Catfishing Memo

This paper examines the formation of the identity in the late modern society compared to the traditional society. There has a been high-tech development in our present society, which makes communication among people easier. In order to reach a better understanding of what characterizes identity formation in the late modern society, theories by Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman will be used. Today, we have the opportunity to create our own virtual identity through social media. This paper analyses the American Documentary Catfish, with particular reference to relevant non-fiction and fiction codes. Catfish is a magnificent specimen of how easy identity can be faked on social media. The analysis shows that sociologist’ theories is an important

Author, Rob Horning in his article, “Google Alert for the Soul,” discusses how the once maintainable notions of authenticity as a “unique interior self” have since become unsustainable through the modes of social media (thenewinquiry.com). In this way, as a social media platform, Facebook reflects a notion of post-truth in which, “objective facts are less influential than appeals to personal beliefs” (OED). Specifically, this thematic trend is evident within my own Facebook experience through recurring instances that illustrate an ability to utilize the site as a means of creating an idealized self and environment. Thus, these elements further aid in demonstrating the Internet of Western society as a space that ultimately renders authenticity

In today’s generation, due to a lack of preparation and understanding of fake news in our education programs, the youth seem to be putting all of their trust in the Internet and most cannot determine if a news article is biased or not; therefore, young people seem to be more susceptible to fake news. Teens use the Internet for everything these days, and they need to be well-equipped with many ways to determine real articles from fake ones.

Chilling Stories of Fake online identities and why people created by Patrick Smith was a head scratching and eye opening article. The article contained multiple events dealing with people that had to go through identity thief. Another article that covers new technology is “Can people trust the people you meet online’’? by Gwendolyn Sediman. This article also gave us another point of view on how new technology can be used in a corrupt way. The average person wouldn’t usually understand how dangerous new technology can be if the wrong person gets a terrible idea.

The ability to access credible information is paramount. No matter what time of medium a person access (radio, television, newspaper, the internet, or social media), people should take responsibility and decide how much to information to believe. For example, social media websites like Facebook influences over 400 million users a day (Peiyu & Arnott, 2013). Websites as such allows users to access others affiliated in various interest groups around the world. Some people believe that media outlets abuse and manipulate the truth to confuse active media users. Today, studies prove different approaches to decide and control how readers should process new information is as the truth.

This article explains how informed teenagers with news that go on around the world. Even though we have easy access to news and current events a lot of people don’t use their resources to inform themselves on what happens within their surroundings. The main issue is how relevant and credible online sources tend to be nowadays, with social media it has become harder to tell apart facts from opinions. This has created a system called citizen journalism, which gives the public the chance to play a part of a role in the transmission of news with just using their phone. Meaning a lot of opinion based comments and posts that are being put on social media make it difficult for teenagers to tell apart reality from biased news. Researchers state that

The internet can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Imagine your every move was caught on camera for the world to see, your every fault documented and aired for everyone, that secret you told your best friend publicized on the evening news, or that intimate moment with your lover broadcast live. Newsweek writer, Jessica Bennett, wrote an article titled “The Flip Side of Internet Fame.” She argues how the internet can easily become one’s real life nightmare when the wrong person logs into the world wide web. Be careful what you put on the internet, as it may come back to haunt you.

“As more children gain access to the internet, online predators bypass while preying on young innocent children.” The internet has become on of the biggest technological advancements of this century. The internet has offered so much and has grown in many ways as far as communication. The internet lets people from all over the world communicate and interact, exchanging information in a millisecond. This has opened a virtual world for everyone around us to live in. With the many different social media websites, chatrooms, and forums all over the internet, it has become difficult to decide who is who. It can be appealing to live your main life and then around every worldwide turn live an opposite life online that compensates for your everyday life. In everyday life you deal with criminals and bad guys, those same people exist in the virtual world too. With the variety of bad people trolling the web the sexual predators are the most dangerous.

Identity is a tricky thing; because identity is never stagnant it becomes a very difficult concept to fully understand. One individual might think a joke that has just been told was the funniest thing in the world where a bystander might think of the joke as immature; as a result of this, the one who thought the joke was hilarious instantaneously has a different opinion of the person who told the joke than the bystander, creating two separate identities for the joke teller. The academic article “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus? Examining Gender Differences in Self-Preservation on Social Networking Sites” by Nina Haferkamp, Sabrina C. Eimler, Anna-Margarita Papadakis, and Jana Vanessa Kruck studies how the genders use different methods of self-preservation as a mean of showcasing to the world the best version of themselves when creating online social network profiles. While not all of their research methods should be considered valid or statistically significant, the study does reveal various differences in the methods men and women use to skew their online identity. Through the use of a voluntary online survey and content analysis of users profiles, the authors try to find statistical evidence of the difference between the genders purpose, use, and self-presentation techniques, requiring the reader to analyze the ways in which their use of social network sites is used to skew their real life identity.

The advancement of technology is a major trend in modern society because there are now many ways to broadcast news. Technology is one of the biggest differences between generations and has a large impact on people’s lives and society. The media industry allows people to become informed about any ongoing issues through easier and faster access to information. Millennials are considered to be the most educated and informed out of all the previous generations since growing up with greater access to information leads them to create strong opinions on many topics (Pew Research Center 133). However, in this day and age, media is a large factor in providing inaccurate or unnecessary information. Media tends to dramatize almost everything it reports, but many media consumers like to “hop on the bandwagon” and believe information that is untrue instead of making time to research what is accurate. Due to the influence of media upon the public, Millennials especially, believe more of what they overhear on the news channels and internet than what they find in research.

Understanding how to perceive the news can be a difficult task especially with their savvy word usages. This essay will explore multiple attributes of the Today show and CNN world news online. We will also exploring marketing perspective to attract an audience, credibility, biasness, uncovering racial or gender stereotypes, and fabrication. Next my research will show if there was any extra research needed to understand what the news report was covering. Lastly sharing options or suggestions on how to make newscast fair and balanced and enquiring why the internet is affecting political views and thoughts more than television. ----

The first problem is about fake identity. Internet identity is a social identity, established by Internet user. Compared with national identity, Internet identity is more unreliable. A new regulatory filing displays,‘8.7 percent of its 955 million monthly active users worldwide are actually duplicate or false accounts’ (Kelly, 2012). Minority people use fake identities based on professional, security or creative reasons, such as identity not suitable to be disclosed, famous by another name than the real one (Eler, 2012). However, more people are using fake identities for deception.

The recent development of technology also accelerates the media’s influence over our personal identities to an extent that it might not be at all predictable. One of the most powerful ways in which technology is altering self-identity is through the shift from being internally to externally driven. Therefore, according to Jim Taylor (2011), we could say that the personal Identities of, mainly, young people these days are shaped by external forces in the following ways:

Adults view social media differently than teens. Dana Boyd’s book, It’s Complicated; the Social Lives of Networked Teens, speaks to the adults that don 't understand and often misjudge teens based on these social media sites. In chapter one, “Identities: Why Do Teens Seem Strange Online”, Dana Boyd writes to adults explaining that most, if not all, teens seem different online than they are in real life. The young adult’s environment influence their activity on social media, making it difficult for them to address all audiences. Teens will try to change context, profiles, and identities online in order to communicate with their intended audience. In doing so, if you are not a part of their intended audience, “what teens appear to do and say on social media seems peculiar if not outright problematic”(Boyd 30).

The birth of social media in the late 1990’s has dramatically evolved our primary means of expression. Posts and tweets provide platforms which instantly project individuals’ voices into the digital realm to be seen and heard by a hypothetically universal audience with an immediacy previously impossible. These outlets particularly appeal to teens and young adults, who desire simultaneously both an independent character and a shared place of belonging. Self-branding achieves the former and a validative, digital form of acknowledgement, via follows and likes, the latter. However, technology's inherently unlimited nature and the speed with which it delivers messages threatens our own identities and personal spaces. Additionally, there exists further friction between individual and group values. A citizen’s understanding of their right to privacy and free expression may differ from their nation’s evolving interpretation of these laws. Central to these conflicts is a human desire to carve out for ourselves a piece of a place where we may live as unique individuals who remain a part of a bigger whole. But, given the balances that exist within the personal struggle for identity and community and within a nation’s struggle to interpret privacy and speech laws in a way that securely respects its people and its history, it is impossible to weigh each factor evenly. As social media becomes normalized across more generations and its reach expands, we will increasingly prioritize our