Kylie Jarrett’s article on “Who says Facebook Friends are not your real friends? Alienation and Exploitation in Digital Media” first displays a picture of a quote that says,
“Who says Facebook friends are not your real friends? They enjoy seeing you on the Internet everyday. Miss you when you’re not on. Showing compassion when you lose someone you love. Send you greetings on your birthday. View the pictures you upload. Like your status. Make you laugh when you are sad. Share this if you are grateful for your Facebook friends.”
Jarrett says this captures the power of sharing and how to maintain connections through commercial meaning (making or intended to make a profit/engaging in transactions). By way of this, she believes the exchanges one has over social media platforms are supposed to be ‘inalienable’ (unable to be taken away from) but are nonetheless destroyed in a capitalist context, such as commercial digital media. The argument is made that there should be a feminist perspective applied to this, one can look at unpaid consumer content as a form of ‘domestic work’ and act as the exploited ‘digital housewife’.The feminist perspective claims that we can use this perspective to examine roles of consumer labor being exploited, and further act as an agent. This is so we can make socially meaningful interactions to the extent that Facebook friends can be our real friends.
This made me think of Alice Marwicks' chapter on life streaming in public. Warwick claims, the bigger the lifestream is equal to a bigger the status and that self-branding is a form of work to create our own networks. Marwick discusses publicity, openness of information and transparency being a strategic selection of useful or relevant information to our friends. In discussion of transparency, if one does not provide information online this can be taken negatively by other users. So, users are obligated to provide information to their friends in order to maintain their online identities and connections.
Together, Marwick and Jarretts’ argument can make for a compelling discussion. The work of the digital house wife can be seen as a form of work that allows them to strategically enhance their online selves. Although the digital housewife produces unpaid consumer content, one does so in a way that allows them to take control of their life. One opens their personal life to the public and strategically selects useful information to employs self agency to become the person their online friends see. For example, sharing pictures on Facebook of your weekend. You can pick certain aspects such as going out for breakfast or going on a nature walk, but refrain from showing the crazy night you had before. This shows that you are still offering a connection to your Facebook friends, but only allow them to see what you want to see, in accordance to the sophisticated identity you desire to maintain.
After reading this, do you think that websites are more a form of exploitation of user content, or an opportunity for users to be agents in maintaining their online identity?
Great post Olivia. I particularly enjoyed the way in which you found clear connections between Jarrett and Marwick's chapters and carried this out with a thorough analysis. In regards to your question, I personally feel that while websites exploit users and surveil their activity for the purpose of producing information as capital, I do recognize the opportunities a website simultaneously develops. This idea relates back to my blog post on Dan Schiller’s chapter on the commodification process. Specifically, your point that individuals display their personal lives to the public and strategically select useful information to become the individual online friends see directly relates to my example of a LinkedIn profile. Within this platform, users are able to strategically chose certain aspects of their lives they want to publically display to future employers including their accomplishments, awards and previous employments. Similar to a resume or interview process, users refrain from including negative aspects of their lives just as you mentioned Facebook users display nature walks but refrain from revealing the crazy night they had before.
ReplyDeleteReading both Jarrett and Marwick’s chapters urged me to explore other external research to discover other opinions regarding online social identities. I would like you as well as our fellow classmates to review the article, “The True Promise of Social Media Drowned Out by Self-Promotion” by Phil Johnson. One particular passage I would like to highlight reads, “Twitter may have started as a medium to tell people what you were doing, but it quickly became a place to talk about what was interesting. Increasingly it has become a platform to broadcast individual messages and post links to content created elsewhere. All that has value, but we've lost the interactive engagement and human connection that made Twitter a game changer”. Ultimately, this statement reveals Twitter’s transformation from a platform that encouraged users to engage in conversation regarding common interests and current news, to a platform centered around self-promotion.
Do you think this transformation is the reason why the number of Twitter users has drastically declined?
Here is a link to article:
http://adage.com/article/small-agency-diary/social-media-s-potential-drowning-promotion/233776/
Great perspective, Olivia. I definitely believe that websites are a form of exploitation of user content. While we do use social media platforms to maintain our online identity, I think that exploitation over powers that. The sole purpose of digital platforms is to create a database, so that there is a continuous cycle of information available to other users. Creating and maintaining your identity is just a characteristic that comes with that main purpose.
ReplyDeleteWebsites like Facebook and Twitter store our information and use it to fuel websites like Google. Without our online profile, we would not have valuable resources like Google. I believe that when we try to understand what the purpose of all online platforms are, we have to prioritize what they are benefiting, before considering what we benefit.