- Social networking
- Keeping in contact with friends and family
- Sharing information - text, videos, pictures
- A profile of yourself - creating an image, representing yourself
- Statuses
- Events
- Conversations
- Memories
- Time Wasting
- Gossip
- Nosy
- Stalking
- Venting feelings
- Judgemental
- Lack of privacy - you choose to have that
Posotive
- More contact with friends and improvement of social lives - easy access
- Allows youths to express themsleves
- Youths can make a name for themselves/ create a certain image
- You can use it as a forum to help advertise yourself - your band, photography, art
- Accessible to everybody no matter what class or status
- Keep contact with people who you can't see a lot quickly and easily - friends that have moved, friends you have lost contact with
- Can keep contact with a lot of people at one time
- Can find out news and information
- Fits in with all the areas of uses and gratifications theory
- Allows for people to be judgemental - arguments, cyber bullying
- Always being watched by other people - constantly trying to keep up an image to avoid judgement
- Opens more doors to "stranger danger"
- Snooping - can look at friends/ partners relationships and conversations
- Stripped of privacy
- Allows people to put up photos of others that can not be taken down
- Jobs, Universities can look at your facebook
- Fraping
- Globalisation
- Sharing of information
- Development of self identity
- Self realisation
- Collective intelligence
- Reshaping media messages and their flow; reshape and recirculate messages
- Increased voice
- Consumer communication with business (greater influence) - mass collaboration
- Awareness - bands/skills
- Communication has become an interactive dialogue
- User generated content
- Self-presentation and self-disclosure
- Increasing diversity within cultures
- Online media focus on some or all of the seven functional buildings blocks - identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation and groups (Kietzmann et al)
- "Online media are especially suitable to construct and develop several identities of the self" (Turkle, 1998)
- "The mobile phone has become a central device in the construction of young people's individual identity"
For what purposes can you use facebook?
- Personal updates
- sharing links, beliefs
- Spreading ideas
- Personal events through own specific language: Short messages
- Constructing own images
The Modern Identity Concept
- Personal identity - sense of being a unique individual
- Social identity - results from being a member of a group, in former times: nationality, race, gender, occupation, sport club
- Mediation of self
- A person has not just one a stable and homogenerous identity
- Identity consists of several fragments that permanently change
- Multiple but coharent (Turkle 1998)
- A live-long developing and new conceptualized patchwork (Doring 1999)
Media Use in Identity Construction
Katherine Hamley
Highlight ke points/quotes that you think are important and then answer these questions when reading this text:
• Young people are surrounded by influential imagery – popular media (Examples?)
Young people are constantly surrounded by influential mass media such as television, internet, magazines, advertising, films, music and news. All these have different attitudes and place within society which is particularly influential to youths when creating a self-identity.
• It is no longer possible for an identity to just be constructed in a small community and influenced by a family (Discuss)
This is true in some ways, but it is still possible to gain influences from family and community in order to create a self-identity. For example, the way a young person is raised can dramatically influence how they choose to present themselves, as well as class and living situation. For example, a working class young person is most likely to have different attitudes to a middle class young person due to the influences from their family and community. However you may argue that these influences come from the way class is represented in mass media, and young people feel they have to follow these representations in order to create a self-identity.
• Everything concerning our lives is ‘media saturated’ (What does this mean?)
Media saturated means that everything is influenced by the media. We are constantly under the observation and representation of mass media in a growing range of mediums. Our lives now revolve around the use of media which suggests that most things we do within our lives are influenced by some form of media.
However, it is fair to say that in some instances the freedom of exploring the web could be limited depending on the choice of the parents or teachers. So, if young people have such frequent access and an interest in the media, it is fair to say that their behaviour and their sense of ‘self’ will be influenced to some degree by what they see, read, hear or discover for themselves. Such an influence may include a particular way of behaving or dressing to the kind of music a person chooses to listen to. These are all aspects which go towards constructing a person’s own personal identity.
Firstly, it is important to establish what constitutes an identity, especially in young people. The dictionary definition states the following:
“State of being a specified person or thing: individuality or personality…” (Collins Gem English Dictionary. 1991).
The mass media provide a wide-ranging source of cultural opinions and standards to young people as well as differing examples of identity. Young people would be able to look at these and decide which they found most favourable and also to what they would like to aspire to be. The meanings that are gathered from the media do not have to be final but are open to reshaping and refashioning to suit an individual’s personal needs and consequently, identity. It is said that young people:“…use media and the cultural insights provided by them to see both who they might be and how others have constructed or reconstructed themselves… individual adolescents…struggle with the dilemma of living out all the "possible selves" (Markus & Nurius, 1986), they can imagine.” (Brown et al. 1994, 814).
When considering how much time adolescents are in contact with the popular media, be it television, magazines, advertising, music or the Internet, it is clear to see that it is bound to have a marked effect on an individual’s construction of their identity. This is especially the case when the medium itself is concerned with the idea of identity and the self; self-preservation, self-understanding and self-celebration. “With a simple flip of the television channel or radio station, or a turn of the newspaper or magazine page, we have at our disposal an enormous array of possible identity models.” (Grodin & Lindlof 1996)
I believe the Internet is an especially interesting medium for young people to use in order to construct their identities. Not only can they make use of the imagery derived from the Internet, but also it provides a perfect backdrop for the presentation of the self, notably with personal home pages. By surfing the World Wide Web adolescents are able to gain information from the limitless sites which may interest them but they can also create sites for themselves, specifically home pages. Constructing a home page can enable someone to put all the imagery they have derived from the popular media into practice. For example: “…constructing a personal home page can be seen as shaping not only the materials but also (in part through manipulating the various materials) one’s identity.” (Chandler 1998)
This is particularly important as not only are young people able to access such an interesting and wide ranging medium, but they are also able to utilise it to construct their own identity. In doing this, people are able to interact with others on the Internet just as they could present their identities in real life and interact with others on a day to day basis.In conclusion it can be seen that the popular media permeates everything that we do. Consequently, the imagery in the media is bound to infiltrate into young people’s lives. This is especially the case when young people are in the process of constructing their identities. Through television, magazines, advertising, music and the Internet adolescents have a great deal of resources available to them in order for them to choose how they would like to present their ‘selves’. However, just as web pages are constantly seen to be 'under construction’, so can the identities of young people. These will change as their tastes in media change and develop. There is no such thing as one fixed identity; it is negotiable and is sometimes possible to have multiple identities. The self we present to our friends and family could be somewhat different from the self we would present on the Internet, for example. By using certain imagery portrayed in the media, be it slim fashion models, a character in a television drama or a lyric from a popular song, young people and even adults are able to construct an identity for themselves. This identity will allow them to fit in with the pressures placed on us by society, yet allow them to still be fundamentally different from the next person.
Media and Collective Identity
- "Identity is complicated - everybody thinks they've got one" (David Gaunlett)
- "A focus on Identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups" (David Buckingham)
He classifies identity as an 'ambiguous and slippery' term;
- Identity is something unique to each of us, but also implies a relationship with a boarder group
- Identity can change according to circumstances
- Identity is fluid and is affected by broader changes (How can you relate this to Britishness? - Cultural Imperialism, culture is injected in to us. For example, if America changes, we do. American culture is imprinted on to British culture. There is also the influences from past generations where ideneity changes and flows to the next form. For example, mods and rockers moving to goths and emos)
- Identity becomes more important to us if we feel it is threatened
- Identity is complicated, however, everybody feels that they have one
- Religious and national identities are at the heart of major international conflicts
- The average teenager can create numerous identities in a short space of time (especially using the internet, social networking sites etc.)
- We like to think we are unique but Gauntlett questions wether this is an illusion and we are all much more similar than we think
- Creativity as a Process - about emotions and experiences
- Making and Sharing - to feel alive, to participate, in community
- Happiness - through creativity and community
- Creativity as Social Glue - a middle layer between individuals and society
- Making your Mark - and making the world your own
- Representation: the way reality is 'mediated' or 're-presented' to us
- Collective Identity: the individual's sense of belonging to a group (part of personal identity)
'Stars' Created by the Internet:
- Star Wars Kid
- Gingers do have souls
- Charlie Bit My Finger
1. When was Youtube first released?
2005 April 23rd, has videos posted that day.
2. According to Michael Wesch what does Web 2.0 allow people to do?
Connect to each other and rethink identity, ethics and so on. It links people in ways we have never linked before.
3. When media changes what else changes?
When media changes human relationships change.
4. What influenced the loss of community? And what has now filled this void?
When women joined work force, large supermarkets, massive communities of suburbia only connected by TV. Individuality has now filled the void.
5. How are communities connected?
Through television and now the internet
6. Explain what he means by voyeuristic capabilities?
You don’t want to stare at people or watch them, but with YouTube videos you can without them knowing you are looking and making them feel uncomfortable.
7. Write 3 points about what he refers when he discusses playing with identity
8. What does the ‘Free hugs phenomenon’ suggest about people?
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