How To Create A Facebook Page And Computer Mediated Communication - Research Paper Example

?How to create a Facebook page and computer mediated communication General of Page Created As the implies, a computer mediated communication is a form of communication that takes place with the assistance of a computer as a mediator. By mediator, reference is being made to the fact that the conveying of the communicative messages is carried along by the aid of a technology backed system such as a computer (Tong, 2008). In most cases therefore, there should be two or more computers involved. The current page that was created was created based on the idea of computer mediated communication. Specifically, it was a Facebook Page. It would be noted from the presentation and the programming of the page that the Facebook Page makes the exchange of as many forms of messages as possible. These include text messages, video messages, audio messages and still graphics messages. The commonest form of messaging that takes place is however the use of text and pictures (still graphics). Through the Facebook Page, other online users of Facebook can be reached and communicated to. Those users must however accept the invitation of the host to communicate. In most cases, a friend request is sent to a person with whom the host wants to communicate. The invitee then accepts the friend request if he or she knows the host or is interested in the friendship. Once the acceptance is done, there can be inbox messaging, text chatting and video chatting between the two parties. Once a while, a user of Facebook can also post a message that can be viewed by all friends even if the message posted at a time those friends were offline. Overview of Specific Concepts that were utilized in the Page Creation Identity construction All people have identities in the very usual world in which we live in. once you meet a person, it is easier to identify the person by the kind of clothes, hair colour, facial shape and other things like that. In the same way, Estoisia et al (2009) note that computer mediated communication such as Facebook, “people are likewise identified by language in what they write, and how they choose to visually display themselves.” Identity construction therefore refers to the kind of identified image that a person gives to him or herself on the social network. Self disclosure Again as a characteristic of communication, it is virtually impossible to know everything about a person after just one encounter of communication. The ability to know more about a person therefore happens at a gradual pace and with time (Walther et al., 2008). The same is true with computer mediated communication whereby the disclosure that a person gives to him or herself on the Facebook Page created will happen on a gradual basis. As a matter of fact, one must follower a specific user for quite a long time to really come to terms with who that fellow truly is. Self Deception Social networks actually serve as platforms for which people create positive identities of themselves. For this reason, it often happens that one may deny the obvious positive facts about others so that they would keep a clean and flamboyant mental image about themselves. This indeed is the basis of self deception as Skeptic’s Dictionary (2012) states that “Self-deception, in short, is a way we justify false beliefs about ourselves to ourselves.” Privacy management In computer mediated communication, efforts are made to keep certain parts of a person’s life as private as possible because people who tend to be our friends on Facebook Pages are not necessarily people who really know and can trust. For this reason, it is always important to have privacy management features on the page to sieve the rate of information about a user that goes out to the public. Description of how Specific Concepts were utilized in the Page Creation In the present page that was created, identity construction was utilized in such a way that it would certainly take the host of the page the need to give certain basic information to identify the host as a user before the construction of the page can be complete. An evidence of this is when one is asked to give specific information such as Name, Date of Birth, Sex, Country of Origin, Languages Spoken, Relationship Status, Best Movies, Hobbies and so on before the creation of the page can be complete. In the absence of such information being collected about the page constructor and being displayed on the host’s page, it would be virtually impossible to know the user because there will be no identity constructed. Secondly, self disclosure is massively utilized in the construction of the page in a number of ways that are clearly evident in the presentation. One of such ways is that even though by typing out a person’s name in the search engine, all names of users who bear those names may show up, one is not permitted to have access to certain personal and critical information about the people whose names are displayed until a friend request is sent and the request is accepted by the other party. This means that the disclosure of person’s self is always done on a gradual basis and never at a go. Furthermore, elements of self deception is made possible on the created Facebook Page because there is virtually no authentication process in the use of the medium. For example a person who does not own a car can take a picture standing by a car and post it on the Facebook Page and write “This is my new Car”. Even though this may make the person feel good about him or herself because others will perceive him or her as wealthy, the actual truth will be that the person is not whom he or she claims to be and the person himself knows that (Shiels, 2009). Finally, the Facebook Page that was constructed gives room for privacy management. This is however not thorough and lacks certain basic conceptualizations. Some of the ways in which one may manage privacy is by categorization of friends. Once such categorization of friends is done into sections such as best friends, relative, schools mates and so on, one has the right to deny certain key information about oneself to certain group of friends. Whiles uploading data such as pictures and videos about oneself, a person also has the opportunity to choose the category of people who are legible to have access to those posts. This may apply even for some comments that are posted. This is evidence that privacy management actually takes place in the page that was created. REFERENCE LIST Estoinia et al. Identity Construction and Self-Representation on Facebook. 2009. Web. August 2, 2012. Shiels, Maggie. Privacy Law Call in Facebook Row. BBC News, 18 February 2009. Skeptic’s Dictionary. Self-Deception. 2012. We. August 2, 2012 Tong, Stephanie T., Van Der Heide, B., Langwell, L., Walther, J.B. Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(3):531–49, 2008. Walther, Joseph B., Van Der Heide, B., Kim, S.Y., Westerman, D., & Tong, S.T. The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep? Human Communication Research, 34(1):28-49, 2008. Read More