Blog Post #2: Response to Nicole F (http://csmt11.posterous.com/my-everyday-use-of-social-media)

While reading Nicole F.'s blog post on her everyday use of social media, I found that I could easily relate to the "online freedom" she referred to in her post. As we have discussed in class, this online freedom became an outlet where we could establish our own identities whichever way we wanted, whenever we wanted. Whether it was a matter of confiding personal feelings, berating another, having simple social exchanges, or intellectual discussions, the dawn of social media connected us and provided us with a voice and manipulable identity. In today's world, this construction of self continues every time we post something online or send a digital message. Especially with textual messages, I am sure more often than not, more people will take the time to consider the wording of their messages (and even their use of emoticons) to fit how they want their receivers to perceive them.

Thus, in relation to danah boyd's discourse, "Friends, Friendsters, and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites," where she discusses the culture of online "Friending" and the ambiguous definition of an online Friend, I could not help but wonder, "How does our definition of our Facebook friends (in terms of the range between personal contacts to strangers) affect our online identity? Does the network more often compromise or facilitate our online identities and the way we express ourselves? This is, of course, person and context dependent since some people may be more private than others in their online profiles. In the past year and a half, however, I have noticed a growing number of adult Facebook users --family friends and relatives-- of whom I share a mutual respect for and must accept their "Facebook adds" as a sign of mutual friendship and respect. And yet, as boyd, discusses, such things can lead to "context collisions" --in which the way we interact with certain Friends (i.e. our peers) differs from others (i.e. people who hold power over us --parents or relatives) simply because each group knows and defines us by a specific identity. And when we use Facebook privacy settings to block away the things we don't want certain people to see, my question is, (generally speaking) do we do this to maintain a specific identity --that is, choosing one specific identity over another? And does that persona, more often than not, align with who we are in-person? It's a tough question to answer. It seems that our culture is composed of separate spheres (professional, personal, friendship, etc.) and that there is an expectation to uphold the original image we had given to the people in those spheres --that our online persona should mirror who we are in the real world. I, myself, find myself blocking many of my adult relatives and professional colleagues and supervisors for the obvious reason that I want to maintain a more respectful and professional image.

In relation to the original "online freedom" we were so well endowed with when we were younger, there seems to be a change in the amount of freedom we have, and the structure with which we can use it. The reason goes beyond the fact of maturity, and that our generation is wary of the perceptions of potential employers and adults who have certain expectations of us. But in our present-day-social-media-explosion, we have finally begun to realize that everything in the digital world can be a record, a footprint, and a potentially permanent record of who we are. That is the irony of the online freedom we have. The Freedom: we can choose to post what we want and when we want, and allow others to see or don't see the content of our profiles and posts. But where is the freedom in having to hide what you do or say?

--Charli