Using facebook as a basis of this research task and my personal experience with the website. Usually when people ask me to add them but don’t have a profile picture or any friends in common with me I am a bit reluctant because it could be anyone, a nice person, psycho or a forgotten friend but with online stalking on the rise one always has to take precautions of people without a valid id.
I personally not use my full name on other sites but I do on facebook because I have a private profile and not anyone can access my information so I do have some reassurance that random people cannot just get assess to my whole life story. Forms allow people with like minds to get together to express their thoughts on certain subjects but can free expression really be observed within such groups very few people will question the main ideas that expressed within the group, the majority of the group will follow the general group consensus. So intend of personal identity being expressed it’s more of a group ideology that will be shown thus causing the loss of identity.
Sites on the internet such as pro-anorexia ones have started taking a hold on society whereby negative views are expressed as positive ones and mislead young and vulnerable people.
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Hi Rue,
ReplyDeleteGood post! Yes, SNS aren't the same as the network/forums that the early therorists are talking about are they? We are different on them than (e.g.) Turkle's subjects are.
The big differences are a) that millions of people are online, so we don't have to go across the world to find likeminded people (unless we are VERY odd!) -so likeminded people can go offline for IRL hook-ups fairly easily. And b) we use CMC (SNS) as integral to our organisation of our lives -especially our social lives- so a lot of Inet use is not about online stuff alone, but about offline stuff probably more than online. Indeed, it might be possible to analyse sites by the balance between solely off/soley on/hybrid content references. My guess would be that currently, the strongest 'virtual communities' would be those in which sharing thoughts about offline action predominates?