By Trent Colledge
Image From: Valuewalk.com Facebook Logo.jpg
What do you see when you log into your facebook account when you wake up in the morning? Funny photos? Hilarious videos? An update from that friend you knew in High School that knows how to make you laugh? Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's a reason you see these things from certain people?
Since 2004 when Facebook was first created, more than 1.4 billion people are actively posting online. But why are there so many people posting on this social network? They are all creating an identity. As explained by Patrick White (2014) on Prezi.com, "With the growing popularity of online social networks, they have brought with them developments in identity construction in the form of users creating an avatar or 'second self.'"
By using Facebook to post to their friends or followers, the creator of the post is writing in a certain genre in a way that is "created and understood based on... the producer's and consumer's knowledges" (Van Luyn, 2015). By connecting with people in this way, the person is forming their identity and forming the "security and stability of place" (Tuan, 1977), somewhere that they are familiar with, and yet they still have the "freedom" of space.
It is from this sense of place and space that we see traces of power starting to form among people and their followers, a power that forms "out of relationships, out of connections" (Kuttainen, 2015). As Kevin Allocca explains in his presentation (2012), there are "tastemakers" online, people and pages that "introduce us to new and interesting things and bring them to larger audiences."
This might seem confusing, but the general message comes down to this: people have an identity online. People use Facebook as a means to convey humour, sometimes among small audiences, and sometimes among larger audiences. It creates power, it creates community, and it creates an identity that can determine both the security and freedom of space and place in this network.
These communities are the driving force behind creating an identity, they are the reason people feel the need to fit in, to make themselves funny or give them a way of standing out. It's how people see themselves, and it's how they want us to see them. That is why these identities are created in online social networks.
References
White, P. (2014) The Impact of Social Media on Identity Construction. Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from https://prezi.com/esyd90erfu4n/the-impact-of-social-media-on-identity-construction/
Van Luyn, A. (2015) BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place, Lecture 3: Space and Identity: Genre and Transformation. [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Kuttainen, V. (2015) BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place, Lecture 2: Power: The Panopticon. [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Taun, Y. (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. London, England: Edward Arnold
Facebook. (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
Allocca, K. (2012) Why video go viral [video lecture] Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_allocca_why_videos_go_viral/
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I agree with your argument of identity creation through online social and media interaction. My question upon reading about online identity formation is how it relates to identity in reality? The relationship between virtual versus real identity was also explored by Linda Kendall, who published under the University of California. She argued that creating an online identity allows individuals to change or hide almost all of the aspects of their real life identity. This, she explains, is called creating "fractured identities" (Kendall, 1998, p. 132). However, she also argues that such multiple/ fractured identities are a bad thing? Based on your research while writing your blog. Would you agree?
ReplyDeleteReference:
Kendall, L. (1998) Meaning and Identity in "Cyberspace": The Performance of Gender, Class, and Race Online: Symbolic Interaction. 21(2), 129-153. Retrieved from https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/18827/MeaningAndIdentity.pdf?sequence=2