Blogging: Self-Representation and Privacy

This article is actually very relevant to my research topic: social media and privacy. Blogging in particular is an interesting activity because on one hand, many people enjoy expressing their innermost thoughts and daily activities, but on the other hand, they desire a certain degree of privacy and know they need to be careful about what they share. McCullagh discusses that privacy is a complex idea; different people have varying definitions. She describes some of the privacy-related concerns of bloggers, and one survey question was about how well the bloggers felt they knew their audience. About 8% new their audience very well, 23% very well, and 32% quite well (9). Bloggers need to keep in mind that if special restrictions are not activated, anyone in the public can read their blog posts, and that once those posts are out in the open, anyone has the power to archive that or even distribute it elsewhere. Quite of these blogs are meant to be online journals, and many choose to write under pseudonyms and limit the clues that unwanted readers could use to tie their real-life identities with their online ones.

Virtual Death

The Kaycee/Debbie dilemma is certainly an interesting one. I had not heard of this particular case before, but I have heard of similar ones where a person decieves many others into believing that they are terminally ill, and worse, take advantage of donations from generous people. The Kaycee case brings up some compelling questions about online identity and community. Debbie's deception brought many people together in the concern for Kaycee, but her lies hurt these trusting and compassionate people once the real truth was revealed. And the revelation didn't just heart individual bloggers who sympathized with Kaycee; it profoundly effected people's notions of what to expect in online communities as a whole.

Before the truth was let out, some people who heard of Kaycee were skeptics. They looked for evidence to prove that Kaycee wasn't really who she said she was, and looked for things such as photos and other posts to prove their belief. Of the others that did believe Kaycee was genuine, some admonished these skeptics for being excessively cynical and "cheapening" Kaycee's experience and suffering. After Debbie's confession, online communities had to reevaluate themselves. With online identities, it is much easier to become someone you actually aren't. How much of what we see on these online forums and blogs should be taken to heart, and how much should be taken with a grain of salt? How much trust should be have in other online community members...how much is necessary to keep the community a community, and how much skepticism is needed so that similar situations don't happen again?

The perspectives given in this article were very thought-provoking and is certainly still relevant today. Unfortunately, some people do still try to pretend to be other people and take advantage of the compassion of others, only to turn around and say, "Haha, how gullible were they?!"

The End of Books

I am sad to think of the end of books and print-based media so this article was interesting to me. I, for one, just love physical books because it feels like you have something substantial, something you can touch and smell. There's a nostalgia I attach to printed books. When I try to read an e-book on my laptop, it feels less personal (and it's much easier to get sidetracked!)

Coover discusses some of the pros and cons of hypertext. I had never heard of this term used for online text or books, but then I saw the article was written in 1992 so that's probably why. He discusses that hypertext easily escapes the linear structure that printed novels are basically stuck with. This can be a benefit, allowing the reader to explore links within the text and choose their own options rather than following a structure that someone else pre-determines for you. However, there's a downside to this; that people may not know where to go next–that the lack of structure makes it difficult to navigate. I think these are all very valid observations and concerns.

Personal Dynamic Media

It was very interesting to read this article since it was published in 1977. Many of the concepts and tools included in the Dynabook were precursors to standard/popular applications for laptops, tablets, and smartphones of today. One statement that made me think was the worry that the Dynabook and future devices, might "collapse under the weight of trying to be too many different tools for too many people" (403-404). Concerns about storing all that data and maintaining fast processing speeds were a much larger problem then than they are now. Modern laptops and tablets have dozen of apps and programs to use, and I think most of us don't worry about having too many. And there are so many out there now ("there's an app for that!")–sophisticated tools for audio editing, such as Audacity, or drawing programs such as MS Paint, and Flash for animation. And all of these can run on the average laptop. We've come a long way from Dynabook.


There was another interesting idea in the reading, that "the computer, when viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and the viewing are sufficiently well provided" (393-394). I think this is becoming more and more true. Think of email; that can be analogous to snail mail, but now it's instantaneous.  Music: before we only created music through tangible instruments that depended on strings, valves, mallets, sticks, our voices. But with computers came the birth of electronic music, bringing forth new sounds like smooth synths and deep bass drops.  Even in the visual art world, digital media is becoming more and more relevant. Painters and illustrators are no longer restricted to pencils, inks, and pigments; many of them draw using digital drawing tablets in programs such as Corel Painter, and their work comes out just as awesome as traditional media. All this is pretty amazing when you think about how people come up with new and different forms of media.

Second Life

I thought this article was VERY interesting indeed. The researchers’ experiences in Second Life share some similarities with the Half Life study we read earlier. One of those similar observations was how people design their avatars. Female avatars were typically characterized by large breasts, small waists, and long hair, mirroring the real-life ideals of the female body. Male avatars often had large, muscular upper bodies. What I found fascinating was how self-conscious the researcher’s felt when they designed their avatars in less idealized ways, i.e. as an androgynous female, rather than what everyone else was doing. I would think that the ability to customize characters would bring more variety in the game, but I guess people are just too exposed to the same bodily ideas, and cannot help be influenced by them.

I also thought it was interesting to hear the researcher's fears when they first started playing. For example, that other Second Life players might only be interacting with them because of ulterior, sexual motives, and that choosing a male avatar felt safer than a female one. It was strange to hear how sexualized some of the actions and scripts were for the players, and how blatantly things like naked female and male body parts were displayed within the game for people to purchase. I found some of the experiences of the researchers rather amusing, but I can understand how shocking it could feel to be a total beginner in the game, and then suddenly having your character take shower in unexpectedly inappropriate way. I also thought it was fascinating to see how in some areas, scripts would make the female characters carry themselves in a clingy, sort of vulnerable way, while the make avatars would be acting laid back and “cool.” There seemed like a lot of examples of sexualization and gender stereotyping, and it is interesting to see how normal it became for the researchers as they continued to play.

The Technology and the Society

In the Technology and the Society reading, Raymond Williams discusses different ways to think about how technology has affected our lives. He talks about how everyone says and agrees that new technologies have brought about very significant changes in our world, yet that thought is much more profound than we realize. When I think about all the technological progress humanity has experienced, I am pretty amazed. Just think about how the telegraph, then the phone, and later radio and television must have revolutionized communication. It went from slow snail-mail. Then long distance communication became fast, faster, and here we are: we’ve got the internet and send messages to people across the world, practically instantaneously and with little hassle.

Another thing I thought was interesting in William’s essay was the theory of technological determinism. The main idea behind this theory is that it’s technology that “made modern man and the modern condition.” I have never thought of technology that way; I think most of the time we think the other way around, that man is modern because he made that technology. But I can see how man develops some new technology, and that new technology takes off in ways bigger than he expected, thus causing a significant impact on life as we know it.  For example, again, the internet!

Computer Power and Human Reason

I thought that some of the insights and reactions to the ELIZA program were quite surprising and thought-provoking. For one thing, the thought of a computer program interacting with the a person as a therapist is something I've never heard of. I know of chat bots that people chat with now, so I think it is very interesting to learn about one that has a further purpose than just amusement. I can see how ELIZA can be a therapeutic tool to guide thoughts in self-reflection, but I was very surprised to hear that some thought that the ELIZA program could replace the need for a human therapist. Personally, it seems like a computer program would inevitably have its limits, and therefore might not process and respond appropriately to a patient's complex problem. I believe Joseph Weizenbaum never expected or intended his program to be a full-in replacement for a professionally-trained therapist.

Weizenbaum also mentioned the dilemma of Michael Polayni in 1935, when Polayni was told by a Russian communist theoretician that under socialism, the pursuit of science for its own sake would be put to an end and instead, and focus on solving the economic problems of the 5 Year Plan. Polayni realized the profoundness of this notion, because it seemed to prescribe a "mechanical conception of man or history." I thought this was a powerful thought. One thing that separates humans form machines or programs is our creativity. We have a desire to push boundaries, pursue creative ideas, the ponder and solve the problems we are interested in. We are flexible in our minds and behaviors. In terms of science, one of the beauties of it is that we always want to expand our human understanding of things. It would be kind of ridiculous to impose limits to scientific pursuit and to expect scientists to be ok with only solving the problems they are told to solve. It kind of ruins the beauty of scientific pursuit.

On the other hand, and another thing I thought was interesting, was Weizenbaum's observation of some people's blind belief of science. He wrote that "scientific statements are never certain, they are only more or less credible." I agree with that too. It's not uncommon for scientific findings to contradict with other findings. Things get disproven, and there are exceptions to even the most well known theories that most people have accepted as scientific fact. So Weizenbaum reminds us that we need to keep our minds open.

Community Media

In the reading, we see that there is an important connection between community media and self-representation. I do not think I have heard of the term "community media" until I read this, so it was interesting to see why the author thought it was so important and how community media could play into politics and help overcome civic apathy. Some of the pros for furthering community media include ensuring the "public's right to controlled communication resources", "encouraging free speech" and allowing diversity of perspectives (186). Community media can be one channel that represents what the individual and their community wants–their "self-expression," a way for them to  participate (187). I think the ability to voice concerns about what people really need and the policies they agree and disagree with is very important. Later the article mentions that increasing numbers of people feel that their voices do not matter and they have very little say about how the government is run, so I see how community media might turn this around. One quote that I thought was very poignant was this: "[A]lternative media spin transformation processes that alter people's sense of self, their subjective positionings, and therefore their access to power" (188).  It's pretty amazing to think about just how empowering it feels to communicate your thoughts and ideas.

Just Like Me Only Better

This study about the connection between the appearance of online avatars and the creators' real appearance was pretty intriguing. I have never played Half Life, but I've heard of it and know that there are plenty of online games/communities that allow you to customize your character as you wish. I thought it was interesting to see that many avatars looked somewhat similar and leaned towards Caucasian aesthetics of beauty even if their creators were inhabitants of other countries or cultures. I would have thought that with so many options, people would want get a little wild with their character's appearance and have few boundaries, but this study shows that people tended to go for humanoid avatars that had similar features to themselves. And yet, many opted to create idealized versions of themselves, with larger breasts for females or larger muscles for men. I also think it is interesting that Half Life players recreate other things from their real lives, such as buildings and even following some of "real life's" social norms (i.e. the example of no sex in public places.)

As a side note, a digital media art professor here at SJSU once showed my art class some of his  projects, and some of them involved online gaming communities such as Half Life and World of Warcraft. Thinking back, his avatar did look similar to how he did in reality (bald and wearing all black.) He built a gallery in Half Life, asked other people online to contribute art, and held an art gallery for people to come in and see, all within Half Life. He did other things, and I thought it was very cool that this sort of thing you see in reality could be translated into the online gaming experiences.

Uses and Gratifications

There are some nice insights in this study. I like that they used the focus group method because it allows users of social media to really talk about their experiences and motivations behind all their Facebooking and Myspace-ing. The people in the study groups enjoyed the ease and instant-gratification of using these social media sites to keep in touch and connect with family and friends. Also echoed in this study and our Burkitt reading was the power to construct your own online identity, which could be done by selecting what your interests and hobbies are and also by who you friend on the sites. I think it's interesting that we can safely present ourselves in the way, that we can "efficient way to tailor one’s appearance from the comfort of [our own] home[s]" (226). I was a bit intrigued by the bit about "scene kids" bit, especially because it seemed to come out of nowhere in the study (I do remember them being a thing back in high school though.) Another interesting point in the article was that is was very common for people to kind of snoop around other people's Facebook or Myspace pages, yet most people did not feel comfortable being snooped on themselves.

Online Social Networking Behavior: The Case of Facebook

This is the first study I have read that really tries to break down and analyze people’s social behavior on Facebook, and I thought it has some very revealing information. It takes into consideration some important factors such as introversion vs. extroversion, gender, and self-esteem. On the topic of gender in online social networks, I am not really surprised that females have larger numbers of friends on their social networks; I am generalizing here, but I do see a lot of females that have a large network of friends in their face-to-face interactions, and to me it always seems that they are expected to be “chattier” than males for some reason. So I can see how that can spread into their online interactions. However, I did think it was interesting that “although women are expected to be more protective and selective in online communication atmospheres,” they were more likely to accept friend requests from people they many not know very well (78).

Another interesting point of this study was the connection between self-esteem and the amount of strangers in one’s online network of friends. People with a high level of self-esteem were more selective about who they "friended" than people with low self-esteem. It seems that people were are more self-conscious of themselves are willing to take chances that this stranger could be a nice online friend, while a person with high-self esteem might think, “Eh, I don’t know this person and I don’t think I’ll ever talk to them.”  

The Medium is the Message

McLuhan certainly approaches media in a way I haven't quite thought about. Is the medium more important than message it carries? Personally, I don't agree with McLuhan, but I do think he brings up some clever examples to support his belief. His analogy of light as a medium that carries no content in its pure form, but that it can be manipulated into signs and advertisements and THEN have content, was very interesting. McLuhan explains that different formats of media have their own character, and that it is "the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action" (203). I do agree with that point; there is a different sort of "personality" or legitimacy of information depending on how it is presented. For example, people would probably trust news they read in a printed newspaper article more than they would something posted from a person's Twitter account. 

And I can see how media has definitely changed the speed and scale at which communication happens, what with so many TV shows, ads, radio channels, and social media outlets, information  can spreads quite fast. McLuhan goes on to describe all this “electric media” as an “inundation” (206). That I can agree with. However, I just do not really believe that the medium is more important than the content. I mostly see the medium as a tool to spread the content, but the content is still the main object.

Social Selves, Ch. 2

From chapter 2 of the Burkitt text, I learned that there are many ideas as to what forms our own identities as “social selves.” Most people believe that although each of us is unique as individuals, we are to some extent products of the environment we live and interact in. One of the schools of thoughts that Burkitt discusses here is the pragmatists. He says that Pragmatism was born as a way for people to “cope in an increasingly modernizing capitalist society where older customs and communities were disappearing” (32). I thought it was interesting to think of a school of thought developing as a coping mechanism in a changing world, which at first sounded pretty depressing to me. But once Burkitt explained that Pragmatism also teaches people to actively change the world as they want it to be, that ideas are “tools” for us to use and produce that change, then that sounded better. In the context of social media, I can see a lot of ways people interact that tie in with Pragmatism thinking. Social media has increasingly been a way for people to reach out to others, and many people use outlets such as Facebook and Twitter as a way to call for action. These needs can be anything from drawing attention to an important social cause such as raising money for underprivileged kids, or to marketing and hyping up a new product for consumers to buy.

Man-Computer Symbiosis

Licklider examines the growing connection between man and technology from a very unique perspective. I agree that he was ahead of his times in these ideas (1960, wow!) First of all, I thought it was strange to think of a future relationship between people and their machines as a symbiosis. When I think of symbiosis, I think of it in a biological context, something that co-evolves with the other for a long time. But then again, that is what we seem to be heading towards. Now more than ever, technology is rapidly improving to be faster and more intuitive. People are being more and more reliant on their devices in their daily lives (smartphones to check their emails, gps when you get lost, keeping your schedules on your phone, etc.)

The concept of being so intertwined with machines that they’ll help us think faster and solve problems more quickly sounds exciting. In some ways, I think it’s a little creepy too. Just how smart and human-like can our computers get? How close and dependent do you think we’ll get? I started wondering if technological progress will get to the point where people will want to start implanting devices into their brains so that they will have a higher than average speed/knowledge base to tap into. Wouldn’t everyone want to think faster and know more, and then other people might feel the need to keep up? Maybe that’s just weird crazy sci-fi talk, but who knows?

I thought that Licklider’s point about the disconnect between human and computer language was interesting also. There is such a vast difference. You basically tell what the computer to do, but you usually have to do it in a specific way for it to understand. If we could make our machines respond and understand us in a more human-like way, that would using them easier. Today there are some good examples of a more human-like thinking in our devices, such personal assistants like Siri on the iPhone. Also, did any of you watch the Jeopardy match between IBM’s supercomputer Watson vs. two other top Jeopardy (human) contestants last year? I thought that was really cool, considering how the computer had to properly interpret the questions (which had to be fed electronically,) search in its own database, come up with possible answers, and then respond. The mistakes he made were funny but you can see how Watson’s less “organic” way of thinking could lead to this. For example, in one category (“Olympic Oddities”), the question was this: “This anatomical oddity of U.S. gymnast George Eyser, who won a gold medal on the parallel bars in in 1904.” Watson answered, “What is leg?”, but got it wrong because he should have said, “What is a missing leg.” A leg is not an oddity, Watson, but missing one is! So close though!

Quality of Online Social Relationships

I think that this study was a good attempt to examine the quality of online social relationships compared to face-to-face relationships. I am not surprised with the result that face-to-face relationships were considered stronger than those mostly based on online interaction. Online communication, to me, always feels a bit detached and less direct.  It's harder to connect because you can't always see what the other person's personality is like, what they're tone sounds like, or what they're expressions are like. There is usually less emotion in the online communication, and in my opinion, less of an obligation to keep up with the relationship.  

I also think it was interesting to think about whether all this online communication hurt or helped existing face-to-face relationships. The study discussed how the effect of online social communication would differ depending on how often you see the friend face-to-face.  I see how online communication can strengthen a good friendship if you are able to to meet with the other person at least occasionally. I do think that relying too much on online communication, especially if you shy away from face-to-face interaction, can have a detrimental effect on one’s social relationships. If you have trouble interacting in-person, then you’re probably more likely to go to online communities, although the online relationships probably won’t seem as “high in quality” as if you were truly interacting face-to-face. But times are changing, and with the popularity of online dating these days, more and more online relationships have developed into "real-life" ones!

Introductory Post

Hi everyone!

I'm SeaPotatoes and I am a fourth year student at SJSU. My major is graphic design, but my major used to be biochemistry before I changed paths and transferred here two semesters ago. Although graphic design is all about visual communication, I do not have much other communications experience other than one public speaking course I took about two years ago. My personal interests include art, design, and science. I really enjoy drawing, riding my bike and hiking. I love learning about the natural world. (My alias name, SeaPotatoes was thought up randomly because I think potatoes is a funny word and I think marine biology is cool. It turns out there is a such thing as a sea potato–it's a type of sea urchin!)

I hope to learn a lot about social media, such as RSS feeds, blogging, and whatever else people are using to connect with each other.  I feel a bit behind. I have a Facebook, but then there are so many other things like Pinterest and Twitter that I never quite got in to. So this class should be interesting!

-SeaPotatoes