Session 6 Online identity
Take Facebook for example, people using the SNS mainly want to get to know new friends, keep in touch with their friends, and being kept in contact with their friends, too. Therefore, the Facebook online identity can be the maintenance of one’s friendship. This working definition goes well with Hudkinson (2006)’s definition that the friend list serves to enhance the communication with one another, which can be the extension from one’s offline friendship or influence the offline friendship from the online friendship. Also, the maintenance of one’s friendship in Facebook speaks to the importance of what a friend is for—material assistance and support (Donath, 2007). However, my definition of online identity based on Facebook may not obviously explain Liu (2007)’s viewpoint that one’s friend connection reveals his identity because some Facebook users tend to include as many and diverse friends as possible in their friend list; thus, it is hard to contour one’s identity by only looking at his friend connection. If looking into this SNS in terms of Wellman’s networked individualism (2003), I think Facebook has several characteristics:
1. The categorization of one’s friends in the friend list makes him manage his friendships much easier than the use of the paper rolodex.
2. The ubiquitous Internet connectivity reinforces the possibility to maintain one’s friendship without the limitation of time and space.
3. The mode of forming a community shifts from many people gathering to form a community to a person developing his own, unique community by incorporating other people into that community.
Scenario 1
A 25-year old man wanted to make breakfast for his girlfriend. The man went to a cooking website, typing the key word “chicken Caesar wrap”, and getting a whole bunch of recipes and some people’s comments. He clicked the first link because it was put at the top of the long recipe list. He quickly looked at the content. The recipe describes the ingredients in detail and how to make it. He thought it provided enough information, so decided to continue reading it. There were other online users’ ratings and reviews. He quickly reviewed what the rating people gave to this recipe and found most people gave four to five stars on a scale of five. He randomly chose one five-rating comment and one four-rating comment to read. These reviewers provided their opinions after following the recipe and their suggestions. Therefore, the man was happy with the online search.
Scenario 2
A 20-something girl was looking for a way to make her eyes look bigger. So, she logged onto a beauty website and keyed in “eyes, bigger” and found there were thousands of ways, such as doing surgery, using mascara, using an eyeliner, etc. She decided not to have surgery, so she wanted to make a decision between using mascara and an eyeliner. She quickly reviewed other people’s comments and found that comments were more on mascara than on eyeliners, so she decided to look into how to use mascara. When reading the comments, she found people referred to a couple of the brands of mascara. Among the brands, one brand was mentioned more often than others. Therefore, she searched online other people’s comments on this specific brand. After reading more reviews on the specific brand, she decided to buy one and follow the ways of using this mascara as suggested on the beauty website.
Scenario 3
A 40-year old single woman joined an online blind date website. She decided to read the personal profiles under the category of swimming because she likes swimming. She continued reading those guys’ profiles, which consist of photos, occupations, interests, hobbies, self-introduction, and the type of females they’re interested in. She found that not all profiles include all the information wanted. For example, some people did not have photos, so she didn’t have a clue that what the guys look like. Because the information provided by each profile was not enough for her, she had a hard time deciding with whom she wanted to make a friend. Thus, she logged out the website without any gains.
Online identity is shaped according to how you want yourself to be presented. No matter in facebook or the hypothetical blind date website, individuals have the freedom to shape their personal image and present it to other people. The way to present one’s personal image is through cultural interests, such as preferences. As Liu (2007) described, one’s social network profile is like an everyday performance. People can change their profiles at anytime, so in this sense online identity is always being reshaped. However, according to Donath (2007), the self-description of online profiles may or may not be reliable. Take the online blind date for example, if a person says he is 170 centimeter tall, it is hard to tell whether it is true or not even if the person posts his photo on the profile.
This photo shows the individual changeed her photo 9 hours ago. People decide what kind of self-image to show at will.
People's online identities are hard to verify, especially on sites where there are no actual physical relationships like dating sites.
ReplyDeleteI have heard many horror stories and a few good stories from people that have used online dating sites.
For example, a dating site user may post a picture of them before they gained that 20 pounds or when they still had hair!
It is these sites that are the most unreliable as there are no boundaries that limit what they may claim to be as a person whereas sites like Facebook, or MySpace may have commonality or validation possibilities based on mutual friends.
I agree with your comments on Liu. Your friends don't necessarily define or reveal who you are as a person, and maybe you'll have friends who are actually your complete opposite.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I enjoyed reading the scenarios you chose to describe, they were very witty, real, and specific.
I second Caloha's comment of SNS potential to valid or flag a misleading profile pic. I have seen on friends profiles comments such as "Those were the good old days!" which sounds seemingly harmless, but indicate to a third party that the picture is outdated.
ReplyDeleteFor a dating site I can imagine the temptation to put your best image up even if it is no longer accurate...good lighting, in better shape, fresh from the salon, dressed up in formal attire...ironically, an old acquaintance of mine recently found me on facebook. When I clicked on his profile to jog my memory and confirm my hunch, he had an image of completely different person. But this time the person wasn't a better version of my old friend, instead it was an older, weathered 50-something guy in a tight purple Lakers jacket. I thought it was a clever way to get around the vanity of maintaining (and/or constantly updating) a profile pic.
"Online identity is always being reshaped." This is a concept I've been thinking about too and I agree with you more or less. As long as a user on Facebook doesn't keep a lot of old photos or posts up, for example, then it might be easier for them to reshape their online identity. I concur with Nana that the scenarios you described were fun to read.
ReplyDeleteHi Bug -- your definitions of the characteristics of facebook are accurate & well-said.
ReplyDeleteThe whole notion of online dating & verifying identity is interesting to me, I must confess I used a dating site in the past (match.com - I actually met my husband this way - he was my 3nd date using the site!!) & although my "dates" did put a picture of themselves looking at their best, it was close to what they looked like in real life. If pp are really serious about meeting people, they probably want to put something at least somewhat accurate up, because they know once they meet someone, that person can simply walk away. Of course you get pp who are not as serious about it or just dumb to begin with not thinking about what will happen when they actually meet another user in real-life, but I think pp will common sense are smarter about being "honest" with their pictures & online.
Bug, I think you brought up two factors of online identity that are different from other social identidies, which is the facility and unlimitedness. For the former one, like you said, it is easier than the use of the paper rolodex comparing to managing online, and for the later one, a person's online identity can goes far beyond the limitation of time and space.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with your conclusion that ones online identity might not provide enough imformation sometimes, and could be subjective as well.
Very interesting post, I'm getting to the age where the image I have of myself is very much different than the one I see in the mirror. The presentation of who you would like to be--your best self--is something we do consciously and unconsciously in a lot of ways. There's a line to be drawn between appropriate selective emphasis and de-emphasis of one's appearance and personality, versus outright false advertising and fraud. But I think it's a pretty fuzzy line...
ReplyDeleteThis week’s discussion about online identity makes me think about its importance to online communities. A person’s online profile is an explicit way of showing one’s online identity. Since the non-face-to-face, textual-based online profile gives online users a chance to shape their identity at will, its reliability is questioned. Because of this problem, some websites ask the users to provide certain pieces of information in order to ensure the authenticity of the profiles to a certain extent. For example, Togetherville, a children’s social website, requires users to enter a “secret friending code” (password) which the person with whom they wish to connect would have to give them outside of the SNS. This is a way to protect the young users from being contacted by strangers. However, some young users seemed not to care about the security issue because they posted their friending code publicly on the website. This behavior can be interpreted as this kind of people attempt to use the website as a place to develop their weak ties in order to increase either their social capital or get a feeling of being a celebrity, having many fans. The authenticity of one’s online profile may affect how much others trust him or her. Some Q & A social websites or e-shopping websites resort to others’ comments or rating for one online community member along with his/her profile in order to increase “trust” on the websites because just as what we read in the previous weeks that “trust” is crucial to the operation of websites. If people participating in the website trust each other, it is very likely that they will participate more and contribute more quality content.
ReplyDeleteIf applying the summary above to an online course, which is my focus for the final project, I think the design of the online course should take into account the trust system in order to facilitate online interaction, which is what many online teachers worry about due to the nature of physical absence. However, the ways that the trust system is displayed is a big issue since we don’t want to ignite flaming or disharmony within the online group. For example, instead of using “thumb down”, or a score for rating, we can make use of more encouraging signs, such as “heart”, “smile”, “the gesture of OK”, etc., to represent “excellent”, “cheer up”, “not bad”, etc. The visual images, providing perceptual affordances, indicating possibilities for action, when perceived by the online learners, might encourage them to care more about what others think and respond more frequently to others’ comments.