Social Media and Identity - Assignment Example

Human being is regarded as the most civilized creature on our planet. “Since ancient time he has a deep instinct to know his identity and to leave some signs of identity in the world even after his death. In ancient time people used to carve sculptors, and paintings. It used to be the identity of the artist and his magnum-opus as well. The ancient forts, beautiful monuments, the Mummies and pyramids in Egypt, everything was formed by our ancestors to preserve their identity. It was Leonardo de Vinci who made Monalisa a benchmark of female beauty. Vinci created his identity as well as the identity of his muse Monalisa. Identity is often defined as “the character that marks off an individual from the rest, the personality that define who you are.” (Wiktionary, 2010)Human identity is such a unique and complex aspect. Every individual has a curiosity to know who am I? What is my identity? Being a social creature, we cannot keep ourselves completely aloof from the society. Rather society is the system which shapes our personality. We interact with other people, share our thoughts, listen to their thoughts and thus we come to know our identity. If considered on a surface our identity is related to our name, gender, profession, nationality etc. Two kinds of forces are there which decide our identity, direct force and indirect force. Our identity is decided by the people around us. Among them are our siblings, our parents, friends, teachers, our relatives, our neighbours etc. All these people around us help us to know our identity. This can be called the direct force. The indirect force also plays a vital role in shaping the identity of the modern man and that force of course is media. Modern world is a world of media which is invasive and overriding. Media includes newspapers, magazines, hoardings, advertisements, television, radio, cinema, cell-phones, and internet. We all try to make our identity through writing blogs and articles. We open our account on social networking sites such as twitter, face book, you tube and upload our posts our comments, our videos and thus we constantly get in touch with the people. Some people are active users of internet and they try to be in focus constantly on internet. They participate actively in commenting, chatting, replying, sharing personal photos, videos etc, whereas some are passive. They are the active members of the social networking sites but they do not participate in such activities but just view other participants. They do not share their views, opinions. These people are known as “Lurkers.” These lurkers participate in media activities indirectly. Not a single man can keep himself away from the influence of media. Mass media has occupied the entire life of human beings right from his birth to his death. The media shape individual as well as the individuals shape media. Thus it is a two way process. For example every networking site has its own face which is created by the members of that site. When we open our account on various social networking sites, the purpose behind it is subjective. Some social networking sites are designed exclusively for managing your professional identity for example; Linkedin, Yorz, Ecademy, Ryze, Xing are the sites where the person can create his identity for business purpose. Business contacts can be expanded through such sites. The person’s professional identity is focused rather than his personal identity. The sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace can play a role of both professional and personal sites. They form the individual identity as he thinks it to be. The common man also has a fascination that somewhere he should be known by other people. He is also obsessed to show his identity and thus he takes support of the social networking sites. The individual get in touch with the people from all corners of the world and share the thoughts likings, interests, and other facets of their personality. Social networking sites are the major source of being in touch with your old friends as well as meeting new friends with similar values, traits and opinions. Maintaining identity has been a crucial part in the life of celebrities especially in a heterogeneous society such as India. The political leaders, cricketers, film stars, businessmen always have to be in glamour for stabilizing their career. Even the common people are crazy to know about their favourite celebrities. They are crazy to know about their personal life. Former Miss World and one of the most popular and most beautiful women of the world, Aishwarya Rai’s pregnancy was the hot topic in media circle, not just because she is an international celebrity. For Indians her international status is not important at all. What was important for them is she is the member of Bacchan family, one of the most influential and popular families in India. Her new born girl has got glamour during her birth. It was because media gave her glamour of being the daughter of the most beautiful lady in the world. Like Aishawarya, all the celebrities need to be shaped by media. Can true identity even be expressed online? Who are you when you start your internet connection and enter the cyber world? True identity can be expressed online. Rather most of the people who feel uncomfortable in opening themselves take the support of internet. Some facets of the personality cannot be expressed face to face and for that the people switch to internet. Due to the advancement of social networking sites the users can disclose information about themselves. Multiple aspects of individual personality can be made known online. Internet is the platform which gives people an opportunity to expose themselves in an assorted ways. With the help of these sites we can present ourselves much much better than we are. We choose one of the best photos and upload it so that we will always be presentable and more and more people will get attracted towards us. Today’s world is a world of marketing and the social networking sites are the best medium for individual marketing. Sometimes the identity can be exaggerated. Many times the person is totally different of his or her avatar on internet. He or she alters and thus experiments with the identity in different manner, e.g. by changing his/her image, age, personal history, and even gender. Sometimes he or she appears with multiple personality in the cyber world. Thus embodiment of multiple identity of a single person is quite common in the world of internet. This is called persona or avatar. In professional email list, you need to appear as you are. Hiding your true identity on this list will be an obstacle for the growth of your career and professional life. But in the world of games encourages the person to have an imaginary persona. Here you have to disguise yourself and wear a different avatar. At the root of the term identity the basic question is who am I? When it is related to online identity, the question is who am I online? The sites such as Facebook or MySpace, the person can easily hide his original identity by constructing a different identity. One can construct virtual identity totally different from the original identity. The simple girls can be a sexy and hot babes, introvert person becomes extrovert and social. Pipsqueaks suddenly change into towering. Self fabrication is very important in cyber world. This can be called identity disaggregation. Multiple online identities Multiple identities have become an expected norm in the cyber world. “In the online world, the unitary self has morphed into the multiple self. Identities in cyberspace are multifaceted, splintered, concocted, fluid, negotiated, unexpected and sometimes deceptive.” (Mathew Fraser Pg. 32), The multiple identities serve the purpose of satisfying the real world as well as the virtual community. In real world people do not have scope to modify their original identity but it is quite possible in virtual world where the person can alter or modify his own identity if he or she does not get emotional fulfillment from the existing identity. The social network sites are the platform for the development of alternate virtual personality. There is a story in this context which I would like to share with the readers. “An older man, playing around with gender switching online. A young man and a woman met each other on a MOO and started corresponding through e-mails. Finally the young man fell in love with the girl and insisted they meet. The truth came out and the girl confessed being a 50-year-old man.” (John Suler 455-460).It is quite difficult to trace online identity so through multiple identities the person can represent the desires hidden in his mind. The major negative impact of multiple identities is that it will lead to an identity crisis. When one assumes many different separate identities, with time, their sense of personal identity and the continuity of the self will seem to be shattered, as he/she will wonder which personality can be considered his real identity, as many separate identities is assumed, and not one is particularly permanent. This lead to a question of whether having multiple identities is considered the same person over time. (Routledge, 2009) Media and illusion of identity: The people in the age of computer technology create their own image which one is hardly similar to his own identity. By doing so, they weave illusions around themselves. The virtual world gives people the opportunity to express facets of who they are (or would like to be) in a new context. (Carroll, 2009)As people create their virtual selves they take many things into consideration. “You should start thinking of your professional self as a ‘brand,’ and start ‘building your brand’ online” (Robinson p. 9).The people get immense pleasure by manipulating their self portraits through digital images and computer graphics. People idealize themselves by doing so. This idealized image swallows our original identity. This has led to create superficial relationships. “Dr. Himanshu Tyagi, a psychiatrist at West London Mental Health Trust, said social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have fostered the idea that relationships can be formed and destroyed quickly and easily” (Telegraph.co.uk). People get full opportunity to create a tapestry. In their manipulated identity people reveal not what they are but what they would be. The online popularity is measured by the number of friends you get. After weaving illusion around your personality, you can easily get many friends and thus the person becomes popular. The parameters of online popularity are the numbers of friends. When the person is absorbed in the world of internet, he or she is comparatively comfortable and more open to online partners or friends. Those things which are hardly possible to share with anyone face to face, can be shared or discussed online. Here I would like to share my personal observation. I accepted a request order from a person and started chatting with him. He told me that he was a gynaecologist. In the very first chatting he started talking about sex. I belong to a culture where talking about sex with your opposite gender is not a sign of good etiquettes. It is not acceptable in the society. It is not possible for anyone in my culture to start the conversation with someone on such topic and with the person, whom you are meeting for the first time. But because he was chatting with me online and it was not a face to face conversation, he was quite okay with it. It was me, who became restless and uncomfortable. He was comfortable because he was alone and no one was listening or watching him. The comfort level is quite good online. As he was a gynaecologist, I could get lot of information about female diseases and female problems. He also answered it very easily. It was a nice experience. The new generation cannot even imagine the life without World Wide Web. Previous generation has experienced the life without internet and life with internet. They have lived without internet and experienced the fascinated world of internet. They are the right people who can judge both positive and negative impacts of the virtual world. So it is the responsibility of the previous generation to make new generation aware of both impacts of social media. Citation: 1. Carroll, B. (2009). Demarginalizing Multiple Identities.Leading virtually. Retrieved (2010, July 12) from http://www.leadingvirtually.com/?p=180 2. Mathew Fraser, Soumitra Dutta Pg. 32, “Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How online social networking will transform your life, work and world”). 3. Robinson James, Pg. 9 Social Networking, http://coms190.wikispaces.com/file/view/Yriarte+David-Social+Networking.pdf 4. Routledge, L.G. (2009). Review - Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple Personality. Metapsychology - online review. Retrieved (2010, July 12) from http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5534&cn=394 5. Suler, John. “Identity Manager in Cyberspace”. 2002. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 4, 455-460. Consulted on November 1st, 2005. < http://www.rider.edu/%7Esuler/psycyber/identitymanage.html > Read More