Our group is going to have a presentation about Friends. Opening a profile in social network sites has become a social norm in recent years. Boyd focused on the development of social network sites in the United States. She used MySpace as the case study.
What is social network site? Boyd pointed out social networks sites should let users to open profile, develop a friends list and leave comments. These sites are networked publics or mediated public which mean the users are bound together through technological network. Mediating Technologies allow audiences to access visual and auditory information without physical limitation. Persistence, Searchability, Replicability and Invisible audiences are the four properties of mediating technology that separate unmediated publics from networked publics.
After discussing the influence of mediating technology, it comes to the participation part the social network - MySpace. Boyd generally divided into three parts. In this paragraph, it will focus on the profile construction progress. Boyd first discovers why the teen need to join MySpace. Besides, Boyd explains how the teens started using MySpace. Teens is invited by their friends to use, then they will start create their own profile. One of the advantage of MySpace is teens can personalize their own profile by using HTML, CSS or JavaScript etc. In order to make the profile more attractive, teens always infatuate with creating profile. Boyd also uses Erving Goffman’s Impression management theory to explain the identity performance in MySpace. Boyd thinks that in the online world, many young people will through the “Association” group they belong to shape their own image. Boyd also claimed that teens need to “Writing themselves into being”, which means teens use the online identity to create and write about themselves, however, the bodies are not immediately visible therefore the online identity may not equal to the offline identity. Teens may envision online is connected to their social world offline.
The second part will be the teens’ conception of public, private and context. Boyd pointed out that teens use MySpace to communicate with peers. However, one question occurs that whether MySpace is a public space or privacy space between teenagers and parents. For teenagers, they think that MySpace is a space for teenagers to be themselves. They can show and create their own identity there. They don’t want their parent know their private side. It’s come into a dilemma that they want to be cool to peers and acceptable to parents. For parent, they think that technology is public, and their children are participation in a public way so they have the right to view it. Thus, Boyd use a case study to show the identity is difficult to manage in the networked public.
At last, Boyd discusses if MySpace is not privacy place, so why US teenagers still are there? Boyd found out that teen think that it is a kind of identity performance and they can show what they want to show. On the other hand, they are strictly controlled by adults in real life. Therefore, access to MySpace is one of the ways to contact outside.
By Michael Wan, Betty Wu and Gladys Yeung
MySpace is not merely one of the way to contact outside. I think it is one of the way to "escape" to outside as well. I tried to apply and re-think the Boyd's research aims and result after reading her paper. I realised that actually the "escape" trend does not happen merely on the teens but also adults. No matter people is working or laying down on the sofa, most of them are addicted to track their fds or play Flash games in Facebook. These behaviors could be counted as escaping from the reality as well. It is quite interesting that human beings create another "world" in order to escape from their previous constructed society. But, why? Why rapes, discriminations (the sinful things) still occur in this utopia?
ReplyDeleteIt’s very good that the mediating technologies allow us to send and receive information without distance limitation. However, does our relationship with our friends improve or closer? We always use facebook to convey message rather through face-to-face conversation, some may think good as our social network are expend. But is it a real or sincere relationship? Maybe not.
ReplyDeleteWhy it may not a real relationship? As everything on internet is a kind of construction and simulation, we cant find the “truth”. For example, the fake profile information and the fake identity.
For Sam's question, Why rapes, discriminations (the sinful things) still occur? I think it is because we are also using the same beliefs in this “world”. This “world” gives us a new identity or change our identity compared to the reality. However, it doesn't change our beliefs and how we behave.
Ashley had raised a very good question indeed, which people kept arguing on- has the technology improved our relationship or became a disturbance of a "real" communication. The internet has blurred our identity, we may somehow behave like someone else besides from the "real world". Which is real then? The one we communicate with others face to face? Or the one on the internet which reveals the so called "true self"? There has not been a definite answer yet. It could be both. Nevertheless, if we are addicted to technologies, we may not be able to communicate without it -just like what Samantha mentioned. If some day the whole city is out of electricity, we may sense that we are actually in a regression of human history- that we may not be able to communicate easily with our inborn body system.
ReplyDeleteReferring to Samantha's question, racism still occur because even though there may not be a personal information be shown on the internet while we type in a certain message, the vocabulary we used, the construction of the message can still reveal "who we are" and "where we come from".
This is no doubt that we cannot live owthout any kinds of online social platform, such as facebook, myspace and xanga..etc
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why people like to get involve in them is, you can have a totally brand new "you" in the cyber space, you can do or write something that you cannot in the real life.
so that's why people will get addicted to the "online identity " in the cyber spacing.
Also, in the presentation, there is a concept about the impression management and this is the key point of why the facebook or myspace will become popluar. This is becasue people can write/ portray something to build a impressive identity and this is very hard to archieve in the real life as different people will have different feeling during the real face to face interaction.
Also, I think that as we are more depend on the online social platform, we are more getting into being a cyborg.
Dear all, thanks for the comments.
ReplyDeleteA coin has two sides. We cannot deny that technology bring us many advantages, meanwhile it brings disadvantages. Nowadays, we absoluetly cannot live without technology. Technology does really help us to keep contact with each others. It is a highly convenient communication tool between people. With a click of mouse, we can communicate with people form all over the world. We are no longer restricted by the geographical gap and time zone. We can chat with people at any time, at any place by Msn, email, facebook and so on.
As for the fake profile or identity, we cannot distinguish it easily. What we can do is to protect ourself carefully.