After completing
this week’s readings and listening to my fellow classmate’s presentations on
such topics, I found Professor Herman’s reading entitled, Production, Consumption and Labour in the Social Media Mode of
Production and Consumption, to be of great interest. This chapter explores modes
of communication and production and constructs a conceptual framework allowing
readers to understand how social media platforms generate symbolic value, which
in turn, creates capital or ‘material value’.
One passage
that stood out to me while reading the chapter was demonstrated in the
introduction which underlined the reciprocal recognition that communication requires
stating, “It is a fundamental foundation of personal and social identity in the
contemporary world. Without such communicative practices, we would not have a
coherent sense of who we are and would not be able conduct ourselves in
everyday life”. This idea was further explored within today’s presentation on
the reading where Larisa demonstrated how users tailor their social media platforms,
creating and distributing content to display the individual whom we want to be.
Reflecting
on this idea, I would like to share a video which demonstrates the importance
individuals place on creating these social identities and how this can often contradict
our truest selves. Attached below is a link to the video, please watch it in
its full entirety as I will be unpacking its deeper meaning shortly.
As you can
see within the video, the way we are perceived by our Facebook friends has
become so important that we are now constantly altering our online identities
to appear a certain way, even if this means being untruthful. This idea can
also be related to our previous discussions on Vincent Mosco’s, Myth and Cyberspace. Specifically, when
individuals modify their statuses this can be seen as a myth as it “lifts us
out of the banality of everyday life and into the sublime”. By reading and
commenting on such statuses, it can be argued that we are giving life to the
myth the Facebook user has created. However, as it is demonstrated in the videos
ending, we as users have the ability to separate myths from the truth by
unfriending or hiding an individual’s posts from our timelines.
While Professor Herman highlights how Facebook provides the opportunity for users to evoke their personal feelings surrounding their everyday lives, do you think that creating false social identities has become the norm for social media platforms? Have you ever experienced anything similar to what was demonstrated in the video, if so, what were your thoughts and how did you react?
While Professor Herman highlights how Facebook provides the opportunity for users to evoke their personal feelings surrounding their everyday lives, do you think that creating false social identities has become the norm for social media platforms? Have you ever experienced anything similar to what was demonstrated in the video, if so, what were your thoughts and how did you react?
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ReplyDeleteExcellent post Megan! The video is a great form of elaboration of professor Herman’s reading alongside the quote you presented. I truly see now how we use social medias as a way to provide ourselves a sense of identity and thus, articulating how we conduct ourselves on a day-to-day basis. Facebook is a great social media outlet to provide your friends with updates on your thoughts, feelings, and activities at any given moment. For example, the “What’s on your mind?” section on Facebook users can now instantly add a photo/video, tag friends, show your feeling/activity, or even ‘check in’ your location. Along these lines I do think it has become the norm for social media platforms. I think users take advantage of posting/updating with each the previously mentioned and only provide information when something exciting, upsetting or something worth debate is occurring. Although this may not be a complete ‘false’ social identity, I do think it is false under the terms that people articulate their statuses, just as you mentioned, in a way that “lifts us out of the banality of everyday life”.
ReplyDeleteIn accordance to the video that you have provided, I have experienced something quite similar to the video. In the sense that I was the person who chose to unfollow the person therefore hiding the persons posts from my timeline. Unfortunately, I knew this person quite well so I was well aware of what was occurring in her life and what she was providing on her Twitter account was not consistent. I was confused and curious as to why she was posting all of this personal information for everyone to see in a way that was blown out of proportion so heavily. This was a daily occurrence and in the end it was time to unfollow her on social media. In wake of this, I decided I should have only direct social relations that were not over social media platforms. This way, I was provided with actual information and not the myths that supported her online identity.
ReplyDeleteI found your post to be very interesting. Often I do think about the identities that we tend to create on social media. I believe that we have become fixated on trying to maintain a certain image or have people perceive to be something that we want them to see. I am not sure that anyone is ever their truest selves on social media because I believe we create value based on likes or comments from others. In my opinion it is almost a force of “peer pressure” in the sense we feel obligated to fit in with those who are able to build opinions about us. The video you attached brings to light how we care a lot about the image we put forward to others we know and even strangers. I believe that creating false identities has in fact become a norm in our society today. My roommate and I always discuss how Instagram is “not real” life as we pick and choose the aspects of what we want others to see. People get too caught up with social media at large due to what others post and how they appear, they try to maintain this “false” image. I must add that some do post things they are truly interested in or photos they do like but for the most part I do believe a bit of thought and consideration goes into what is put up for others to see. Last year, I unfollowed a bunch of celebrities on Instagram. My reasoning for this was, I was uninterested on seeing a bunch of photos of people I did not know personally. If I really am interested in the content they post, I can go “lurk” their profiles. I try to keep my content very private and typically personal for just my friends to see. Overall, I believe that we try to keep up with being something/ someone we are not in order to find some type of acceptance, as you mentioned through generated symbolic value found within likes, comments and so on.
Great post and also very relatable to our social media crazed society today. I definitely think creating false social identities has become the norm for social media platforms. Of course we want people to view us in the best way possible, thus we only post pictures and statuses of ourselves when we are doing something interesting and looking our best. Honestly, I must admit that my Instagram feed is not an accurate representation of my life... If my feed were to be a true depiction of my life, most of the pictures would either be of me eating, sleeping, or watching TV in bed. In terms of the message trying to be conveyed in the video you posted, I think it is a bit upsetting how the need to maintain positive images of ourselves on social media platforms has become more of a motive for people to go out and do things than the activities themselves. For instance, I have a friend who, before we go out to an event, has in mind exactly how she wants to pose and caption her hypothetical picture on Instagram. Rather than being excited for the event itself, she is more excited for the post she gets to publish to her feed. As such, we can admit that we do this ourselves, yet our tendency is to still "creep" peoples' social media to draw conclusions about the kind of person they are. It is crazy how important likes have become to people. I know some people who delete their posts if it does not receive a certain amount of likes. It is also difficult to try not to fall victim to this need to maintain a certain image on social media and obtain 'x' amount of likes since we know how important it is to a large degree of our population and in how they form judgments.
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