DTC 101 – Spring 2013

@cougar_sean

“Media use changes the user” (Coleman) in more and more obvious ways as our access to social media becomes further integrated into our daily lives. TV commercials and products bought in stores all give a shout out to social media and ask that consumers “like” their page on Facebook and/or follow them on Twitter. Many TV personalities and celebrities have public accounts on social networking sites so that fans who just can’t get enough, are able to become “personally” connected in ways beyond the television screen. I place quotations around the word “personally” because the digital world has created a false sense of human contact. As Coleman suggested in her article, an avatar is a “representation [used] to interact in real-time.” With sites like Facebook and Twitter, an ever-growing gap has been created between emotional stimulation and physical contact. More and more, society uses digital interfaces to communicate with one another and in fact prefer to do so because of the platform and sense of security a computer can provide. This kind of psychological bond to electronic devices has caused the development of “hypersocial behavior” and a reduction of face-to-face interaction. Now, society can simply click a few buttons on a screen and talk to their neighbor, or their friend from across the world, instantly. It is that feeling of immediacy that has truly changed the user. Due to the prevalence of social media on mobile digital devices, one can talk to virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. That kind of freedom is what has destroyed our personal human community, yet has created a digital global network.

@KatieGullans

In “What is an Avatar?” by Coleman, she mentioned x-reality. It meant a cross reality of being in two places at once. She also mentioned how in second life, every character had perfect sculpted avatar bodies designed by the person in the way that they wanted them to be.(125) It can relate to facebook or twitter in that you can be any person you want to be there and it doesn’t have to be exactly how you are in real life. You may say things on online sites that you may not say out loud. You can even pretend to be a different person. I created two facebook characters to write a story for my digital storytelling class, telling a story about aliens and centaurs.

Media changes the user because it allows them to do things they couldn’t do in real life. In Sims, you can have them burn the house down and let their ghosts haunt you. But you know that that world isn’t real of course because a thief can’t steal a swimming pool and put it in their pocket. In facebook and twitter, you may interact with real people,(or fake people) but it still seems less of a real world than seeing someone in person. Some people may even be easier to talk with online because they have the time to think about what to say. Maybe it seems not as real because you can more easily walk away from the computer whenever you want to. Maybe these words are easier to say here because I can write them and leave this internet world. But I can’t give a presentation and just disappear.

Everyone knows that you usually can’t trust people on the internet to be who they say they are. There are many stereotypes. For example, there are the people on dating sites that pretend to be 20 years younger and several times more attractive than they actually are. Another example are social network sites. As many businesses have begun to check Facebook pages to appraise potential employees, people are encouraged to maintain both a casual page, for friends and family, and a social page, in which they present a respectable face. This has led to people creating two different personalities: a wild party animal paired with a calm , upstanding young man. The internet encourages Albert Bandura’s model of agency, which states, “people’s belief about their capabilities to exercise control over events that affect their lives” (pg.136). This applies to the internet, in that total anonymity allows them to form a new identity in which they can gain the good opinion of other people. They often try to be, in the words of Coleman, “cooler than life” (pg. 125).

RachaelS_DTC

Twitter and Facebook are forms of social media that has changed out lives. Beth Coleman and Clay Shirky have made this argument in their work “Hello Avatar.” With Twitter and Facebook the user can create an “online identity” (pg 38) by controlling the images uploaded, items that are liked, and what is said. With this control, the user is an agent of the medium and can be someone who they are not. Agency is how someone understands themselves in environments and how they engage in their environments. Having another identity seems uncanny, but Coleman and Shirky explain this idea as a cross-reality or x-reality. An x-reality is a “representation of a diversity of network combinations” (pg 20). The network is created by the C3 structure; communication, community, and collaboration. An online community is created between users by following them (Twitter) or becoming friends (Facebook). Within the community, members communicate through posts, sharing and likes (Facebook) or hashtags (Twitter). Each member interacts with the other members and collaborates to express their ideas and opinions. Through the C3 structure, Twitter and Facebook has changed the user by having a second identity that is under their control. With this second identity, the user can ‘hide’ from the impact of reality. Someone can be more open with their beliefs and do not have to face direct criticism because posts can be hidden. Also, the user can create an identity that is not themselves by the items that are liked, hashtaged, or posted.