Will The Real Me Please Stand Up?

Looking at my about.me page, you might be forgiven for thinking I have multiple personality disorder. I have two Wordpress blogs, a Blogger, as well as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr accounts (I think that’s all…).

But it’s all me.  Or aspects of me.

Like any human, I have different facets to my personality and my engagement with the various social media platforms (SMPs) have sprung from different needs at different times.  

Source

Just as in real life, our online self is constructed – by our behaviours and by our interactions with others – and constantly negotiated.  We strike a pose, or wear particular clothes to present our best possible self.

I find Smith and Watson’s toolbox of concepts helpful in thinking about online self-presentation, and I wholeheartedly agree that ‘both offline and online, the autobiographical subject can be an ensemble or assemblage of subject positions through which self-understanding and self-positioning are negotiated’ (2014:71).

Take for instance, the concept of the audience. The things I post to Facebook are vastly different to the things I put on Twitter because the audiences are different.

Facebook started for me as a place to connect and reconnect with friends and family, people I actually know. Now I communicate with distant strangers whom I have never met, but with whom I have warm and funny conversations, and share common interests.  My Tumblr is more for my professional profile; it’s where I post my artwork and writing.  In this, I am attempting to transition to a new ‘me’, a creative potential employee.  I’m trying to rebrand myself, what Smith & Watson called ‘the self regarded as a commodity’ (2014:79).

These online versions of me are still authentically me, though.

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I have also written previously here about the specular economy - we're all looking at each other and crafting our online personas, consciously and unconsciously.

Smith, S and Watson, J 2014, "Virtually Me: A Toolbox About Online Self-Presentation," in Poletti, A and Rak, J eds, Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, ProQuest ebrary. Retrieved 18 July 2014.

The internet - it's not just for cat videos

Media Studies 2.0

Mr Pet Cam

WOW! My husband has been saying for years that we need to get a Go-Pro on our cat and see what he gets up to! And lo and behold, it’s already been done.  Yet another example of someone with a great, innovative idea actually taking it to a market and making it a reality. 

I don’t think I’m so cynical as to think that the creators of sites like Mr Pet Cam and Dog TV are in it purely for the money. Sure it’s a business, but if they hadn’t already had an interest in animals it probably never would have happened. Is it a service fulfilling a need (or want)? How many people spend hours daily looking at cat videos for free; the interest is definitely there. Look at the burgeoning of cat cafes. And surely I'm not the only person who knows a cat with their own Facebook page?  

Melbourne's first cat cafe

Digital media’s accessibility and global reach allows people who do not have access to vast amounts of start up funds to build up a business without mega capital investment, in this case providing the content of the business itself, but also allowing marketing relatively cheaply.

William Merrin’s article, Media Studies 2.0: upgrading and open-sourcing the discipline, points to the vast complexity of the worlds that the interconnectedness of digital media allows. I think any aspersions he is casting are aimed firmly at his colleagues in academia, some of whom refuse to give up their hegemony on the bridge of media studies even as the boat is being tipped on its head.  

What is intimidating is the breadth of the subject with which we have yet to come to grips. If Media Studies 2.0 is ‘recognising, confronting and exploring’ the changes brought about by thriving digital technology, then perhaps we need to just get on with bridging the digital divide and get to Media Studies 3.0 where we know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Merrin’s explanation of the mass communication era broadcast media model (one-to-many) being replaced by a horizontal, peer-to-peer, bottom-up model rings true.  

I really like the way Merrin acknowledges that media studies needs to open its arms much wider to encompass pretty much all other disciplines such as theology, engineering, science, social theory.  Its not just about the twentieth century mass communication industry business model.

The loss of ‘common culture’ is noticeable to me; I can see it in my own family where each of us is a  PRODUSER of ‘very different personal and peer-centred content’. 

I also feel the pull of and see sense in the new paradigm of ‘collective intelligence’. And this seems to be the direction Merrin sees us heading. Good. Sign me up.

And get this lazy cat off my desk. He needs to be out and about earning a living like the rest of us.

Change of focus - new media

I'm still globalised me. In fact, more than ever, but for the next three months I'm going to use this blogspace to comment and reflect on topics covered in my current Deakin university subject, ALC201 New Media: Users, Settings, Implications.

Twitter

Shorter, more timely and frequent reflections will be posted on my Twitter account with the hash tag #ALC201, which all participating students and tutors will see.

All my online presences are collated in my about.me page. One of the aims of my participation in this unit, which only crystallised in my mind yesterday at the first seminar, is to bring together all my online 'personas' to present a united, yet complex, version of me.

About.me

I've been on Facebook for 5 years, and have gradually added other forms of social media for different purposes.

Facebook really was primarily for staying in contact (and reconnecting with) family and friends in far away places.  It is my most private profile. I joined Twitter early 2012, but did not easily get to grips with it. Part of this current unit of study will push me to use Twitter more, and understand it better.

Wordpress

Tumblr

In the last 12-18 months I have opened Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr pages to showcase various other uni-based participation, with variously an art, design, academic or writing focus.

So, for ALC201 writings, only look at anything from this date forward.