"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.