How Does Media Affect Personal Identity

“People can take their time when posting information about themselves, carefully selecting what aspects they would like to emphasize (Gonzales 80).” By controlling what information and self-attributes to share with the online world, an individual may present an idealized version of self that would not align with societal perceptions in the face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, Gonzales notes that recent research in computer-mediated communications suggests that online self-presentations can alter self-perceptions (80). As Orenstein says, “I tweet, therefore I am.” The online presentations of self can become the reality, or idealized reality, of the

Infant boys have blue and the girls will have pink. After the fetus is birthed, it is difficult for individuals to determine the gender of the baby without the exposure of the genitals. The most common thing for parents to do is to dress the infant in the respective colors so society will know whether it is a boy or a girl. These colors will eventually shape how they are viewed in society. As the children grow up, they begin to adjust their behavior to fit in with the gender norms and expectations.

     Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and white for girls and bright or dark colors like green, blue and red for boys has long been a part of culture. How many times have you heard kids argue over toys because girls don’t want that icky boy color or the boys don’t want the gross girl color? This

In today’s day and age, social media is popular more than ever. Now, just by clicking the “tweet” button, you can expose yourself and what you put out there for anyone throughout the whole world to see. Twitter, Instagram, etc have taken over the world, with millions and millions of users that range from super young to super old. Personally, I have three different platforms of social media. These include twitter, instagram and snapchat. I am interested to evaluate how I use it versus how I consider myself to be in real life and on a day to day basis. I believe the way that I represent myself on social media has some similarities and differences between my actual self on a day to day basis.

Watching “Dying to be Thin” further solidified a slowly growing understanding of the media’s impact on self-image and its ability to steal a person’s life in a 30-second advertisement. As explained in the video, eating disorders have the highest death rate of any psychiatric illness. The onset of this illness seems to stem from a desire to achieve the unattainable and the subsequent desperation that ensues. “Dying to be Thin” properly explained the role of the media in saturating society with waiflike images that we are to perceive as perfect and worthy of love and adoration. This gives evidence to the idea that members of society have unfortunately become conditioned to feel that if they were not precisely the visual image of what is consistently thought of as desirable, they were then not good enough. On top of the role of ‘seed planter’ the media is also able to take credit for the creation of the mindset that, these body images, although 20% below normal body weight, can be completely attainable by the average person- if they just tried hard enough.

Today’s generation thrives on social media platforms. We use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram everyday as a technology to promote ourselves through images, status updates and likes in order to be viewed by the public’s eye as likable. The sociological construct that I’ll be examining will be gender and how likes plays an important role in society of how we are perceived to be. Additionally, I’ll expand on how we use these technologies as a tool, that can bolster our image through likes and content that determines our reality.

Since the year of 1948, the state of Palestine became known as the state of Israel, but whatever happened to the Palestinians. Since then clashes have occurred between the two nations and Israel created walls, checkpoints, no passing zones, and illegal settlements but when a Palestinian stand up for his or her rights, he or she is automatically labeled as a blood shedding terrorist. The media had an enormous impact on this situation of course. When one just switches the remote, his eyes open and his ears expand as they say, Palestinian terrorists have done this or done that. Media and Television is something I have always loved as a child, but not when my people were being targeted.

Effortlessly associated with the varying genders, one often pictures a pink tiara for girls and likewise a blue cape for boys. The Guardian.com quotes, “the connection of blue with boys and pink with girls is relatively recent” and goes on to recite a Sears Catalougue, “ from 1965 to 1985, “pink was so strongly associated with femininity that it was vehemently rejected by feminist parents for their daughters’ clothing.” The well known divide between the two antagonistic worlds of girl and boy are steadily sharpening into an almost unyielding force that will be impossible to reverse. Children will continue to grow up with the understanding that they mustn’t breach the barrier or they will be persecuted for it. In adulthood, the fight for equal treatment is still a large issue and the continuing increase and support for it in young years only amplifies the problem.

Living in the 21st century requires one to stay current with latest technological advancements. Ever since the development of social networking sites, people are now able to create a carefully-crafted identity for themselves. This has led psychologists to question how well these online personalities match the person in front of the computer. The innovative branch of media psychology looks into how social networking portrays individuals and initiates human interactions within a society.

Everybody has a secret or specific information that they do not want made into public knowledge. Normally this is not a problem as people can keep their own secrets and only tell those they can trust. But when the media gets involved, it becomes a different story. When a reporter gains shocking, interesting, or important information, the first thought many have is “this would make a great story!” So many people become numb to the news as there are always influxes of stories flowing in, but one does not always realize that a majority of what we read is actually occurring in someone else’s life. Journalists have the ability to bring light to a controversial issue or introduce a topic that needs to be talked out, but sometimes, journalists take it too far. It is really easy to take the human out of the story and solely report the sparkling secrets for everyone to hear without realizing that bringing these secrets to light could ruin someone’s life.

This study analyzes how teens represent themselves through their profile pictures on a popular non-anonymous chat site. Ever since the rise of “computer-mediated communication”, people have been looking for ways to present their persona online. Recently, internet users have been using pictures of themselves to represent who they are. The choice of photographs is under the control of the user and it is intended to enhance user’s positive self-presentation, along with other aspects of impression management. The authors put a great amount of emphasis on race/ethnicity and gender and how it may shape online behaviors in different ways and to different extents. This study also suggested that teens manipulate their postures, gaze, dress and distance from the viewer all through their image choices. So the authors have traced patterns where this was visible. The key concept identified was self-presentation which is mainly involved in impression management because that is closely related to forming an online identity. The main question the authors are trying to ask is whether there are differences in pictures chosen for self-presentation according to user race and gender on a teen

The media plays a significant role in influencing and shaping individuals’ perceptions of self in American society. Additionally, the media plays a key role in how it portrays people of color (POC) and, therefore, in how it affects their perceptions of self and others. It is the way the predominantly white media interacts with POC that reinforces racial stereotypes and systematic oppression that affect their daily lives. In the past two decades, research on media has supported the “media’s ideological power over their consumers to define social reality, not simply reflect it” (Drew, 2011, p. 355). The media, is therefore, not reflecting society’s opinions and attitudes, but rather forming society’s opinions and attitudes of POC. “They not only set the agenda for public discussion (what people should think about), but more importantly, they strongly suggest how” people should think about POC (Drew, 2011, p. 355).

One common theory suggests that individuals use social media to create idealised personalities – the “self-idealisation” theory (Mango et al, 2008). According to this theory, profile owners display ideal traits that do not reflect their true personality. Therefore,

Surely it is common knowledge nowadays that pink is the colour for girls and blue is the colour for boys, but the real question is, why? How did the colour pink gain its label as a girls colour? And why is blue recognised today as a boys colour? Why have these particular colours become so gender specific?

More recently than in years past, digital technology and social media have grown to become a part of our everyday lives. The recent rise in those who own smartphones allows this everyday use of digital technology and social networking to be easier than ever before. At any time and any place, we have the ability to “socialize” with nearly anyone—even celebrities who have no idea most of us even exist. The continuous consumption of digital media has altered once personal face-to-face communication to just that, digital. More and more people seem to be living in what Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon call “The Cloud”. “The Cloud” is a seemingly alternate universe of which communication is altered from personal to digital. This universe has led to debates over whether or not these online communities are real or whether social media is actually social. Various digital media sources also encourage users to create individual identities, of which may or may not actually be real. It seems as though our reliance on digital technology and social media have allowed the determination of certain aspects of our lives. Although social media allows us to connect with nearly anyone at any time, Americans have taken advantage of its use, and their attention has been drawn away from real life interactions to digital ones. The ramifications of such influences reflect the hidden insecurities of Americans and, ironically, emphasize our inclination to boast about ourselves by allowing others to see the