 2 mentions the importance of inspiration and reproduction from other cycling groups, especially from the ones in Miami (Miami Fixed Mafia), Barcelona (The Fucking Riders), Los Angeles (Kushtown Society) and the UK (ICARUS). He also recognizes the differences between Ride Warsaw and other teams formed in Poland, for instance Tragedia in Wrocaław, southern Poland. He sees Warsaw cyclists and their style as “rather metropolitan, associated with some brands, better earnings and being more colorful in pictures and other visual representations” (Interview 2). This could give an image that is more acceptable for others, however the group itself runs a bit in a closed system (Interview 2): the content itself runs in a circuit, as people repost the same pictures, usually using the

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affordances of Instagram, staying in the same group of people, rather not participating in outside events and gatherings. “We keep our identities on bicycles” (Interview 2). He calls the circulation of content between a closed group of people in a way that could be translated in English as ’inbreeding’. It is another, after Postman's, biological metaphor that refers to the new media. The medium, in this case mainly Instagram, is the substance, within which the culture is created and it grows. The growth is possible by inspiration from others, the pure joy of the activity around which the culture merges, but importantly due to the circulation of content within the group. When riding many of the riders take pictures and post them on Instagram as post or as dynamic, lasting 24 hours Stories where they tag other riders. Users that are tagged can re-post that material. The flow of content is important, not only for the growth of the culture or the group in a physical sense of number of members, but also the growth of identity and the feeling of affiliation to other riders, formats of the meeting as well as the style that the group has.

4.5 Social background - the new skateboarding

When talking about the fixed-gear culture, the Interlocutor 1, who has participated in bicycle rides organised by groups in different cities from around the world mentioned that for him fixed-gear cycling is “the new skateboarding” (Interview 1). What he means is that the skateboard has been eliminated from the streets due to infrastructure changes, over crowded streets and traffic. What he has also observed when traveling was that fixed-gear cultures could mainly rise in places with higher social inequalities. “In Australia where no matter if liberals or conservatives are in power, everything is going rather well, there is always good weather and good food, there is a small fixed-gear scene. In Sidney there are maybe 100 riders, slightly more in Melbourne. The fixed-gear scene occurs in places with the biggest social inequalities. USA, South America - places with free markets and wild capitalism or places that remember socialism or communism like Poland” (Interview 1). Indeed Poland has a number of fixed-gear societies in different cities. Ride Warsaw is the most diverse and the most colorful (Interview 2), also because of the Instagram image that the group has. Running a public Instagram profile requires certain skills and common sense to attract the viewer. That is also why at the moment the feed does not only consist of real-time relations but also of throwback footage. Still, Warsaw being a place of constant changes and long history of social issues, occupation, war and communist terror is a fertile soil for movements like Ride

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Warsaw. In Polish Internet sphere the first mentions of fixed-gear were not in a context of a trend in between hipsters from Warsaw, but it was a reportage on bike messengers in Łódź, a city in central Poland that used to be a textile production imperium and now is a depopulating, unwealthy city. The simple form of a steel fixed-gear bike could easily anchor in such an environment to act as a work tool for the messanges as well as an attribute of a certain, quite exclusive lifestyle _{(Karykowski).}

The relation between skateboarding and fixed-gear cycling does not conclude only to the common group of urban sports that require simple pieces of equipment and wheels to commute around the urban jungle. Both sports root back to socially difficult backgrounds, but what is more important with regards to this research especially, is the media ecological way of going out to broader public. None of the sports were aiming for a wide range of audiences, nor were disciplines that would allow for enthusiastic support for teams or players. Both skateboarding and fixed-gear cycling origin in different sports and became either a substitute (skateboard for a surfboard) or a purposed differently version (track bicycle turning into a fixed-gear bike). Both urban activities have become popular worldwide with thousands of riders and skaters with many commercial brands and trends evolving from the sports. However, despite many similarities in sport characteristics the following comparison and analysis will not move towards the sport ground. Ride Warsaw is an example of a fixed-gear society, but it does not represent the global scene of that urban sport, that additionally might seem smaller and less popular than skateboarding. The analysis and comparison will take into account certain new media solutions and processes that occur among people forming cultures around these disciplines looking at the degree to which a medium helped or helped for the culture to grow.

4.6 Skateboarding

The forerunners of the contemporary skateboard being built of a wooden deck covered with grip (a sandpaper-like surface) with aluminium trucks and clay-composite wheels were already present in the United States in the 1930s and it has evolved form the kick-scooter that many kids had. There were many different groups enthusiasts of that new way of moving around in the late 1940s and early fifties and the gear that would be constructed by then was rather rudimentary _{(Borden n.p.). About ten years later the first} commercial skateboard would arrive on the market and along with the equipment

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improvement and specialisations there were increasingly more enthusiasts of skateboarding. The rise of skateboarding was parallel to the surfing boom in warm places by the ocean such as Hawaii, California, Florida and Australia. And therefore, “thousands of real and want-to-be surfers were ready for the similar experiences of skateboarding” _{(Borden n.p.)”} For some reason, after some time the first boom of skateboarding went smaller and the fashion has passed away for a number of years. In some opinions, the return of skateboarding to the public sphere was announced by the resumption of publishing the Skateboarder magazine in 1975. First four issues of that paper were published ten years earlier and the publication was stopped. In 1975 the second edition of the renewed magazine had a section that has initiated an influential movement in the world of skateboarding. That publication contained material by a California-based skateboarder and photographer Craig Stecyk titled “Aspects of the Downhill Ride” _{(Peralta n.p.). This was the first text of a series called} Dogtown Articles written by Stecyk. His “photo-text reportage-style essays crackle with take-it-or-leave-it attitude, artistic sensibility and insider knowledge” _{(Borden “Truth and} Screw the Consequences”)_{, found an appreciating audience world wide and allowed many} young people who had a similar, belligerent notion of the world, to identify in this convention. One of Stecyk’s friends from back in the day mentioned that “skateboarding could just become baseball, or another ordinary sport. The way that Stecyk presented it, gave it significance”_{(Peralta n.p.). The articles by Stecyk are an example of how media in general} as well as conscious methods of shaping that allow for culture growth. It is not the Skateboarder magazine that would change the way that people feel about this urban sport, but the particular inputs from the real and wild skateboarding scene brought to the readers by Stecyk. These texts were the method for him to share content in an analog version in a similar way as the content is shared today online.

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Chapter 5: Analysis

Ride Warsaw media output is based on collective and collaborative content production. During the rides, people who participate take many pictures in different moments along the trip, take portraits and pictures of the bicycles during the coffee breaks. The content is shared between members directly during the meetings or after via social media. Therefore, everyone has access to the images shot every time there is a social ride. There is not just one author of the images that are present online. The collaborative approach leads to higher involvement of the members and possible higher motivation for participation. This shows how important content is within a society that is formed within new media. The participation does not only mean taking pictures but also feeling as a part of the group, the willingness to appear in the pictures and to cause comic situations, do tricks or own a great bicycle. During the rides I have participated in, the bigger the group would be, the more playful, reckless and sometimes dangerous situations were taking place. Riders treat the streets of Warsaw as a playground to show-off their cycling skills to their teammates. Every member of this society can influence and contribute to the growth and existence of that group. Furthermore, Ride Warsaw is applying an efficient and coherent way of publishing content, following and observing marketing rules (Interview 1) and trends from other groups world wide, making it a common effort to obtain an effective both online and offline community. Members of the society include film makers, producers and employees of advertising agencies who implement their professional skills for the use of Ride Warsaw growth. This process also involves some perfectionism to get images and videos that fulfill the aesthetic requirements. During the rides, people featured in the group photos would be set up appropriately to get good composition and an aesthetically pleasant picture.

In the world of skateboarding there were and still are many publications, nowadays the community is also active in social media (Borden). However, the media appearance by Craig Stecyk for many was the most revolutionary moment of skateboarding public release that has influenced generations of skateboarders (Peralta). The Dogtown Articles document the willingness of Stecyk to stand out and speak up for the whole community of young people living in California skating on omnipresent concrete and abandoned (or not) backyard swimming pools. With his arrogant, energetic and rock and roll narrative he motivates many people for action causing a revolution in the way that people would look at skateboarders and skateboarding in general. But in this case Stecyk as a chronicler and photographer was acting

Counterculture vs technology: exploring fixed-gear cycling communities within the online environments.

Master’s thesis - Zdzisław Heydel