Laying Down the Mask: Are We who We Claim to be Online?

That is the million-dollar question and one, which I don’t believe has a clear cut answer.

I chose the third option for Project 2 because the ontology of online personae has interested me for a while now. Although historically there has been a sense of anonymity with online accounts that produced a sense of social disinhibition, this paradigm has shifted in a new direction. The disposable nature of online accounts has faded, replaced with permanence, where your online persona represents who you are as much as your actions in the real world do.

Donovan and Nigel’s blog entries reflect my opinion on the shift online personae have taken towards permanence. Barber asserts that the tendencies of McWorld contribute to the porousness of national borders. To me this is analogous to the change that online identity has experienced in representing who a person actually is, where effects of online identity have bleed over into the real world. Employees have been fired, and students disciplined, over their activities on social media

Donovan’s blog details a very mature approach to the establishment of his online identity. His path seems to live in the realm of Rheingold’s discussion of online tribes although he frames his blog post arguing against the statements of Turkle. It appears that Donovan also created his accounts for maintaining and developing relationships with others instead of trivial reasons.

Nigel details the evolution of his online identity on his blog post. I believe his experience closely matches that of many individuals. With the relative infancy of online accounts, few foresaw the possibilities and future of those accounts. Many of us were simply naive about their potential. Nigel details how he grew up with the developing presence of social media personae; moving from Friendster and eventually to Twitter and Facebook. Nigel’s growth in expressing himself was settling in during his LiveJournal experience where he is quoted as saying, “I was learning how to effectively communicate using a digital medium.” It seems that Nigel began to see little difference in constructing a digital identity and the expression of who he actually was.

Nigel’s blog entry discusses the customization options on MySpace, but the inclusion of different colors, songs and animated gifs were of questionable benefit in fully expressing that persona in Nigel’s estimation. I believe that those design elements should work in conjunction with the other textual elements in expressing and identifying the persona.

Donovan’s initial experiences covered several different topics ranging from race, capitalism and God with others online. It’s safe to assume that the personality of those individuals were revealed through their discourse and whatever text they may have used.  The presentation of online personae has changed over the years. Now individuals have commercial avenues such as Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, blogs and e-portfolios to express themselves. The customization options are endless and the presentation of online personae has become more sophisticated.

Formerly there was less significance on identifying who you were by your actual name, which typically saw accounts created with made up nicknames. This situation made it hard to locate your friends unless you had their actual account name. Rheingold touches upon this when he discusses the sanctity of nicknames on IRC in chapter six of his book The Virtual Community. There is no reliability in knowing who the person on the other end of the computer screen actually is. Rheingold believes there should be some reliability behind the fact that the person using the account/nickname is the same person, day to day, when he states,

Violating the sanctity of nicknames is a taboo because it attacks one of the fundamental forces that holds the IRC culture together–a minimum certainty about the identity of all participants in discourse. According to Reid, “The uniqueness of names, their consistent use, and respect for–and expectation of–their integrity, is crucial to the development of online communities.”

Attempting a search on Facebook for Nigel Higdon, will locate exactly who you’re looking for. It appears that the one-time standard of anonymity has shifted; now the majority of people have their account and actual name one and the same, and someone assuming control of an account is equivalent to identity theft. There have been instances where individuals have had their accounts banned on Facebook when they have the same name as celebrities, because the company feared that people were co-opting the identities for fraudulent use. Does the identity of the account holder lie in the name or the actual use of the account? On the other hand, does it lie in both?

You can still create an online account with a made up nickname, foregoing your actually identity, but there’s less penchant for this today. Little occurs online with complete anonymity. If anything, people clamor for having their actions known, and accumulating followers on services like Twitter and Facebook.

In the past, there was little to the establishment of an online persona other than creating an account at one of the established websites. This appears to have contributed to the expendable nature of these accounts, which Nigel experienced with the purging of his Friendster account. Potentially losing a Facebook account would typically be an upsetting experience as years of information, and photos could be lost. In addition, not having an online presence is often times met with incredulity. The online persona is a reflection of your offline one; in many instances, it has become just as significant.

A reflection on the Presidential debate

Since I previously posted on the field trip WRT232 took on Columbus Day 2012, I decided to reflect on the blog post from the class, in regards to the first Presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Mr. Mitt Romney.

I am not new to Twitter, but it was something I used infrequently to communicate. Since class has started, I’ve sent out roughly a quarter of my total tweets. I looked at the platform more as a tool for following celebrities than anything else. When given the option to live tweet during the debate, I figured I would try it. The problem I had with live tweeting was properly dividing my attention to tweeting with focusing on the debate. There were several times when I tried to send out a tweet and I missed what the candidates were currently saying. It wasn’t a lot of the substantive that I missed, but I found it very annoying.

I found Kayla’s blog entry on the debate interesting. Although we had some differences, I understood where she was coming from in the newness of the experience. I also had people I follow on Twitter, tweeting about the debate. It was interesting to read what they noticed, that I saw differently. Kayla was also astute in pointing out what seems to be the main thing remembered about the debate- Romney defunding PBS and Big Bird. This comment has gone viral and we saw Big Bird on Saturday Night Live, the weekend following the debate. I agree with Kayla. It’s ridiculous.

Another blog that I found interesting was Leyandria’s. She professed her bias against Mr. Romney and I felt the same way. My experiences are very similar to hers. My mother spent time on welfare but she never abused the system or sought to stay on it indefinitely. My mother who is a staunch pro-life woman, worked at Planned Parenthood for years. I admire and love my mother so much because of the hard times she overcame raising three boys and earning her bachelors degree and then her masters. Mr. Romney I feel has not regard for someone in certain segments of society. It may not be that Mitt Romney doesn’t care for them, but I believe he’s so ignorant of what it takes for them to just eke out an existence, he may as well be on another planet.

I understood Leyandria’s difficulty in being impartial during the debate, but I tried it anyway. It was good practice for future assignments and possibly career requirements. Hopefully we will have some assignments that allow us to voice an opinion.

The First Presidential Debate 2012

Watching the Presidential Debate this past Wednesday was different for me this year. I am a liberal leaning person and found myself challenged to stay objective and not allow myself to tweet opinionated material, a struggle which @LolliLeyann mentioned.

I did not see anything in the debate that would dissuade me from my particular candidate, but I believe that those who were persuaded may have not listened to the candidates over the last 2 years. Only one of the candidates came out with a new centrist outlook which seemed disingenuous. I was wondering if there was anyway to state how I felt about this while staying objective. Since I didn’t feel comfortable doing that, I never crossed the line.

Listening to the debate while tweeting was extremely difficult for me. When I did start tweeting about something, I continually had people asking me, “Did you hear what he said?” No. No I didn’t. I was tweeting. And then I had to ask them, “What did he say?” It was one of those times that you realize that the ability to rewind television with a DVR/PVR has changed the way we watch and listen to television. With the availability of material like the debate online in its entirety at several different websites, it’s not that big of a deal to watch it again; however, it does change the experience because your focus is elsewhere. Tweeting the debate may have been a little more difficult because this was my first time tweeting an important event like this.

What’s funny is that I was able to read some of the tweets sent out from my classmates in WRT 232 and see what was discussed. Those snippets did help, along with the other people I follow on Twitter; however, they did not always adhere to the guidelines in our WRT232 class despite being journalists. For class were were told to mark our tweets with #wrt232 for the debate. If we could not be objective in our tweets we were told to leave off the hashtag. Few of us took that avenue.

The debates from a rhetorical standpoint produced no clear winner to me; however, I can see why some believe Romney won on delivery because of his forcefulness in delivering some of his message. His delivery was a complete turn-off for me. His convictions seem fluid depending on what he believes will get him elected. Both candidates used some pivots and went over the allotted time several times. The moderator had very little control over the two candidates. Many tweets went out feeling sorry for Jim Lehrer.

I’m not sure, but were these blog entries supposed to be neutral like our tweets about the debate? I hope not.