An online social network trend has emerged within this decade which teenagers are the major activist. Distinguishing from the conventional communications, social network sites is a networked public which consists of 4 unique characteristics: persistence, searchability, exact copyability (Replicability), and invisible audiences. For persistence, it means communications that can be last for a longer period, as it can be documented on the platform, unlike the instant conversation. Secondly, users are able to copy the exact expression of one spoken from any other platform which refers to the concept of Copyability.
Primarily targeted 14-18 aged urban youth who are receiving high education, Boyd adopted the practice of qualitative interviews and direct observations in order to examine youth engagement with MySpace. The ethnographic data reveals that the characteristics of race and social class are less influential than gender on the participation of social network sites. Moreover, the satisfaction of social voyeur and the opportunity to visually represent themselves are mentioned as the reasons of participating into these sites.
The emergence of the online social interaction platform has complicated the common definition of Public. The term of "Public" does not merely refer to simply publics, it branches Mediated Public and Unmediated Public. Networked Publics, one type of mediated pubic, implies interactions among social, cultural, and technological developmnts via the use of digital devices. Mediating techologies have changed the scale of public and audience - Imagined audience and Invisible audience, respectively. Audience are no longer a concrete group of people you have expected but even the global virtual groups.
The profile is a form of digital body where individuals can construct their online and offline identities via impression management, since they "write themselves into being" on their pages, as Jenny Sunden argues. On the other hand, teenagers are generally enthusiastic about pursuing the coolness of Myspace in order to gain peers' acceptance. Hence, individuals build up their group identities simultaneously - "You are who you know".
The privacy setting in those social network sites has blurred the definition of "Public" and "Private", where "Public" now means that a profile is visible to anyone and "Private" means that is for Friend-only. Parents encourage their children to establish a fabricated profile to protect them from strangers online; while adolescences create mirror network to escape from the watchful eye of parents.
It seems that social network sites have pull ourselves together which peers and peers can communicate in different context. However, the asynchronous communication has also built a transparent wall among specific group of people.
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ReplyDeleteIt seems that the definition of “friend” is blurred since the rush of social network sites, such as “facebook”. Regarding the “public” or “private” problem, as yoyo’s group presented, it reveals the phenomenon that “friends” are categorized into various levels. A guy may become your friends just because of the encounter on train one day, but he/she is “hi-bye friend” only, but not “super best friend”.
ReplyDeleteAfter yoyo’s group presentation, I want to share a news to all of you. Burger King has once asked facebook users to delete 10 friends from facebook for free burger, and this campaign had been “liked” for lots of people.
If you find it’s easy to do so, then ask yourselves a question: What do those 10 “friends” mean to you?
link of news:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/264821
hahahaha !
ReplyDeleteThanks for Ava's interesting sharing!
It is worthwhile for net citizens to re-think about the definition of Friends, boundary of private and public.
Thank you for yoyo and sam's presentation:)
ReplyDeleteTechnology created by human make convenient in our world. The development of internet breaks the limitation of time and region, and also makes the communication between human become smoothly. For example, facebook, weibo, email, etc. However, does the communication between human really can reach a level such as we phone to our friend to chat or face to face chat? I think the answer is NO! Nowadays, internet is very useful that can let people to get information very quickily, but I don’t think that it can really maintain a relationship between people. Take my friend as an example that I shared on the lesson. He was very active on the Facebook platform and he added nearly 1000 different friends thought the system of Facebook. However, only about 100 people is his ‘real’ friends such as classmates and colleagues, the others are only ‘hi-bye friends’, even we do not calculated those ‘hi-bye friends’, does we really can maintain the relationship with those 100 people thought facebook? It is very difficult to do that. Therefore, the development of internet is using for sending message and make the things become convenient only, if we really want to communicate with our friends, I think we should do it in the reality, but not thought the virtual world.
Lastly, I recommend our classmates to watch a film that is called . This is a very interesting movie which is talked about the technology and social network in nowadays. Hope you guys enjoy it. :)