Opening the black box that is text counselling

The 3 minute thesis has parallels to text counselling; i want to say more- I have to miss lots out, the constraints are huge, it makes me come to the point, it stops me going round in circles. And did you notice the staccato rhythm that evolved?
Ironically this matches what occurs in text counselling.
The medium we use shapes us.

3minutethesis

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The phones hardly ring anymore at YL; youth still have problems, and still seek help, but this happens silently.
So what happens when counselling moves into text spaces of mobile phones?
How are such spaces both shaped and shaping those involved?
This introduces a political agenda, seeing the things that make something happen provides opening for seeing that things could also be otherwise.
I Traced what’s involved that makes texting the first thing young people reach for when they reach out.
There’s seductive advertising. Bestmates are shown as unconditionally accessible and willing to be available, suggesting lonliness can be bypassed.
NZ is also in a pricing war making for cheap texts. But cheapness is only one factor; when it’s free to call YL, texting is still preferred.
So I looked at reasons young people and the environment that online spaces provide for them.
Texting provides Control: on talking about her dad who had died, one said: talking makes it too real, with texting I can take it slow.
I don't hear my own voice breaking
Another described how texting stopped her going round and round re-traumatising herself . The visual trace reminded her of ground already covered.
Texting provides Voice For example: txtn is ok because i cn keep goin evn if im crying.
Texting provides connection
If you've run away at night or
ur hiding under the house from your dad whose going to give u a beating, texting works.
‘its in ur pocket, its where u r’
 
Anywhere anytime also allows for keeping strategies and evidence of being connected in the world. I was shown a pocket full of Affirmations, texts not deleted even 6 months later, she said they felt good.
What’s important for counsellors is to see texting as a conversation and not an expectation to mend everything in one utterance
However, Receiving 18000 txts a month provides challenge in sustaining the threads of the conversation
Counselling is Reshaped some skills work in the medium, some don't.
Caution is heightened in a medium where digital traces feel ephemeral but are more solid than conversation or phone call.
Textual traces provide advantages as well as risks.
Privacy remains an area of ongoing tension.
Fewer cues requires caution.
 
Opening up text counselling allows us to see how practices are shaped, and might be shaped otherwise.
Currently There is no evidence base for text counselling, there never is for something new. This thesis is seen as providing insights into the practice of text-based counselling.
My hope and intention is that practice is shaped in listening primarily to the voices of young people.

Value of the 3 minute thesis is that it forces consideration for the 'so what' question. At the same time i found myself forced into overwriting what participants had said, so as to fit this medium. An actor network approach lets me explain so much more in taking littler steps but covering the distance. in contrast, this covers the distance but at a height where there is a loss of so much detail.
Where this has really been significant is in making me aware of the responsibility i have in writing of practice-
i hope i do it justice.

Counselling by text

The NZ Herald reports on the findings of the Health and Disability Comissioner where text messaging for counselling is dangerous:

"A young man committed suicide after his counsellor told him by text message not to take his medication, provided he was undergoing regular counselling.

Acting Health and Disability Commissioner Rae Lamb, in a finding issued today, said the case highlighted the importance of consulting other health professionals working with a person, the dangers of providing advice by text message, and the risks associated with "no suicide" contracts."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10663542

While not wanting to take away at all from the fact that suicide is tragic, always, what I am going to do is an intellectual argument here on text not being.
The counsellor involved was unethical. There was a lack of assessment and a lack of professional boundaries. One might have said counselling is dangerous, or that this specific counsellor in this particular situation was dangerous.

To pit texting within a context where it can be considered seriously, it needs to be noted that it is an extremely common practice now. It is not just for the young and it is not just for trivial interactions. It is a serious application. SMS text messaging is the commonest use of mobile phones, is used by 53% of people world-wide, and is now the most widely used data application on the planet.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/03/faster-than-a-locomotive-leap-over-giant-buildings-yes-sms-text-messaging-twice-the-users-of-email-t.html
At some stage it would be used for giving wrong advice.

All conversations have the potential for error ...all mediums through which messages can be conveyed whether face to face, phone, letter, or SMS, have given wrong advice at some time with tragic consequence.

Text/SMS messaging has its own foibles, and rather than demonizing it, there is need to attend to the particular factors and foibles with regard to it's use for counselling (and hence my PhD in this field).

1. Messages are brief. 160 characters per message, and a cost per message encourages brevity. With brevity there is less information on which to base any advice. This brevity need not restrict an ongoing conversation. As with a verbal conversation, an utterance may be short, the conversation may be longer.
2. Beyong brevity, the medium also shares less information. There are fewer paralinguistic and non-verbal cues, and the ones that are there are ambiguous. Slowness to respond may say as much about the state of the telephone network service provider as the person sending a message.
3. The medium may be chosen because of 2. While I have something difficult to say, I may be able to construct my response more deliberately , more carefully, because the medium provides me time to compose myself and my message.
4. The apparent anonymity along with 1,2 and 3, has a disinhibiting effect. Things can be said in a forthright tone that would not occur face to face without checking for more obvious cues.
5. Identity flexibility (Suler, 2005) is associated with 4, 3 and 2. I can elect how I present myself by text. Male, female, young, old, gay, straight, happy, sad, attentive, distracted.
6. Absent presence (Gergin, 2002)
6. In entering into text, attention is shifted, reality moves. One is no longer attentive to the present but engages with an invisible other. At the same time, in the virtual space of talking with someone silently, in conjunction with 1,2,3 and 4 this inokes imagination as to what is going on, it involves projections; the world engaged by text becomes surreal- it is what i perceive it to be. It creates a space in which I am not fully here, or there, but somewhere else instead. I'm not sure that this isnt always a condition of counselling regardless of the medium. I have compassion invoked- I try to appreciate the world view of the other...however with text I have so much less to go on, projections (or assumptions) in the absence of cues increase.
7. Flexibility of anytime. I don't have to wait for the person to be ready to respond with messaging, they can get back to me when they are able, and i can leave the message when i think of it.
8. Flexibility of anywhere. Its where you are, its in your pocket. It doesnt matter where they, or I, are currently situated.
9. Digital traces allow for messages to be kept, this allows for a pocket full of evidence that one is connected in the world, strategies and affirmations can be as close as one's pocket.
10. Associated with 8 is that messages that are unpleasant are also as close as one's pocket, and associated with 7, they can also be intrusive. Strategies to manage these can be taught.
11. Privacy in spite of the sense of intimacy is questionable. In hitting send, errors can be made. As with 9. there is risk of others accessing ones phone and its messages. Messages can be intercepted. Message are visible to network service providers, or police (with warrant).
12. Its affordable. Financial costs can be kept small. Whether charged by the text, 20 cent per message by major providers in NZ today, or on a preplay plan allowing unlimited or very generous texting such as 2000 texts for ten dollars, texting is a cheaper option than being charged over a dollar a minute for a call. In addition texting does not have the transport or opportunity lost costs that might occur with an appointment.
13. The microskills of counselling such as empathy, active listening, sensitive confrontation, translate into the new medium (Haxell, 2008). An empowerment approach of being strength's based can also be identified within text counselling as performed (at least at Youthline NZ)

refs
Gergen, K. J. (2002). The challenge of absent presence. In J. E. Katz & M. A. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact, mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 227-241). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Haxell, A. (2008). Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard: Mobile technologies and youth counseling. Paper presented at the Ascilite; Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Retrieved January 23, 2010, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/haxell.pdf.
Haxell, A. (2010). Empowerment in tight spaces: Youth counselling in a text-messaging medium. Paper presented at the E-Youth Multidisciplinary Conference Balancing between opportunity and risk.
Suler, J. R. (2005). The Psychology of Cyberspace Revised edition version 2.2. from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/basicfeat.html

Technical mediation

In what ways do the media we shape, shape us in return?

The concept of young people being negatively affected by the ubiquitous mobile telephone (“mobile”), has taken firm hold in the public consciousness. Unfortunately, an instrument blaming perspective fails to consider the relational issues involved. Questions of how we are both shaped by and shape our technologies are neglected when questions collapse to binaries of good or bad. This paper draws on the work of French sociologist Bruno Latour as a means to understanding the discourse positioning the mobile as an object of harm, and for strategies considering how the mobile might be positioned otherwise. In an attempt to redress the negative evaluative imbalance associated with mobile phones, an example taken from research in progress involving Youthline’s text messaging for counselling is explored. Implications for teaching and learning are suggested, including strategies for text messaging and for positioning the mobile as an adjunctive instrument supporting students through their studies.

Haxell, A. (2009). In what ways do the media we shape, shape us in return? In Same
places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009.
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland09/procs/haxell.pdf

Slideshow

Ascilite09 Ailsa Haxell

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Deskilling humanity or cyborg enhancement?

Ivan Illich wrote of the effects of school as more than a dependent variable within society; but as the reproductive organ of a consumer society. If I take the institution of schools as being nothing but a tool that leads to another end, the education of people, I miss so much of what does and doesnt go on. He argued for a radical change to how teaching and learning might therefore be envisaged, namely by deschooling society.

His 'deskilling' argument leads me to wonder about more recent innovations with the ways we might to do things,and to wonder if the outsourcing of so much of people's abilities to their mobile phones is a deskilling of their humanity or just sour grapes on my part.
See, I dont have one, iwant one, an iphone that is.

This mornings rant is following a nice little column on smartphones by Richard Fisher that helps that author find a cab, a cafe, is a note taker and records interviews, times his teeth brushing, maps and times his cycle rides, and even finds itself through a synch option with a computer. Fortunately he drew the line at only musing about the vibrator option (I know, don't go there).
The cyborg connection is made, there's enhancement of abilities. And there are questions of what does this do to how we function as people.

In light of my PhD study: I continue to consider the questions of what it means to be mediated by a mobile phone in our relationships with others, specifically with regard to counselling relationships mediated by text. And I continue to wonder about the assemblages that create changes in the ways we relate; how such changes occur and what the anticipated and unanticipated results might be.
I am prompted, again, to wonder of how we are shaping the mediums we use, and how they might be shaping us, for no other technology is so close, so much of the time.
What impact does this have on our relationships and on us?

As expressed by one of the young people interviewed for my study, "I had every technology possible, but it was my mobile i reached for." Texting was her first choice for a conversation she anticipated as likely to be distressing, not because it denied the emotions involved, but because it allowed her to express these.

And the reskilling that then occurs seems to more than compensate; have a look at this article on the positive associations texting has for literacy in August Wired magazine.

new media democratizing intimacy

Interesting concept from TEDGlobal speaker Stefana Broadbent http://blog.ted.com/2009/07/session_3_runni_1.php
I havent yet heard her, I guess it will be up in a few days, so these comments are just in response to the running notes.

these new methods of communication are helping us break out of old institutions and bringing us closer together than ever before. She's speaking with a backdrop of constantly refreshing, beautiful black and white portraits, always of two people seated together. She explains that in each picture is someone she interviewed and the person the communicate with most in the world, whether it be their significant other, parent, grandparent or sibling, along with the communication tools they use -- by and large, these are cell phones.
She says that although we may have many people on our Facebook friend lists (120 on average) and in our cell phone directories, we typically use these technologies to interact with a small core group of people. The typical cell phone user makes 80 percent of their calls to just four people, and the average Facebook user exchanges most of their messages with only five or six friends. So these technologies are not networking us with more people, but reinforcing our communication with our inner circle.

And I totally agree with her, but there's a rub...creating more or less intimacy...and then she takes it into more risky space with examples of cell phone use adding to intimacy particularly with regard to people who are at risk in terms of social justice, being time and / or resource poor. The examples of workers having to use phones to maintain family connections.
My own research is of a further example, the use of texting for accessing counselling as provided by Youthline, NZ. This provides a service by youth, for youth, in the medium young people select as their preferred choice. Reasons for that choice can be speculated upon- costs, privacy, ego protection, anonymity...its available, accessible, affordable... wherever and whenever (almost), one could say almost free, and easy.
The examples Stefana provides of workplaces are difficult to accept as there are concerns of safety, eg the busdriver with a cell phone maintaining contact- generally not going to win the argument when there is the issue of driving and safety. The broader argument of cellphone use being able to lift some of the alienation otherwise experienced by those who are socially disadvantaged by poverty, working shifts, two jobs etc, I can accept. But there is an implication that democracy at work is a right,however given that one's time is sold/bought/paid for, democracy doesnt feature largely in that kind of power dynamic or structured relationship.
So although it may provide greater access to one's loved ones, there are still times where this is going to be deemed inappropriate. And its (technology aided communications) still a bit of a bandaid on what i suspect may be hemorrhaging issues. The worklife balance isnt solved by being told heh whats the problem, you can ring, or text silently without employer knowing, your family or kids. And the issues of kids might be better addressed without the need to hide angst. meantime in the current world, its a better option than not having the ability to gain contact when and wherever.
Relating matters, and I'm glad to see the arguments broadened and some real discussion happening beyond the good or the bad of communication and computer mediated technologies. In what other ways do these shape us, how are we altered, whose interests are served, what's involved...bring on more discussion :)
(thanks to Frances Bell for bringing this tedtalk to my attention)

Entice me with lies.

The capacity to consider change during, rather than before and after, is a challenge.
To compare before with after is, in contrast easy.
I've taken on a PhD researching change as it progresses, and sometimes it doesn't (the change that is). Sometimes things change and I barely notice as the small shifts have unrecognised impact.

Reading Clay Shirkey's blog on newspapers and thinking the unthinkable suggests some very ANT like insights on change. (I find it useful to see ant like analysis everwhere, it helps me convince myself I'm progressing my PhD)

It's never one thing that makes it all happen. The printing press did not of itself, change the world. An enormous amount of other work was also going on.
Shirky refers to Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. An analysis informed by ANT would suit her approach: “How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?”
A similar question to my own- in using emergent technologies in a telephone counselling agency, how are those involved shaped and shaping?
Taking Callon's 1998 approach with ant, the printing press revolution can be identified by stages identified as Translation:
1. Problematizing: if reading is good, then being able to do this without needing to wait for others to read it to you must be better; how then to make this a possibility? Make the making of printed matter smaller, faster ...
2. Interessment: others need locking in to make this happen, there's a need for push and pull, a negotiation with others, and not just of human actors but also of technology.
3. Enrolment involves actors accepting positions to make such change occur
4. Mobilisation; an assemblage of the social that works; oil based ink, compatable with paper rather than parchment, and with the movable print molds from metal alloys rather than carved in wood or stone... People also need mobilising, there would be no value in a press without a growing literacy in the middle classes...

At this point it is really necessary to restate that neither Guttenberg- credited with the invention, nor the invention itself happened in isolation, there's a network at play within which they were situated. Further work was required to maintain the change, the expectations do not rise in and of themselves. What sustained the change was sometimes small; literally. The ability to make a book small enough to carry...

And here's where modern day change similarly could learn from a past.
In telephone counselling, the landline is no longer a prime means of communicating. Young people are using mobiles, cell phones. And in this there are other actors at play; the cost of a call is significantly higher than the cost of text. Having limited income, the young person then develops a way of relating that is text based, they get used to it, it becomes the first option and the preferred option. This is sustained even when the receiver pays the cost of the communication transaction.
At this point it gets really interesting, because the small changes, being mobile with a phone, having cheaper text than calls, create a revolutionary moment for the 'old' system; how to meet young people where they are at in the medium they they are choosing to use. And what does this do in terms of reshaping those involved?

The argument that Shirkey makes is that when old stuff gets broken down faster than new stuff can be put in its place lends itself to experimentation, and more than this, experimentation based on plausible promises if one reads Here comes everbody. However in this blogpost, he instead refers to the demand for lies. Its as if we know that we dont know where this is going, so promise me that its going to be good; entice me with lies as i know you also don't know where this might lead. However, agreements with stakeholders need to be firmed up...'this is a change in name only', 'its the same but different', 'its only a tool', if we dont like it we can go back to what was'....such lies minimize the anxieties involved, and allow for movement forward. Its as if they create a keel for plowing through uncharted waters. Dont rock my boat ...keep things on an even keel...
From Clay Shirky:

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify.
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

A last lie; here's Frodo helping ailsa write a thesis :)

changing the way we are

Time magazine twitters. I hope it has a look at google wave next.

There are some areas of similarity for the doctorate;
1. its not like anyone sat around saying hey I know the next thing that can revolutionise telephone counselling; lets create a conversation space where no one has any clues about you unless you share them. They wont know if your male, female, young old, u'll be invisible, inaudible, and restricted to 160 characters or about one sentence. You can do the emoticon thingy to say how your feeling in two pushes of your mobile phone, and it doesnt really matter if u've got the time right now coz the conversation can be synchronised or asynchronised. YL will be there for you.
2. people were skeptical.
3. and yet thousands discover it works for them.

How come, coz lets face it, on the surface it doesn't seem to have a lot going for it.
Well, as with twitter, there's an extremely important component going on here about ambience, about being present and heard and acknowledged. There's a sociability not to be trivialised, being connected positively matters. There's concrete attestation to having others available, interested, responsive and focused for you.

While we thought we had reshaped the service being provided, there's a strong suspicion we too are shaped. We feared becoming too shallow to make a difference, but the evidence is a difference is being made that remains profound, Being there for people as and when needed matters, help is as far away as your phone, and that can be as close as your pocket. Its not like it all has to happen in one sentence or less, conversations occur. And the conversations are held, they dont dissipate unless actively deleted. I can choose to keep a message on my phone acknowledging that I feel heard and understood and affirmed, or of suggestions to explore.

Skeptics still abound, there is resistance to the unknown, there is also a demonising of mobile phones as if the only relevant link to counselling was because of their use for text bullying. Little regard had been given to the positive applications made possible and there are as many if not more. Its connectivity thats as close as your pocket, actively chosen, wherever, whenever.

Its entirely possible it wont last. But the service provided is to the current generation of young people, and they are using it. The medium of choice for a generation. Seems its tied to identity of a generation and its shaping them as they live their emotional lives through one more means of connecting. Might be fickle, the costs currently make it a preferred option, its cheap when Vodafones text 2000 or Telecoms txt for $10.00 makes it seem unlimited. Young people are then shaping the service in saying 'i jus wanna txt, k?' And they (re)shape and (re)create a service demonstrating both resilience and flexibilty.

It's the conversation that matters

Debating value in text counselling can usefully be viewed as a debate over what constitutes the boundaries of said texts.
The value is in the conversation, organic and open, and not in the transmitted increments. Yet wariness on the value of text messaging for counselling, more often then not, is because the focus stays on the transmitted increments, that is, singular messages of 160 characters or less, rather than the conversation. The analogous argument would be to criticize face to face- or any other form of counselling- based on sentences. The overall experience would be lost.

What is new about txt counselling?
It enables new forms of intimacy, new ways to perform counselling with distributed participants and new forms of performative practice. What then arises are differences in relating that can be considered.
1) What does txt counselling do to our sense of time and place and of being there for someone? Or as Jean Baudrillard provokes, what changes in the relationship when "the instantaneity of communication has miniaturized our exchanges into a succession of instants"?
2) There is a lot of "work" that goes into txt counselling, and this work is not always transparent, how is it configured, what reshaping occurs for counsellors and counsellees, as well as consideration for who benefits from the shift?
3) And a further problematic consideration: sms messaging is, at root, a database, and we are happily populating it with text based utterances, giving little thought to the uses to which such information could be put. Participants are "users" of the data base with little knowledge of, and no control of, the database. How does or should this affect how we use these technologies?

An so its worth looking at the actors involved in the performance, and of the work involved, for at present we do not know.

reality is multiple

There is a tension between multiplicity and singularity.
In my research this singular:multiple tension is evident in considering the practice of counselling. It's called counselling when its face2face, f2multiple faces, verbal but not f2f, nonverbal and not f2f, synchronised or non-synchronised.
In order for counselling to occur, at least two people are required. The practice occurs in relationship.
One initiates the conversation, and one makes themselves available to hear the story of the other. If counselling is to be enacted, it is crafted from the story of the one and the communication skill embedded with the other.
In this agency, responses from those who 'do counselling' suggest a singular entity, a set of skills or processes that fit together. The skill set of listening, affirming, being client-centred, a strengths based approach. A single reality. Definite and singular.

What then of differences? Obviously not every story is the same, nor every skill set. How is listening shown when the conversation is non verbal? What is meant by being client-centred, does this extend to intervening when the counsellor identifies saftey trumps autonomy? There are hen examples of contradictions. Differences in counselling when the story differs, when the actors differ, when the actors might include non-human actors such as mobile phones, computer screens...

The inconsistency with what is counselling is altered. How then is difference contained?

Mol suggests the need to work with multiple possible truths. What counts as best depends on circumstance. And points to Wittgenstein on how rules do not make their own applications. Rather than an actual inconsistency, the scenario is described in terms of apparent inconsistency. In respecting autonomy but acting on a person's safety expressing concern by contacting emergency services despite the client asking you not to, gets described as "if they were in their right mind, less tunnel visioned, less distressed, less drunk, less depressed, they would appreciate it ... they are telling us for a reason...at least they will know that we take their safety seriously..."
The implication is that what is best, desirable, advised as best practice, depends on the circumstances. Thus inconsistency gets explained away. Such storytelling of practice help to sustain the singular version of a cohesive practice. Such an analysis would suggest that concern for inconsistencies is one of perspective. However this does not do enough to explain how the same actor tells of their own practice.

When the counsellor says:
"no difference, phone, text, health.
then 15 minutes later says
"I am aware of doing it differently, role of psychodrama. Everyone does it differently, brings different backgrounds.
I am the triage(insert name), phone counsellor (insert name), text/email (insert name )counsellor.
Such an example supports what Law describes as poorly coordinated realities. Or what Mol points to in distributed practice. Contradictions evolve in enactment, working out what to do. In shifting between medium there's a sense that some things change and some stay the same, and even described as the same and different. Law picks up on the implications brought about by this same and different discourse.
He identifies how the contradiction provides opportunity to work out best options where there are contradictions, in the less than perfect world of health practice the work involved requires adaptation. In addition, this requires an ability to make judgments. The craft of counselling growing out of past experience, conversations and reading.

At the site of this study, the past experience in counselling was predominantly to use the medium of choice of the target group, telephone counselling. With a shift to the target group using mobile phones, an attempt to provide a portal to counselling by text was also initiated. The standard for counselling comparisons is frequently made. A need for judgments being contingent led to policy development. A guide for judgments when the situations were contingent on the type of 'call' or on the medium being used. The decisions required are even more complex. As expressed by one counsellor:
"I worry of how young the caller might be, could be 10-11 not teens, and I might be affirming sexual activity and stuff and assuming [they're] old enough and sending a mesage that might be colluding with activity that might not be appropriate for the age....on verbal if they sounded young we would probably find a way of asking that. Definitely makes [me] text cautious. If i have a 10 yr old saying my boyfriend wants to have sex with me, that's very different than an 18 yr old."
The type of response is contingent, shaped by the realities experienced in the moment. In texting a cautious response is then given based on how little is known, this counsellor describes herself as not being able to work with instinct or intuition on a txt platform. Nor having enough knowledge to do more than affirm that the situation sounds difficult and inviting the person to phone up.

What this reflects is that difference is produced with difference assemblages, there is an overlap but it is not the same, there are some things that stay the same, such as affirming, but there is also difference, call us. A move away from being client centred, or a reinterpretation of what it means to be client-centred.

Enacting is not then a matter of perspective, and includes more than a crafting by the people involved. The non-human actors too have influence. A combination of people, technique or skill, and text and technology evolves. The realities of practice are produced in relationship and these relationships extends beyond the people directly involved to include the technological actors. It also includes unseen actors, invisible actors and invisible work (and power differentials...all of which point to a new posting opportunity).

beware, your imagination leaves digital traces

Artefacts tell a story.
Texting leaves digital traces inside of which imagination, thoughts, preferences can be located.
Artefacts, such as policies, documents, purchasing orders, emails, letters, texts...provide traces. Such tracings don't just substantiate or refute whats said by research participants.
They also provide a way of accessing voice. Whether that voice wants to be heard, or not. In this there are also multiple ethical concerns in making visible what might have appeared invisible.

This then begins a story told using the 'voices' of txt artefacts evidenced in txt counselling.

15% of texters to the Youthline service are requesting/demanding a text option for counselling.
Examples of texts (based on, but not actual) are reflected in the following type of comments:
"Il neva b abl 2 tlk bwt it. S0ri 4 bthrn u"
"k but na thankz.i cant.g0ta h0use fill n same1 c0uld easly hear me..."
"I cant fukn ring ny1 0k !!"
The pressure to provide a text service is clearly evident.

However, as pointed to by Bruno Latour, beware.
The cost of digital tracing needs consideration.
There are costs of privacy, confidentiality and trust evident here.
What's digitally texted stays.
In my own performance of pointing to this here, there is risk.
Does a community get damaged or empowered by having it pointed out that a trace stays?
In the past, counselling was a private affair.
Current costs are not recognised.
Such traces as are left in txting became evident in the Kahui twins murder trial; where you are, the calls connected, the messages texted...remain in the digital trace.
And as expressed by Latour "the inner workings of private spaces are prised open".
Those most likely to use this service, aimed as it is at a young audience, may not know of digital posterity.
For me as a social science researcher, my use of such tracing remains cautious.

Further potential stories from this 'silent' actor of txt artefacts include the trace of a service that changes over time and the variation that occurs in counselling
across a range of actors, and by the same actor distributed across a range of media.

Nonetheless, I am disconcerted. In the trace there is potential for a panoptican surveillance of Foucaudian proportions.

technology does not have its own trajectory

Who killed Aramis; everyone and no-one.
She dies because of a lack of love; a lack of commitment.
She was not negotiated.
The gap between technology and the social just collapsed for me.
They are one; the one does not happen without the other.
Technology/social.

In my data collecting of counselling changes with the advent of txt, I am noticing the expectation that txt will do it by itself, and it doesn't.
There is 'a collective drift of good intent'.
Yet service costs are vulnerable.
Support, like all support, inconsistent.
The innovation is ongoing- from mobile phone palmcorder to computer then through YORA...
Negotiations are partial and ongoing.(Arent they always?)
This fragility goes unnoticed.
How does the service adapt to suit the medium, how might the medium alter to suit the service.
Txt counselling; the wrapper or the present; all there is or nothing.
Adapt or perish.
Negotiating a middle ground.


How do I <3 u
let me no. the ways
>1
<160

(^-^)