Social Networking and Online Identities

Identity can be defined as the cognitive and affective understanding of ourselves. With social networking and involvement in online communities becoming increasingly popular, there seems to be more interest in how people create or re-create their identities online. There are many ways in which people express their personal identity. Often the reflection of identity comes down to certain characteristics like clothes, taste in music, sexual orientation, race, religion, and any other affiliation, activities or interests. However, if you take away the physical person then it becomes more challenging to express these individual traits and portrayal of identity.

Young people are one of the primary users of online networking sites, spending approximately 50 minutes per day on the internet. Two of the most popular activities online were participation on personal homepages, such as Facebook, and on blogs. Both of these activities involve portraying to a public audience an image of their identities. For young people, creating and networking online content is becoming an important part of managing identity, lifestyle and social relations. It is throughout this period of their lives that they start to develop goals, opinions, attitudes and other integral traits. 

A large portion of what makes up an online identity is what content is on display and who can see it. Even though social networking has allowed for users to interact with others across the globe, majority of people are only friends with those that are local to them. Most young people have contacts which they have previous associations with (such as study or work) and there is little interest in befriending strangers. There have been on-going criticisms about the people that can see the content in a person's post. Although majority of the time these people are known to them in some form, the "MySpace" generation has been accused of having no sense of shame or privacy.

There are some factors of constructing an online identity which are similar to reality. On the surface level, personal homepages allow room for information such as religion, hometown, place of residence, work, previous employers, education, and so on. However beyond those things, people are also faced with making decisions that are difficult offline as well as online. For example, whom to trust, what information to reveal, reciprocity, when to express emotion, etc. 

Online networks are used by young people as a way to develop a sense of identity. The idea of the self is often constituted through the interaction with others and largely how others view us. Online, people are continuously developing their sense of self through communication. For example in a study of online dating profiles, they found that the sites were popular because they allowed people to explore possible selves and have that identity validated. Often these people were in a place in their lives where one phase of their life was ending and another was beginning (e.g. after divorce). This period of time created self-reflection and a re-creation of identity.

How Networked Media Culture Enhances Online Communication

In this day and age, the internet as we know it is becoming increasingly prevalent in our society. The internet (or Web 2.0) is used on a daily basis as part of our lives. It is for this reason that communication in its most basic form has been transformed in a way to suit the online world. As a result of digital media, how we communicate is constantly evolving.

The internet differs from traditional media in many ways. Before the internet, traditional media such as the radio, television and newspaper informed us of any news. We used to communicate through face-to-face interaction, the telephone, postal mail, fax, and telegram. Although new technology has not completely erased these previous methods of communicating and receiving information, it has opened the door to an influx of new ways to communicate. These include: email, instant messaging, chat rooms, blogging, social media, and data sharing. The internet also differs in comparison to traditional media in that it is interactive interface. It includes a range of text, images, video and audio (multimedia) on almost every page. 

Traditionally, the use of media has been used as a source of one-way communication. That is, information is sent from the “sender” to the “receiver” without any further interaction. However, the internet does not always follow this one-way communication model. Users now have the ability to leave comments, share the post with friends or the public, and create their own content. This creates an interaction between the sender and the receiver where the sender can receive feedback and communicate back-and-forth. This model is called the two-way communication model.

One-way communication model

Two-way communication model

Political campaigning is just one area that has been changed by online communication. Stereotypically the method of political campaigning has been to rely heavily on coverage in traditional media. This means that the image being portrayed, what news is included or excluded, and the opinions that are being created, are all controlled by the media. The 2008 US election was the first real “online” election which was said to embrace social networking sites, multimedia and other digital media outlets. 

Throughout the 2008 election, Barack Obama used social media and his website to produce a mass of supporters and financial donators. He took advantage of these media sites for free advertising, encouraged his followers to share his posts (thus creating a broader audience scope) and could rally supporters like never before. Using social media was effective as people chose to consume the material rather than have the campaign interrupt their television show.

However social media has not replaced traditional media completely. The roles of online networks are to enhance the agenda in the traditional media (rather than replace it) as well as create discussion and hype. For example, this video below outlines how social media is said to create a public sphere where people can voice opinions, discuss ideas and in-turn increase democracy. 

The internet is able to provide certain tools which enhance online communication. Hyperlinks for example, are a mechanism originally designed as an online referencing system but inadvertently changed how we access information. Unlike traditional citations where a person would need to invest time in order to locate documents, hyperlinks can instantaneously direct users to the source. The use of hyperlinks has since developed into much more. They are now used as an algorithm by search engines to determine the popularity of a site. Hyperlinks have changed the way in which people navigate online by transporting their attention from place-to-place, instantaneous access to information, and a way for search engines to determine the websites popularity.