What’s Going On

[selfidentification101-blog]

5 primary practices of young users (on tinder)

As we know, many things affect how our online identities can be interpreted by our audiences. These 5 things below (adherence, subversion, discrepancy, obfuscation, and equivocation) demonstrate many things users of social media (not only Tinder) do to alter their own online identities.

1. Adherence: “[the users] impression of what is required of them when it comes to their processes of Participation and Representation on Tinder.” i.e. a little blurb about yourself on your profile.

2. Subversion: those that are still exploring their identity or are not comfortable posting real pictures/ information of themselves online. i.e. your profile picture as a cat or your age as 101.

3. Discrepancy: “users represent themselves in a varied and at times, conflicting manner.” i.e. users posting pictures representing different “versions” of themselves.

4. Obfuscation: using deliberately blurry or “embellished” pictures to “alter the viewer’s impression of the users corporeal or physical self.” i.e. filters

5. Equivocation: using group pictures to make it harder for viewers to tell who you are. Also using close-up pictures of body parts to hinder the viewers ability to see the users full appearance.

…

Borrow, B. (2014, August 6). More Than Just a Pretty Profile: Exploring the social norms and technical affordances that shape and mediate identity performance on Tinder. Retrieved October 26, 2014.  

[selfidentification101-blog]

your online identity: now playing on computers near you

Try to remember a time you watched a movie or play that was really confusing, yet you still tried to interpret it until it was over. Well this scenario more or less is what other people go through when trying to interpret your social media. Sociologist Erving Goffman compared human online identities to theatre performances, where the “individual (the performer) sends social cues that are inferred and interpreted by an audience of observers who help shape the notion of the said individual’s identity.” While this is true for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, it is especially emphasized through dating websites and apps like Tinder.

Turkle agrees with Goffman that our online identities are ever-changing and always being evaluated. She adds, “the practice of producing multiple online personae is sympotomatic of the inherent flux of human identity performance… we should think of ourselves as fluid, emergent, decentralized multiplicities, flexible and ever in process.” These “multiple online personae” Turkle is talking about can be relatable to all social media users. For example, you have a Facebook. In a week, you posted two pictures of things you did that week: one of you at a party, and another of you helping at an old-folk home. Some people may have only seen one of these pictures on their newsfeed, and therefore have one of two perceptions of you: that you are partying it up in college, or that you are a kindhearted and helpful person. Because of situations like this, we can understand that our audience contributes to the “resultant product and perception of [our own] identity.” The more pictures you add, the more peoples’ ideas of you change.

Furthermore, Lisa Nakamura, a professor at University of Michigan, coined the term “identity tourists,” describing the “phenomenon of new media users constructing varied personae.” Similar to Goffman and Turkle’s arguments above, we can see a pattern that people struggle with keeping a consistent identity online. Dating media theorist Katie Davis confirms that our online profiles, “often are not exact reproductions of offline identity.” And as David Buckingham puts it, “it is difficult both cognitively and metacognitively to monitor all of one’s different selves and audiences.” This goes for all users of social media. Keeping track of even your own online identity can be difficult, especially when you don’t keep your imagined audience in mind. Our performative process online is ever-changing and dependent on many variables, and therefore can be interpreted differently by every person viewing your profile.

…

Borrow, B. (2014, August 6). More Than Just a Pretty Profile: Exploring the social norms and technical affordances that shape and mediate identity performance on Tinder. Retrieved October 26, 2014.

[whatshouldwecallsocialmedia]

When DiGiorno used a domestic violence hashtag to promote pizza.

REPEAT AFTER ME:

READ.

THE.

HASHTAG.

BEFORE.

YOU.

TWEET.

[stinarodo-blog]

[stinarodo-blog]

“This is what’s wrong with our generation”

See posts, photos and more on Facebook.

[maaarine]

Talks at Google: Alice Walker

[stinarodo-blog]

Is this the last piece of technology the digital immigrants are comfortable using? Marc Prensky argues that this digital divide is detrimental to how the youth are educated.

“The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” (Prensky, 2001)

Read the full article via his website: www.marcprensky.com