"So like, what's this Web 2.0 thing?" "It's what you're using RIGHT now, and every day..."

What would we do without Web 2.0? For starters, you wouldn't be reading this assignment on your computer screen right now! And I wouldn't be writing it about how teenage girls use Web 2.0 applications to create and re-create their online identities. Despite the inescapable nature of Web 2.0, and the prominence of it in the lives of teens, many are unaware of exactly what it is (Chandler, 2007).

It has been noted that 'Web 2.0' is a rather loose term, evading any strict definitions (Whittaker, 2009; Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). The term was popularised by Tim O'Reilly in 2004. Whittaker (2009: 2) suggests that it "refers to a collection of platforms, technologies and methodologies that represent new developments in web development". The crux of these new developments is the idea that Web 2.0 is a participative web, where the producers of content are also the end users, often referred to as User Created (or Generated) Content (UCC/UGC) (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2007). In a guide for parents on their children's use of MySpace, Magid and Collier (2007: 1) refer to Web 2.0 as "the everywhere, all-the-time, multimedia, multidevice, downloadable and uploadable, user-driven Internet", which encapsulates the many and varied ways teenage girls are using Web 2.0 applications.

As indicated in my previous post, Web 2.0 applications include social networking sites such as MySpace and facebook, as well as sites with a more specific function, such as YouTube (video sharing) and Flickr (photo sharing), blogs (such as this one!) and wikis (the most famous of which is Wikipedia). 





This video is a great demonstration firstly of what different Web 2.0 applications are available, as well as showing the extent to which they are used, and by whom.

SO, the question must then be addressed, how are teenage girls using these Web 2.0 sites? One of the main sites that girls aged 12 to 17 use, and which will be the main focus of this assignment, is MySpace.

MySpace launched in 2003, off the back of popular social networking site Friendster, but differing in that it allowed bands to post content, attracting a new demographic of younger users, bringing with them slightly different ways of utilising the features of the site (boyd, 2007). MySpace allows, or rather is centred on, users creating a profile about themselves, which can be viewed by friends (and strangers, depending on privacy settings). Initial profile setup consists of inserting details and information in pre-determined forms, such as age, sex, location and interests. Subsequently, users can post photos to their profile, and customise just about anything, including fonts, layouts, content and often most importantly, backgrounds. A few examples of what these profiles can look like are here, here and here. Further to this, users can comment on other people's profiles (and photos, and just about anything else), post bulletins, update their status and mood at any particular time, post and share blogs, videos, music and much more. Most importantly, and the thing that I am aiming to highlight the most with these blog posts - is that sites such as MySpace allow teenage girls to constantly change their online identities. This is exemplified in the fact that the profiles linked above could look COMPLETELY different when you view them to how they looked when I linked them (and in fact, they look different now than earlier in the week when I first found them!).

It is this aspect of teenage girls' use of Web 2.0 applications that I wish to examine with this blog - how the different applications facilitate, and encourage, the creation of an online identity. One that can be changed at the whim of the user (or even deleted completely!). With the media saturation surrounding teens in the crucial years of their personal development, it is almost inevitable that social networking sites such as MySpace will play a large role in how they go about discovering and constructing who they are. Thiel (2005: 180) recognises that "adolescence is a time when people develop and construct identity...a time of experimentation with different styles of communicating and articulating identity". In the same volume, Mazzarella highlights how teenage girls today, in constructing their identities, are not really doing it any differently than generations before them - it is merely the environment and medium upon which it occurs that has changed (2005: 144).

The simple user interfaces of sites like MySpace enable teenage girls to 'play' with their identities, and change aspects which they tire of, or become 'uncool' amongst peers. As Valentine and Holloway (2002: 308) explain, the online environment where this identity construction occurs "gives [teenage girls] more control over their identities than do spontaneous face-to-face encounters because they have time to think about what they want to say and how they want to represent themselves". This notion of representing themselves will form the focus of my blog next week, where I will be examining Erving Goffman's notions of impression management and all that lies therein, and how teenage girls unknowingly (to an extent) engage in these practices when they present their identities on Web 2.0 platforms.


References:
boyd, d (2007), 'Why Youth [heart] Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life', MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital
Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chandler, J (2007, August 14), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, retrieved from 
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-virtual-generation/2007/08/13/1186857409896.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Cormode, G & Krishnamurthy, B (2008), 'Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0', First Monday, Vol. 13, No. 6, 2 June, 2008 http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2125/1972


Magid, L & Collier, A (2007), MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking from the Directors of BlogSafety.com, Peachpit Press: California.


Mazzarella, S (2005), 'Claiming a Space: The Cultural Economy of Teen Girl Fandom on the Web' in S Mazzarella (Ed), Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York, pp. 141-160.

Thiel, SM (2005), ' "IM Me": Identity construction and gender negotiation in the world of adolescent girls and instant messaging', in S Mazzarella (Ed), Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York, pp. 179-202.

Valentine, G & Holloway, S (2002), 'Cyberkids? Exploring Children's Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp. 302-319.

Whittaker, J (2009), Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, 3rd Ed, Routledge, London.

Wunsch-Vincent, S & Vickery, G (2007), ‘Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking’, Report for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OECD Publishing: Paris.

"I like, only checked my MySpace four times today!"

Over the past six or seven years, Web 2.0 applications have all but taken over the Internet. They range from social networking sites like MySpace and facebook (amongst many others), to blogs, wikis, photo-sharing sites like flickr and photobucket, youtube, and the mother of all Web 2.0, virtual online worlds, such as Second Life. These sites are known as ‘participative web’, where the producers of the content are also the end-users. Such content has been referred to as ‘user-created content’ (Wunsch-Vincent & Vickery, 2007: 9).

The aspect of this that I would like to focus on with this blog is how teenage girls use these different Web 2.0 applications, and in doing so, how they are creating and re-creating their identity for all to see. If you asked a teenage girl what Web 2.0 was, she more than likely would not be able to tell you, even though she is likely to spend a large portion of her day using its various applications.

Why are the constantly changing online identities of teenage girls interesting to me? Because I used to be one of those girls. And looking back on it all now makes me wonder why girls do it. What has happened that has enabled people to create and craft an online identity? What are the different aspects that are involved in this?

This blog will attempt to answer this, or at the very least will examine some of the underlying ideas of liquid presentations of self online. I will use this first post to provide an outline of teenage girls and how they use Web 2.0 applications, primarily MySpace, to present their identities to others. Following posts will be used to explore exactly what Web 2.0 entails, and where it originated from; Erving Goffman’s ideas about impression management and the presentation of self; Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity and how this extends to the self; and placing all three of these ideas together to try and work out what identity means in modern society on the Internet.

My final post will summarise my findings, and tie up any loose ends that may have been left undone. Throughout each of these posts, I will be using the example and case study of teenage girls and their constantly changing identities to exemplify my arguments. For this reason, this post will focus on the issues involved in teenage girls’ use of the Internet.

From a personal viewpoint, as someone who has used a number of these different social networking sites both past and present, the two most popular destinations for connecting with friends and people you know are MySpace and facebook. While in essence, they are essentially the same (users create a profile, and can communicate with others), it would be fair to say that a majority of the users of MySpace are younger people, especially teens, whilst facebook better caters towards ‘older’ demographics.

In modern society, today’s teenagers make up the ‘digital generation’ – those who have grown up using and being constantly surrounded by technology and the Internet, and who tend to take it for granted. Social networking is second nature to them. Studies have shown that just over half of teens are logging into these applications multiple times a day. So what are they logging into and doing exactly?

Having a MySpace profile is basically a pre-requisite to existing online for any teenager. Boyd suggests that these profiles “become yet another mechanism by which teens can signal information about their identities and tastes” (2007: 128). They do this through filling in information about themselves, such as their likes and dislikes, choosing background pictures and colours, displaying their ‘top’ friends, and publishing photos of themselves and their peers. This process allows them to create a page or ‘space’ that is “truly” a reflection of who they are. David Gauntlett has referred to this practice as building an ‘identity collage’.

It will be my contention throughout this project that, as a generalisation, the profiles of these girls are not necessarily true representations of their identity, but rather one that has been constructed based on acceptable social norms, and how the girls wish to be perceived by their peers. Alexa Tsous-Reay highlights one of the important aspects of how these pages are created in her statement that “MySpace and MSN enable participants to socialise with friends and construct a mediatised self-representation: an online performance of identity…[one] that is separate from both childhood and family” (2009: 52). This notion of identity performance will be explored in a future post regarding Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

An article that appeared in The Age two years ago interviewed teens on the topic of MySpace and social networking. The following excerpt highlights a lot of the issues that will be developed further throughout this project:

Both girls and boys say they enjoy recording and preserving the images and sounds of their teenage lives as they happen. They are a surprisingly nostalgic tribe, anxious to archive their youthful memories before they have even slept on them. Georgia has 16 files full of photos of her and her mates stored on her computer. She loves watching them randomly flash across her screen in the odd moments when the keyboard is dormant. Her mum, says an appalled Georgia, doesn't have any pictures of her and her teenage friends.

Their MySpace pages are fashioned, and refashioned, by fickle teenage infatuation. "Not necessarily the coolest things," says Sara. "My background at the moment is the Cookie Monster. I don't think it is really me, it reflects how I feel at a time. If I am feeling really excited about dragons, I will go and find myself a really cool dragon background."

Zoe changes her profile maybe once a month. It varies with her mood - colourful one minute, starkly monochrome the next.

Are the sites really "them", as they see themselves? Yes and no. They are authentic expressions of their changing selves, but never quite the full story. Though they all have their pages set to private - that is, only approved "friends" may visit the page - both the girls and, later, the McKinnon boys, say they know they are on show. What is portrayed is a powerful piece of personal marketing. It can be less about how they see themselves than about how they may wish to be seen.

This excerpt, along with the rest of the article, will be useful in demonstrating arguments from my future posts, especially how their presentation of self is a liquid one.


 Next week, I will be exploring in further depth what exactly Web 2.0 is, which will be useful in examining how teenage girls create their online identities. :)


References:


boyd, d (2007), 'Why Youth [heart] Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life', MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital
Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chandler, J (2007, August 14), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, retrieved from http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-virtual-generation/2007/08/13/1186857409896.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Tsoulis-Reay, A (2009), ‘OMG I’m Online…Again! Myspace, MSN and the Everyday Mediation of Girls’, Screen Education, Vol. 53, pp.48-55.

Wunsch-Vincent, S & Vickery, G (2007), ‘Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking’, Report for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OECD Publishing: Paris.

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