Just Like Me Only Better

Just Like Me Only Better was an interesting article to say the least.  I learned about Second Life, which I had never heard of before and also some history behind the term 'avatar'.  Avatar is a word in today's world that is fairly common.  There are internet and video game avatars and when I first heard this word, I just accepted it for what it meant and never thought about its' origin.  This article stated that the word 'avatar' came from Sanskrit and it was used to describe gods when they visited the world in mortal form.  Today, "the avatar is a form of social representation of the self" (p. 1).  It was nice to learn about where this word originally came from.  It definitely surprised me.

The whole Second Life idea was very interesting to me and the whole time I was reading about it, I kept thinking about the movie, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis.  In this movie, people live life through their 'surrogate selves' or avatars while their actual bodies are controlling what's going on from a 'stem chair'.  Although the Second Life idea isn't quite as advanced, it has the same premise behind it as people get to choose how other people get to them.  It's amazing to me that so many people would get into creating an avatar.  It is something that I have definitely overlooked.  The results of the study also shocked me, as Western media beauty standards were the most dominant.  Many people want this perceived look of perfection that we have all come to know from the Western media.  I was just surprised that so many different nationalities also saw this as the most "desirable" way to look. 

Overall, this article was enlightening.  I learned a lot of new information that I was completely unaware of.

Uses and Gratifications Post

Explaining Why Young Adults Use MySpace and Facebook Through Uses and Gratifications Theory was a very helpful article in explaining why young adults use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.  Early in the article, the text stated that "in her study, Ray demonstrated that SNS satisfy a variety of needs in one central location, thus making it a popular destination for many Internet users" (p. 219).  Before even reading the article, I tried to answer the question myself of why I use social networking sites and pretty much came to the same conclusion.  Convenience is a big reason why I tend to use SNS.  This is also supported in the article after 50 undergraduates participated in a focus group and it was reported that the main results showed that these young adults use SNS because of "1. efficient communication, 2. convenient communication, 3. curiosity about others, 4. popularity, and 5. relationship formation and reinforcement" (p. 221).  SNS are used to satisfy young adults wants and needs.  For me personally, Facebook has become a part of my life.  I care about updating my profile and use it to communicate with a lot of my friends.  Thinking back to my early high school years, most of the communication I do now through Facebook was done face to face or over the telephone.  It's pretty amazing to read about the statistics that show how fast sites like MySpace and Facebook have grown and how popular they have become in such a short time.

Although SNS are fast growing and make life easier in a lot of different ways, I still think conventional face to face communication is necessary.  It's easy to find the information that you're looking for on these sites but at times, I feel people are taking the easy and lazy way out.  I feel like a lot of today's young adults would be lost if these popular sites shut down.  This is why I tend to not rely on SNS as much as some people do.  This article was very interesting and confirmed a lot of my beliefs as to why people use SNS.

Community Media Post

The article Community Media proved to be very relevant to class material.  The part on self-expression caught my attention as it talked about new technologies opening the door to more media population.  Although this article seems a little outdated, you can still see the upward trend in media participation amongst civilians.  With this new technology, there has been a "greater acceptance of the fact that people can, do , produce media outside of professional contexts" (187).  The article reported that in 2003, 44% of internet users created some kind of online content, even though most of them were using a dial-up modem internet connection.  This blew my mind and you have to think that with broadband and cable, this percentage has skyrocketed.  In today's world, people use blogs, video chats and podcasts to connect with people that have similar views or interests.  Self-expression is important and this article has shown me a lot about the recent past and made me think more about the future.  It has shown me that the gap between professional and public outlets of media has shortened because of what technology allows the average person to do.

Another part of the article that was interesting to me was the part on Democracy, Governance, and the Media.  This part of the article talks about the media's huge role in democracy and the two views that people have on it.  The article states that "some believe democracy would not exist at all without the contemporary media as it promotes freedom, civic virtue, and individual rights.  For other, the media itself is undemocratic-controlled by a small number of elites who determine what information is available and how it is disseminated" (190).  I believe both sides have a point and thought this was a creative way to divide the media's importance in democracy.  Like the article says, "people understand the nation and the related configurations that tie us together" (190).  This is why people need to receive all the information, not just what the "elites" feel is important.  Regardless of what side your on, this article was very entertaining. 

Dialogue and the Social Self

Chapter two was interesting on many fronts as we got to hear a number of different philosophies on pragmatist view on the self.  It was helpful to read and get different perspectives on such a topic.  The most interesting part of the chapter to me was the part that talked about G. H. Mead and his ideas about the social self.  The book best sums up Mead’s perspective by stating, “Mead’s central concern, therefore, was the relationship between the activity of the social group and the formation of the individual self, and, more specifically, the role of the tools that humans have invented in evolution and social history-such as symbols, signs and language which mediate and direct their joint activities, and form self-identities” (p. 37).  Mead was big on symbols and used an example about boxers being able to counter punch each other based on body language and gestures.  He believed that self-conscious emerged from social activities and such ideas were different than what had been previously written on the topic. 

Mead thought that we can get a “sense of the self only as we become social objects to other people, as we become ‘mes’”(p. 38).  Facebook and other social media outlets help make us social objects.  People are able to get a view into our lives and see what is going on.  To counter that, we can see how people interpret us and get our own understanding on the self.  This was a fun chapter.

Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior

I really enjoyed reading Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior: The Case of Facebook by Adam Acar.  I liked how the article was setup with some background information about the different social networks and how popular each one was at the time this article was written.  I also liked how Acar defined the different factors he would be looking at such as anxiety, self-esteem, body image, extroversion, and gender.  I thought Acar asked the right questions when there wasn't a consistent view on a certain area and I agreed with all of his hypothesis that he made throughout the experiment.

As the initial goal of the experiment was to compare online social networks to real social networks in terms of size, I knew that the online social network would be bigger in the end.   The text states, real social networks include "family members, relatives, neighbors and colleagues as well as friends" (Acar 77), while online includes all of these but also people that are acquaintances and strangers.  I wasn't surprised to see the result that Facebook had one and a half times the number more than a real social network.  I looked at my own Facebook and most of the hypothesis were spot on as girls typically had more friends than guys and that people with low self-esteem had more strangers as "friends" on their profile.  Overall, this article was helpful in looking at social networks in a different light in regards to how the different factors listed above effect a person's profile.  Although Acar had a small sample size, his work was influential because it seems to be some of the first on this topic.