Online Identites- Media and Communications Blog Post

       Online identities can be seen to a degree, as an extension of our ‘real-life’ or ‘offline’ personalities. No longer are computers exclusively utilised for information storage and telephones for calling (Hills, 2009), these devices can now be seen as a way of creating and sustaining connections. They are also often utilised to a significant extent as a way of establishing a sense of character and personality.  In particular, online platforms allow us to choose how we want to be viewed by specific people in specified contexts. 

Personally the modes of social networking I use the most are Facebook and Instagram.  Not only do I use them for talking to friends but as a performer, they have become a fast and effective mode of advertising and gathering interest around a show through the uploading of images. Within the study of media, there is often a lot of controversy that surrounds the uploading of images to the Internet. This can be examined for a multitude of reasons however, particular emphasis can be placed on the issue of which specific images we choose to upload and who we choose to view these images. It is important for us as media theorists to question what we put on the Internet, why we put it there and what we think these ‘uploads’ say about our online and offline personas. As well as this, it is important for us as individuals to question whether our online and offline personas are one in the same, interchangeable or completely separate from one another.

      This is my current Facebook profile picture. I specifically chose this image because it is not a photo I have taken myself but somebody else’s interpretation of what I look like. I love it because it is everything I aim to look like, the red lipstick, the 1950’s glasses and the long hair. Yet it is not an actual image of how I look in an ‘offline’ sense. In relation to this, I do not have a ‘virtual identity’ by which I have created an avatar through whom I live vicariously so I cannot say how that feels.  However, I do have an online identity that I see as an ‘ideal’ version of myself. This is discussed to a significant extent in Subrahmanyam and Smahel’s (2011) text exploring the role of media in youth development. As stated in the text, an online identity can be thought of as a ‘cluster of digital data’ (p.62). I can personally relate to this because to me, my online persona is a self-monitored compilation of email addresses, images and words that specific people (that I have chosen) can interact with. As Chalkney (2013) refers to, many of us ‘manage’ our online identities. Through a management and monitored viewpoint we as individuals have the opportunity to make a personal distinction between our online and offline personas. 

Chalkley, T 2013, Teen identity in the digital age: who exactly is “me” now days?‟, conference paper presented at Transformational Communication and the New Asia, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Hills, M 2009, Case study: social networking and self-identity‘, in Creeber, G and Martin, R (eds.), Digital Cultures: Understanding New Media, Open University Press, Maidenhead, pp. 117-21 

Subrahmanyam, K & Smahel, D 2011, Digital Youth: The Role of Media in Development. Springer, New York, London.

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Kimbra

A goddess!

So, i don't think i have written in about 5 months, but hey, whose counting?

This is the drawing my friends gave me for my eighteenth, ain't it just fabulously amazing!
A credit to Courtney Brims.
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Ciao all x

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Happy birthday, you beautiful young woman.

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