Narrating Me - Both of Me

In my New Media lecture last Friday, I was presented with the following quote:

“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”
Mark Zuckerberg, cited in Kirkpatrick (2010)

I fundamentally disagree with Zuckerberg on this point.

My own online presence as it has expanded has grown, naturally, into two distinct online identities: the flippant, unguarded self I reveal to my already known contacts on Facebook, and the more carefully narrated, “worldy” and heavily stylised self I share with the unknown audiences of Twitter and the blogosphere.

Both are cultivated from the essence of my identity, but they present a different version, for a different purpose, and in the hope of resonating with a different audience.

Inconsistent? Yes. But lacking integrity? Definitely not.

Dueze (2011) says that “the potential power of people to shape their lives and identities can be found in the assumption that people produce themselves in media.” I agree with this assumption, and believe the online universe affords people the opportunity to explore who they are, who they want to be, and to narrate themselves as the person or persons they would like to be if only there was an edit button in the “real world”.

While Zuckerberg might consider multiple online identities as a show of weakness, I see it as a fantastic opportunity for self-realisation.

References

Dueze, Mark. 2011. Media Life. Media, Culture & Society 33(137).

Kirkpatrick, David. 2010. The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Contructing Our Online "Self"

Week Two in KCB206 centred on how and why we construct our identity online. Social networking sites offer a platform by which we can select, contrive and omit  signals, which come together to form our online identity.

Pearson (2009) uses the analogy of actors playing a role. She says that online the performer is “disembodied and electronically re-embodied through signs they choose to represent themselves”. Donath and Boyd (2004) talk about signalling theory, explaining that each signal we select represents an underlying quality. What differs between the two approaches is that Pearson (2009) suggests our online identity has no boundaries, while Donath and Boyd say the public nature of our online connections creates accountability for our behaviour and encourages an “honest self presentation”.

I believe that the reality falls in the middle ground of these two approaches. Though I don’t construct a false identity, I do censor some aspects, while highlighting other aspects of my identity that I consider the most positive. For example, my Facebook statuses reveal my sense of humour, my “check-ins” reveal what type of social scene I most relate to, and anything that I sense might be damaging to my constructed identity I can delete.  From my own experience of social networking, I see the process of online identity construction more as a personal public relations tool rather than a performance.

Image from Littlejohncomics.com

Reference List

Pearson, Erika. 2009. “All the World Wide Web’s a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks.” First Monday 14(3-2). Accessed March 11, 2010 via Course Materials Database.

Donath, J and Boyd, D. 2004. “Public Displays of Connection.” BT Technology Journal 22(4): 71-82. Accessed March 11, 2010 via Course Materials Database.

http://littlejohncomics.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html. Accessed March 13, 2010.