There are so many different ways to use the
internet but in recent years a rise in the use of social networking has
occurred. People are adapting to the use of these mediums as a new modern form
of communicating, or networking with people from various aspects of their
lives.
Internet
usage has grown significantly in Australia ‘… the proportion of the
Australian public that were online in 2007 were 72.6 per cent, which grew …
to 86.8 per cent in 2011.’ (Swinburne University Of Technology, 2011. These internet sites can be used to not only form but maintain
relationships, it is modern day networking that can be done from the comfort
of your own home.
|
Representing yourself on these sites has
become a topic discussion for media theorists such as Marshall, D. This discussion follows how one represents their ‘true self’ online and how
this may alter from the representation of oneself in person. I really only use
Facebook and Twitter as my main forms of social networking. My profile picture
only shows the back of my head and I have chosen it to be this way so as I can
keep my online life private as much as possible.
I have also done this because I only want
people who genuinely know me in real
life to be able to contact me and have access to details such as my profile
picture, my birthday and so on. I think my online identity is quite an accurate
representation of my offline identity, which is why I want to keep it as
private as possible. I use my Facebook in quite a similar style to how I use my
profile picture, privately. If I want to chat to friends I will do it in a
private forum, such as in a private chat or a private group as I don’t want
everyone to see what I am doing and saying. If there is something good or happy
in my life that I want to share with the majority of my friends I will post a
status, but these don’t contain too much private detail of my life. I also like
to ‘prune’ my friends list often so as it is mostly just the people I talk to
on a regular basis. I usually delete people I don’t talk to often, people who I
have added for assignment purposes at university and haven’t clicked as well
with or just people who post way to often and start to irritate me. This allows
me to create my own identity amongst my friends on my Facebook page.
“Being able to create
online profiles and communicate one’s own identity in a manner that one prefers
may be considered as exercising one’s privacy rights. This perspective reflects
a long-standing socio-legal understanding that defines privacy as one’s ability
to have control over when, how and to what extent information about them is
known by others (Bing, 1972; Fried, 1984; Wacks, 1989; Weintraub, 1997). As
such, by publicizing information about their subjective experiences and
everyday lives, users may be exercising their privacy right to disseminate
information about themselves.” (.Baruh, L and Soysal, L 2010)
These people who post to often I believe do it because they like showing their private life in a public setting, the idea of having people read their information and updates and being immortal in the same way as celebrity fame.
Overall everyone uses their social media
differently depending on the type of person they are, how they think and what
they do.
References
Baruh, L and Soysal,
L 2010, ‘Public intimacy and the new face ( book) of surveillance: the role of
social media in shaping contemporary dataveillance’, in Dumova, T and Fiordo, R
(eds.), Handbook o f Research o n Social Interaction Technologies and
Collaboration Software: Concepts a nd Trends , pp. 392 – 403
Swinburne University
Of Technology, 2011, ‘Aussies are 'frequent buyers' online’ Melbourne. < http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancellery/mediacentre/media-centre/news/2011/09/aussies-are-frequent-buyers-online>
