3.2) Choose a web forum and undertake a brief analysis of its dynamics as a communication form.
Interestingly, this forum is a forum dedicated to discussing people’s secrets IRL and problems they wouldn’t feel free to discuss IRL. This demonstrates how people present themselves differently online; sharing info they have withheld IRL as a result of the anonymity online. Interestingly, however, people in this community seem close and to ‘know’ each other, often referring to things which have previously happened to other users discussed before, and referring to them by name (be it real name or their screen name, or a nickname based on this). This suggests not total anonymity in terms of secret sharing, rather new identities created online through which communities are built and ‘friends’ are made. It seems almost a contradiction that people use the mask of being online to hide their identity but in fact end up seeming quite close to other members and getting to know them well, or as well as you can online!
http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/chat/
In addition, a lot of the questions from this week link in with this and it's a good example to examin them through, particularly;
-Do you think that assuming an online persona (via screen name/handle/avatar etc) encourages people to play with the identity they present online and take risks in the ways the express themselves?
-Far from adopting a ‘mask’, isn’t one appeal of the Net that you can express your true self among like minds?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, I'm with you on this one. Looking at PostSecret, several (girls?) post with photos of themselves, not all of them protecting the person pictured's identity. Of course, some will be photos of someone else, but I'd guess most are genuine -and certainly the conceit is that they are genuine. Together with the 'secret' nature of the forum, it suggests that contibutors are 'opening themselves up' in what they see as a 'protected space'
ReplyDeleteThis is very different to the Turkle research (and other early researchers inspired by her) isn't it?
The explosion of non e-mail Inet communication has been about people 'being themselves' online. Not 'playing at being others'. The experimentation seems to me (in my research into global personal website makers) to be with levels of 'exposure' and narrowness/breadth of aspects of the selves we inhabit IRL and online. And we do that IRL as much as online too.
Generally, researchers in this field now wish to downplay the early theories of cyberspace as an alien world and promote notions of cyberspace as more like a different sort of lived experience which interrtwines with everyday culture.
Yes it definitely doesn't demonstrate Turkle's thories. I suppose the bottom line is the idea of anonimity. If this allows people to share their secrets and be more 'themselves' online, or alternatively to be someone they are not at all IRL depends on their motives online.
ReplyDeleteI don't think one or the other is the right answer, just that different people use the internet (forums) for different reasons.