A social networking site is an online place where a person can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other people. Online social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have become one of the greatest social technological phenomenon’s of the 21st century. Today, digital communication is not just common in teenagers’ lives. It IS teenagers’ lives.
Why teenagers go on these social networking websites?
-helps them define their identity
-it makes them feel they have established themselves independently from their parents.
-to make new friends or connect with their existing friends
-in order to look cool
Key points Danah raised in her article
• The relationship between social networking sites and concept of identity.
Social networking sites allow teenagers a space (an online profile) to model their identity. They are able to write themselves and their community into being.
The concept of identity refers to the ways in which teenagers develop their online profiles and lists of friends to fulfil four important community processes:
1. Impression management: is about personal identity formation -users on social networking sites model their own identities through the information they give on their profile (pictures, videos and personal information) and also the degree to which they make it public or private in the online community. Through these activities they give out signals to others about who they are.
2. Friendship management: Teenagers use the publicly displayed profiles of other users to select who they prefer to embrace as friends on their lists and who they would not want to add. They look at the identity markers of other users to decide the levels of social interaction they would want to establish with them.
3. Network structure: is about the roles that teenagers carry out in the social community in which they participate. Some teenagers would be active participants-they would post information and construct intricate networks of friends, while others would be inactive and have a restricted personal network.
4. Bridging of online and offline social networks-how social networking sites have become an important part of a teenagers life while they are offline.
Second point
• Social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability and invisible audience.
-I know that she did not state that networked publics are better than face-to-face public life and I am not arguing that they are better. I feel that it is better that face-to-face relationships do not contain these properties.
Persistence: Any speech that occurs in networked communications such as facebook will have a much longer shelf-life than any face to face conversation that you have had, as discussions in networked publics are recorded and saved for posterity. So what you said when you were 14 will still be accessible when you turn 30. If you posted something stupid online when you were young, you would have to live with it for the rest of your life. President Obama warned high-school student last September. “Be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age whatever you do will be pulled up later somewhere in your life”. So in this way mediated publics make it harder for you to reinvent yourself.
Searchability: In mediated communication strangers can use search and discovery tools to locate the online profiles of people with similar interests as them, which means that they can find someone’s digital body in a few clicks. I find this quite dangerous and feel that it may raise privacy issues. Some teenagers do not privatize their online profile, which means that anyone can access the information on it. Strangers can know about your activities and use them to their advantage. In unmediated spaces, people cannot obtain the geographical co-ordinates of any person, it makes it harder for strangers to locate you and cannot find out how much you have in common with them.
Replicability: Networked publics allow photos and conversations to be copied from one place to another, which makes it harder to differentiate between the original and the copy. The information can be modified and altered into something completely different. You might have made a general comment but somebody alters it to make a political argument. So misinterpretations can occur. The altered information might harm your identity or affect what you were trying to say. Face-to-face relationships are much clearer and help avoid misinterpretations because the people communicating are having face-to-face conversations.
Invisible audience: In unmediated spaces, we are able to visually detect everyone who hears our conversation, so we know the type of people that are listening, even if they are strangers but in mediated publics the audience is invisible, you don’t know exactly who is looking at your profile. You can’t see the audience, the way you can when you are chatting to a friend in an offline public space or at a party. You have no control over it.
Discussion questions
• Do you feel that teenagers should be able to conduct activities on social networking websites without the interference of adults?
• How do you present yourself in an online environment like Facebook? Do you make conscious decisions about how you appear?
• Are networked publics diminishing a teenager’s ability to conduct more traditional relationships? Is the digital technology turning them into screen-enslaved, socially challenged adults?
Why teenagers go on these social networking websites?
-helps them define their identity
-it makes them feel they have established themselves independently from their parents.
-to make new friends or connect with their existing friends
-in order to look cool
Key points Danah raised in her article
• The relationship between social networking sites and concept of identity.
Social networking sites allow teenagers a space (an online profile) to model their identity. They are able to write themselves and their community into being.
The concept of identity refers to the ways in which teenagers develop their online profiles and lists of friends to fulfil four important community processes:
1. Impression management: is about personal identity formation -users on social networking sites model their own identities through the information they give on their profile (pictures, videos and personal information) and also the degree to which they make it public or private in the online community. Through these activities they give out signals to others about who they are.
2. Friendship management: Teenagers use the publicly displayed profiles of other users to select who they prefer to embrace as friends on their lists and who they would not want to add. They look at the identity markers of other users to decide the levels of social interaction they would want to establish with them.
3. Network structure: is about the roles that teenagers carry out in the social community in which they participate. Some teenagers would be active participants-they would post information and construct intricate networks of friends, while others would be inactive and have a restricted personal network.
4. Bridging of online and offline social networks-how social networking sites have become an important part of a teenagers life while they are offline.
Second point
• Social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability and invisible audience.
-I know that she did not state that networked publics are better than face-to-face public life and I am not arguing that they are better. I feel that it is better that face-to-face relationships do not contain these properties.
Persistence: Any speech that occurs in networked communications such as facebook will have a much longer shelf-life than any face to face conversation that you have had, as discussions in networked publics are recorded and saved for posterity. So what you said when you were 14 will still be accessible when you turn 30. If you posted something stupid online when you were young, you would have to live with it for the rest of your life. President Obama warned high-school student last September. “Be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age whatever you do will be pulled up later somewhere in your life”. So in this way mediated publics make it harder for you to reinvent yourself.
Searchability: In mediated communication strangers can use search and discovery tools to locate the online profiles of people with similar interests as them, which means that they can find someone’s digital body in a few clicks. I find this quite dangerous and feel that it may raise privacy issues. Some teenagers do not privatize their online profile, which means that anyone can access the information on it. Strangers can know about your activities and use them to their advantage. In unmediated spaces, people cannot obtain the geographical co-ordinates of any person, it makes it harder for strangers to locate you and cannot find out how much you have in common with them.
Replicability: Networked publics allow photos and conversations to be copied from one place to another, which makes it harder to differentiate between the original and the copy. The information can be modified and altered into something completely different. You might have made a general comment but somebody alters it to make a political argument. So misinterpretations can occur. The altered information might harm your identity or affect what you were trying to say. Face-to-face relationships are much clearer and help avoid misinterpretations because the people communicating are having face-to-face conversations.
Invisible audience: In unmediated spaces, we are able to visually detect everyone who hears our conversation, so we know the type of people that are listening, even if they are strangers but in mediated publics the audience is invisible, you don’t know exactly who is looking at your profile. You can’t see the audience, the way you can when you are chatting to a friend in an offline public space or at a party. You have no control over it.
Discussion questions
• Do you feel that teenagers should be able to conduct activities on social networking websites without the interference of adults?
• How do you present yourself in an online environment like Facebook? Do you make conscious decisions about how you appear?
• Are networked publics diminishing a teenager’s ability to conduct more traditional relationships? Is the digital technology turning them into screen-enslaved, socially challenged adults?
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