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:
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.
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.
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
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.
www.commonsensemedia.org
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