Friday, April 30, 2010
Type oneself into being- Social Networking
Type oneself into being- Social Networking
The pervasiveness of social networking sites has become everyday and is fast becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. While online communities have been popular for the last ten years, social networking has become a recent phenomenon. Social networking sites are centred around people rather than a specific interests. They are said to be ‘ego centric’ networks with the individual at the centre of their network. Dana Boyd an academic that has centred her career on the effects of social networking sites has noted that the bulk of SNS’s focus on impression management and friendship performance. Boyd (2004) has suggested that ‘public displays of connection’ serve as important identity signals that help people navigate through a networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in ones profile. Most sited encourage accurate representations of participants. There is a sense that a profile will never be real, that they are a projection of one’s best self or a selective presentation of a person.
Another aspect of self presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity makers for the owner of profiles. MySpace has leveraged Peoples willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam. Friends on social networking sites are not the same as friends in real life. The context of friends is reliant on behavioural norms, but a social networking site seems to create a different set of norms, in that a SNS user may be behaving in a way that is a reaction to a perceived audience. They are effectual performing, in that a status update may be a means of attracting attention and go beyond the basic conception of letting the world know what they’re doing.
Most social networking sites support pre existing relations; sites like Facebook are designed to foster existing relations rather than soliciting new friends. The relationship may be based on weak ties but typically there is a common offline element, like that of a college of work place. An advantage of SNS is that they allow a network of people to socialise in a borderless space and in unmediated environment. There is much discourse to support that SNS promote sociability. However there are a great number of privacy concerns, this may be of particular concern for younger users. There is a sense of disconnect between users awareness of the dangerous of the internet and their actual behaviour. Users often reveal there where about but fail to realise that a wide variety of their audience can access this. The public nature of the internet seems to be over looked or underestimated. There is very much a lack of responsibility in what people type into their being, in that a passing comment on the internet is recorded and can be liable, there have been many cases of employees trashing their bosses only to be fired on the grounds of defamation of character.
Aside from privacy concerns, the positive uses of SNS has benefited many and allowed one to keep in touch with estranged friends and family, similarly people living abroad or away from their primary social networks can keep in touch online and remain a part of people’s lives despite living hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Sources: Judith Donath and danah boyd (2004, October). "Public displays of connection."
The pervasiveness of social networking sites has become everyday and is fast becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. While online communities have been popular for the last ten years, social networking has become a recent phenomenon. Social networking sites are centred around people rather than a specific interests. They are said to be ‘ego centric’ networks with the individual at the centre of their network. Dana Boyd an academic that has centred her career on the effects of social networking sites has noted that the bulk of SNS’s focus on impression management and friendship performance. Boyd (2004) has suggested that ‘public displays of connection’ serve as important identity signals that help people navigate through a networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in ones profile. Most sited encourage accurate representations of participants. There is a sense that a profile will never be real, that they are a projection of one’s best self or a selective presentation of a person.
Another aspect of self presentation is the articulation of friendship links, which serve as identity makers for the owner of profiles. MySpace has leveraged Peoples willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam. Friends on social networking sites are not the same as friends in real life. The context of friends is reliant on behavioural norms, but a social networking site seems to create a different set of norms, in that a SNS user may be behaving in a way that is a reaction to a perceived audience. They are effectual performing, in that a status update may be a means of attracting attention and go beyond the basic conception of letting the world know what they’re doing.
Most social networking sites support pre existing relations; sites like Facebook are designed to foster existing relations rather than soliciting new friends. The relationship may be based on weak ties but typically there is a common offline element, like that of a college of work place. An advantage of SNS is that they allow a network of people to socialise in a borderless space and in unmediated environment. There is much discourse to support that SNS promote sociability. However there are a great number of privacy concerns, this may be of particular concern for younger users. There is a sense of disconnect between users awareness of the dangerous of the internet and their actual behaviour. Users often reveal there where about but fail to realise that a wide variety of their audience can access this. The public nature of the internet seems to be over looked or underestimated. There is very much a lack of responsibility in what people type into their being, in that a passing comment on the internet is recorded and can be liable, there have been many cases of employees trashing their bosses only to be fired on the grounds of defamation of character.
Aside from privacy concerns, the positive uses of SNS has benefited many and allowed one to keep in touch with estranged friends and family, similarly people living abroad or away from their primary social networks can keep in touch online and remain a part of people’s lives despite living hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Sources: Judith Donath and danah boyd (2004, October). "Public displays of connection."
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