I hid someone in FB recently because she frequently updated about food she was eating and then wrote elaborate, intimate notes about body image issues, clothing sizes, workout etc. TMI. She's a colleague, who I happen to like too. I felt as if I were in a private domain, a confession. I've noticed the women I know post about food more than men. Yeah <food>fat>skinny>food>workout> is a women's issue and a national obsession. I respond (and react) to discourses like that one and yes I know, I know, that's abstract, but it's really not. So the personal is political and it's public. ~~ Suzanne Aurilio Assistant Director pICT -People, Information and Communication Technologies San Diego State University 5500 Campanile Drive San Diego, CA 92182-1623 619-594-2953 Office AD220C pict.sdsu.edu cdi.sdsu.edu sdsu-aztlan.wikispaces.com SL Aurilio Oh Twitter saurili Delicious saurilio
Suzanne has hit the nail on the head not so much about the blurring of public vs private but about multiple identities. Remember the scholarship and commentary from the mid to late 90's? (I'm thinking Sherry Turkle in particular). ICTs (text-based back then) were supposed to let us get in touch with our postmodern selves. Cyberidentity was marked by fluidity and multiplicity. With FB, the opposite is happening--we are presenting a fixed "one size fits all" identity to a mixed audience. Someone else upthread said that she maintains three Twitter feeds for that reason. I have a limited profile of FB and keep it quite generic. Rhiannon
I feel it's our getting acclimatized to these virtual facets of ourselves, these 'new selves', that is the genesis of this cyberidentity crisis. I believe we feel that face to face (in the physical) we have a complete control over our interaction with others. (OK, except perhaps for those with Jewish mothers.) But think of a communication as a data set. In technology we speak of 'push' and 'pull' technology - data on instigation going in two separate directions. Same therein with physical communication - we have an underlying understanding of who we are as a 'self', and in the physical we have evolutionarily, societally, culturally, and psychologically come to understand 'separation'. And within that the ability to change the communication to push, pull, or null. When we use technology to relay segments of ourselves, I think we become new facets of 'self'. So with any new technology, even say the telephone we had to create new ways of understanding our new self; it's humanness, it's rights, it's understanding of separation etc. From these understandings come a culture, and then a cultural etiquette - but it starts with our being able to grasp these new facets of self. But, for example myself, I had to come to understand and integrate my physical self and being with my new telephonic facet of self and being in any push/pull/null communication when on the phone with my jewish mother I think we just have yet to get used to understanding and then integrating the same ways of being of our physical selves with our new multiple virtual selves. -Sharon Sharon Greenfield Digital Ethnographer GC Research On Nov 3, 2009, at 11:25 AM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:
Suzanne has hit the nail on the head not so much about the blurring of public vs private but about multiple identities. Remember the scholarship and commentary from the mid to late 90's? (I'm thinking Sherry Turkle in particular). ICTs (text-based back then) were supposed to let us get in touch with our postmodern selves. Cyberidentity was marked by fluidity and multiplicity. With FB, the opposite is happening--we are presenting a fixed "one size fits all" identity to a mixed audience. Someone else upthread said that she maintains three Twitter feeds for that reason. I have a limited profile of FB and keep it quite generic.
Rhiannon
Yes, of course we're facing a new identity crisis: how do we manage a multiple selves at the same time? It's very interesting to note the rise in the "social media guru" who supposedly will guide you and your company to present an "appropriate" digital self at all times. We are also noticing this need among user experience designers. Facebook has a "groups" function, which will allow you to select and manage the front you present to people in your friends list (but they provided it too late for many people who already had hundreds of friends. Who wants to manually categorize what self to offer to what people?). Rhiannon is correct: this is the end of the postmodern virtual self. The ubiquity of digital presentations of self has now reached such a state that it part of a Western cultural competence to be able to present multiple selves, simultaneously, materially and virtually, and in "appropriate" ways. We have lost control of some of these online presentations of ourselves, which will mean that we must collectively wrestle with social breaches. I have already noticed people beginning to "ignore" online breaches of inappropriate selves into other fronts, such as the workplace. This is particularly true, again, for user experience designers who recognize how much of the Web lint out there is actually out of our direct control.
On 3-Nov-09, at 2:25 PM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:
. With FB, the opposite is happening--we are presenting a fixed "one size fits all" identity to a mixed audience.
I argued in an unpublished paper that facebook is real people rather than virtual thus opposite a lot of what the Internet has been. Rephrasing: On facebook if you are a dog people know you are a dog. Facebook was the first Internet contact I had with many real life people in my life from the past. Very few of my friends connected with me via the net before facebook. The Internet on facebook is easy enough for these non techie people to use. Again facebook "can be" a private network with only real face to face friends. I think this brings the power of internet social networking to our real pre Internet social networks. I think you can throw out a lot of Turkle and others who explored the virtual and hidden identities when it comes to facebook. Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa. just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. kiitos paljon, merci, thank you and muchas gracias for reading.
"On facebook if you are a dog people know you are a dog." Well said, Peter! However I would argue that this Facebook presentation may be more singular but is no more "real" or less mediated. What it does do is make one's "front stage" management, to borrow from Goffman, more conscious and visible. And allowing one "self" to break out into other spaces may have unintended and real (as in material) consequences--the prospective boss checks out your facebook page and sees the photos of your "shitfaced" self at the bar. Rhiannon
On 3-Nov-09, at 8:54 PM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:
And allowing one "self" to break out into other spaces may have unintended and real (as in material) consequences--the prospective boss checks out your facebook page and sees the photos of your "shitfaced" self at the bar.
In my unpublished paper I read some studies done in ACM journals of privacy and ingredients for crimes of stalking and identity theft on facebook. One paper studied first year students and found that 98% to 99% of them did not change the default privacy settings on facebook. So these statements are usually it seems prefaced on the default settings. My argument is from the fact that I have changed my settings to be very private and the only people who view my facebook content are friends. Now there is one former boss, but no present boss or HR department or recruiting web site should be able to see me at the bar. I guess I am too aware as well to post such pictures. You might check the University of Ottawa's Tech Law program output on facebook because they have actually forced facebook to change privacy information. I attend the local tech law talks when I can. I do though follow the fact that I present multiple identities to groups of peers from different jobs, and different phases of life. Crossing groups like Ottawa's open source programmers with Nortel's security guards and then with Wobblies. Privacy to use a legal definition is how much we control information about ourselves. I think Sartre said, we know more about our self then others do. Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa. just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. kiitos paljon, merci, thank you and muchas gracias for reading.
Interesting. And I'm the opposite. I leave my settings wide open intentionally. Because, well, we're all human beings. And with my background in tech, I know if I put it online I have no expectations that it will be private. Sharon On Nov 3, 2009, at 6:37 PM, Peter Timusk wrote:
My argument is from the fact that I have changed my settings to be very private and the only people who view my facebook content are friends. Now there is one former boss, but no present boss or HR department or recruiting web site should be able to see me at the bar. I guess I am too aware as well to post such pictures. You might check the University of Ottawa's Tech Law program output on facebook because they have actually forced facebook to change privacy information. I attend the local tech law talks when I can.
I do though follow the fact that I present multiple identities to groups of peers from different jobs, and different phases of life. Crossing groups like Ottawa's open source programmers with Nortel's security guards and then with Wobblies.
Privacy to use a legal definition is how much we control information about ourselves. I think Sartre said, we know more about our self then others do.
I published a study on FB and some of the consequences that came out of everyday usage. I conceptualized my findings around "social metadata"-usage and an expansion of the attention economy. Mainly, the analysis revealed use of experimental profiles, clashes between work-and non-work-related social metadata usage and differences in users' social investment, causing social dilemmas. Skågeby, J. (2009) "Exploring Qualitative Sharing Practices of Social Metadata: Expanding the Attention Economy", The Information Society 25(1), pp.60-72. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a907447270~db=all~order=pag e I also published a related paper on the tension between public and private self- and relationship maintenance in Flickr. Skågeby, J. (2008) "Semi-public end-user content contributions-A case-study of concerns and intentions in online photo-sharing", International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 66(4), pp.287-300. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1346387 Apologies for the shameless self-promotion! Cheers Jörgen Skågeby, PhD, Information Systems and Media http://www.ida.liu.se/~jorsk/
From: Peter Timusk <ptimusk@sympatico.ca> Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 21:37:28 -0500 To: List Aoir <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Food updates
On 3-Nov-09, at 8:54 PM, Rhiannon Bury wrote:
And allowing one "self" to break out into other spaces may have unintended and real (as in material) consequences--the prospective boss checks out your facebook page and sees the photos of your "shitfaced" self at the bar.
In my unpublished paper I read some studies done in ACM journals of privacy and ingredients for crimes of stalking and identity theft on facebook. One paper studied first year students and found that 98% to 99% of them did not change the default privacy settings on facebook. So these statements are usually it seems prefaced on the default settings.
My argument is from the fact that I have changed my settings to be very private and the only people who view my facebook content are friends. Now there is one former boss, but no present boss or HR department or recruiting web site should be able to see me at the bar. I guess I am too aware as well to post such pictures. You might check the University of Ottawa's Tech Law program output on facebook because they have actually forced facebook to change privacy information. I attend the local tech law talks when I can.
I do though follow the fact that I present multiple identities to groups of peers from different jobs, and different phases of life. Crossing groups like Ottawa's open source programmers with Nortel's security guards and then with Wobblies.
Privacy to use a legal definition is how much we control information about ourselves. I think Sartre said, we know more about our self then others do.
Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa. just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. kiitos paljon, merci, thank you and muchas gracias for reading.
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Hi all, I've really enjoyed this discussion and though I'm usually just a lurker, I felt compelled to contribute here particularly in regards to managing multiple identities on Facebook. I have actually just completed data collection for my dissertation which looks at the ways in which users create, present and manage online identities on FB. I conducted interviews with college students and adult community members (35+) to see the way age organizes FB experiences and management of identity. Though I'm still going through the data, much of what I've found so far is consistent with what has been posted here. -College students experience FB and online identities in a much more modern way than do adults. College students create and manage their identities toward one general audience of friends and don't spend time actively managing multiple identities. College students seem to experience a much more singular aspect of identity on FB. They worry less about the convergence of different social groups and identities on their FB page, mostly because the basis of their identity (as they describe and experience it) is college and all things associated with college. -Adults are much more likely (as mentioned) to spend a significant amount of time managing multiple identities, in a number of ways (privacy settings, group memberships, multiple accounts). One of the reasons for the difference in experiences is that adults 35+ claim membership and social identities in more than one group or community (high school friends, college friends, work friends, community friends), which come together on one FB profile. I'm still in the process of analyzing the data, and also uncovering some interesting findings about gender and race, but haven't yet completely formalized my ideas on those themes. While this conversation certainly helps to inform some of my thinking, I have not yet seen much formal research on this topic (beyond theoretical lit on modern/postmodern identities). Any citations or sources would be greatly appreciated! Best, Stephanie _______________________ Stephanie Laudone, MA Ph.D. Candidate Dept. of Sociology Fordham University Laudone@fordham.edu
If you haven't yet, you might want to look at the social networks and life course literature -- how social networks expand (from childhood to early adult) and then contract (from adult to seniors). /Caroline ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 10:38:10 -0500 (EST) From: Stephanie Laudone <laudone@fordham.edu> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Food updates To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
Hi all,
I've really enjoyed this discussion and though I'm usually just a lurker, I felt compelled to contribute here particularly in regards to managing multiple identities on Facebook. I have actually just completed data collection for my dissertation which looks at the ways in which users create, present and manage online identities on FB. I conducted interviews with college students and adult community members (35+) to see the way age organizes FB experiences and management of identity. Though I'm still going through the data, much of what I've found so far is consistent with what has been posted here.
-College students experience FB and online identities in a much more modern way than do adults. College students create and manage their identities toward one general audience of friends and don't spend time actively managing multiple identities. College students seem to experience a much more singular aspect of identity on FB. They worry less about the convergence of different social groups and identities on their FB page, mostly because the basis of their identity (as they describe and experience it) is college and all things associated with college.
-Adults are much more likely (as mentioned) to spend a significant amount of time managing multiple identities, in a number of ways (privacy settings, group memberships, multiple accounts). One of the reasons for the difference in experiences is that adults 35+ claim membership and social identities in more than one group or community (high school friends, college friends, work friends, community friends), which come together on one FB profile.
I'm still in the process of analyzing the data, and also uncovering some interesting findings about gender and race, but haven't yet completely formalized my ideas on those themes. While this conversation certainly helps to inform some of my thinking, I have not yet seen much formal research on this topic (beyond theoretical lit on modern/postmodern identities). Any citations or sources would be greatly appreciated!
Best, Stephanie
_______________________ Stephanie Laudone, MA Ph.D. Candidate Dept. of Sociology Fordham University Laudone@fordham.edu _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Caroline Haythornthwaite Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Institute of Education, University of London (2009-10) Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820 (haythorn@illinois.edu)
participants (8)
-
Caroline Haythornthwaite -
Jorgen Skageby -
live -
Peter Timusk -
Rhiannon Bury -
Sam Ladner -
Stephanie Laudone -
Suzanne Aurilio