Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
  • Questions.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Drafts of papers returned.
  
  • See email for general comments on papers.
  • See email for general comments on editing.
  • Further comments on papers forthcoming.
• Friday
  • Talk about papers and presentations.
  • Presentation from FC and AF.
  • Talk about last week of technologies.
• EC
  • Thu @ 4:30 pm Snowden talk
  • Fri & noon: Discussion of Snowden

Five Main Points from PG

1. Racial communities are formed online and reinforced through the use of certain styles of communication, like "black tags".

2. Trinidadian women are very truthful online, specifically on facebook, and this has both positive and negative consequences. [Perhaps too much of a generalization.]

3. Social media allows the creation of self or the role play of self that the person is not comfortable with in the physical world.

4. Facebook is a representation of life but is not an accurate representation, as you are only showing the "center stage" aspects of your life and not your whole self.

5. Unintended audiences are very difficult to avoid when using social media, knowing this should allow you to be more conscious of your online presence.

Challenge

Each group has been assigned an article. Spend ten minutes preparing to talk about the following issues.

• What is the article about?
• What are two or three most important points in the article? (What points should your colleagues know?)
• How does the article relate to our discussion on Monday?

Writing community into being on social network sites

FC, AF, PG, and ZS

About:

• Online and offline personas are affected by each other - it's a two-way street.

Main points:

• "It's a performance of identity."
  • Your list of top friends says something about your identity
  • Mismatch in the ordering can affect friendships
  • "You can be called a 'whore' if you have too many friends."
• The incentive to say "yes" may be more a fear of negative social consequences than a desire to enhance a friendship.
  • Since it's tied to privacy settings, it's also more than just friendship.
  • "Choose friends based on what you want to make visible."
  • Long list of other reasons you accept friends.

Relationship to last class:

• Creationship of what's true and what's false online.
• Influence on how you are and what you want to be.
• Danger of people copying what you post privately - You have to be very careful about who your friends are.
  • One person's loss of control of her social media had serious consequences in real life. Drama in
• "Fake vs. true."

Questions:

• Is what's online not "real"?
• Argument: There's so much performance that we do online that it's less real.
• Argument: The accepting of friends
• Followup: There's a homogenization (acquaitance to close friend)

"You have one identity": Performing the self

EL and CO

About

• Communication, self-promotion, struggle between users and others in identity formation
• Focus on performative side

Many points

• Facebook is about personal self-presentation; LinkedIn is about professional self-presentation
• Forming a personal narrative in both cases
• Timeline allows you to create particular narratives
  • E.g., ability to add photos from the past
• LinkedIn is more of an online resume/cv and also a way to promote yourself and others. Professional gain rather than personal gains.
• In a survey of professionals, 91% looked at Facebook while only 48% looked at LinkedIn. Perhaps employers look at weaknesses rather than strengths?
  • Perhaps different beliefs in truthfulness. (Tied back to last time.)
• Timeline encourages people to release more data about themselves, but also gives them some control over these things

The Book of Truth: Tales from Facebook

CC, DP, and JV

Performance and Truthfulness in Facebook Profiles

• Narrative about woman from Trinidad and question of whether Facebook is about true selves rather than created identities?

Important Points

• You have the agency to create your identity through Facebook - actively posting things and talking to people.
• Facebook is a means for people to gain sympathy and attention from friends. (You get more attention online than "in real life")
• Contrast between this reading and Monday's readings: Issue of context collapse: If you are truthful, you are less likely to have context collapse.
• Is it disingenuous to talk about being truth and about creating an identity online?
• Author has some clear biases - In talking about Trinidad residents, in comparing US and British schooling, ....

Questions

• Is this really just about one person? Yes. The book is about Facebook use in Trinidad - Stories about individual users.
  Opportunity to study smaller community?
  • Is the Trinidad population any different than the res of the world?

"Black Facebook"

SA, DB, and TD

Main issue

• These platforms help constitute and promote racial identities.

Important points

• Structure of Twitter allows racialization of communities with Twitter and then allows this to spread between communities.
• Distinguish between groups by use of hashtags and how they trend.
• Tags that are traditionally used by certain communities, such as #onlyintheghetto [Did I get that right?]
• Race online is often created by connections people make.
• Some racialization by looking at pictures, although there are dangerous aspects to this approach.
• Twitter's algorithm that sorts hashtags.
• Racial communities are fluid over time

Questions

• Are problems raised? Trying to be independent, not look at positives and negatives.
• What are the relationships with Monday's stuff?
  • Some things can very easily become public.
• Other issues?
  • Other groups adoption of racial hashtags can become problematic

Wrapup

How should we behave online?

• Be truthful, but not too truthful.
• You're always going to run into situations where you write for one audience and then get seen by another audience.
  • This happens "in real life" too, but you can see it happening and can change the context.
• Be mindful of who you are performing too.
• Sometimes you have to make a choice as to which audience you are appealing too.
  • Although different social media sites can allow you to provide different personas in different locations
• Be aware of how you are presenting yourself online