Online 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

Both authors point out the negative reasons of using “too much” internet and less interaction with people. Because people lose their focus from doing the work. Carr offers concern by stating how writing few pages is hard and reading long articles has become difficult. Car writes, “Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it” (55). Even he has become the victim of online browsing and not able to write long articles, which shows how he has problems focusing on writing a blog. More easiness has made people lazier because people do not have to put extra effort to do any tasks. Therefore, Carr says that some people would save a long article to read it later, but the chances are less that people actually go back and finish it (55). He also shows how people may forget to work on something they had saved for later while doing something online. However, they tend to forget it because some may get distracted from scrolling through one link to another which slips out of their mind. Bauerlein would strongly agree with Carr that people are becoming more distracted and technology-like. Bauerlein also shows the concern that people use fake facial expression to describe their expression. He argues that people send “smileys” and “emoji’s” when they send text messages on phones or inserts an emoji on Facebook, but their actual expression could be completely different and no one would figure it out (77). It prevents people from knowing a person very well because they could have a totally different perspective about them over the phones. Bauerlein describes his concern that people are not at their benefits when they talk through “emoji’s” on the phone because they would not be able to figure out a person’s hand movements when they talk about certain things or their actual facial

Online identity expands real identity is Turkle's third point. The user may choose to be anyone he or she wants in cyberspace. There are no boundaries on who or what a person may be. A user can express many different aspects of his or her personality without being made fun of because no one would know the truth. A man may be a woman because he wants to engage in his feminine side. The other users may not know it is a man because in cyberspace, others only know what it told to them. If a person chooses, he or she may change gender, age, physical characteristics, and such. A fat man can easily become a beautiful woman in a few key strokes. On the other hand, one may express their nonconformities in a safe way and not have to repress them. A user may be blunt and be proud of it without receiving a black eye for it. Therefore, online identity expands real identity.

The first discourse community I belong to is Facebook. Facebook is a social media website in which I can communicate with relatives and friends. The first step to become a member of Facebook, one must create an account by entering his or her basic information such as name, date of birth, gender, and email address. After the account is created, one must verify his or her account by clicking on verification link in the email account provided during the sign up process. Then, one can start to add people on his or her friend’s list either through searching or syncing their phone contacts. Once this step is done, he or she can post pictures, statuses, share links, and comments on his or her walls or their friend’s wall page. Other things you can do on Facebook is, tagging friends on pictures,

Though many characterize their identity with others’ perception of themselves, sincere identity is rather an internal set of beliefs and values that shape a person’s behavior--inside out, not outside in. In the modern world of technology, identity increasingly has become the image of someone created online, put on display for the internet. The era of interconnectivity, technological social interactions, and instant feedback develops an insecure, outward-looking society that forms their social media platforms into “highlight reels” of their life, posting perfectly filtered and angled masterpieces of their most exciting activities. Rather than try to compare their genuine life with these seemingly vastly superior profiles, most create

In a twenty-four-hour day, internet users will have communicated online at least once whether it is writing to a classmate on a message board, posting pictures on Instagram, or responding to colleges via email. It is possible that a different username and identity are used for each of these online communications, each username constituting, in effect, a separate “personality.” These online personalities may be a part of one’s authentic self or a separate identity altogether. In The Times article, "Internet 'trolls' ignore social rules: Expert: Online disinhibition effect means many people feel invincible online," the anonymous author states, “This is your brain in cyberspace: while in warp-speed from forum to

Currently, people are living in a virtual world that is dominated by social media; the influence of emergences of social media platform, such as Facebook, YouTube, has far beyond the imagination of people（Pennsylvania, 2011）.There are an increasing number of people who are willing to use social media to manage their identity, which offers a large amount of opportunities for those audiences who want to standing out from the crowd.(Matthieu; Serge et al, 2013) But because of information overload, to some extend, social media are probably making it harder for them to differentiate from the counterpart .In view of the fact, how to manager personal identity has been view as a vital

Acquisti, A. & Gross, R. (2006). Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook, Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Robinson College, Cambridge University, UK.

The second major trend to be aware of is the virtual community - a social network of individuals who interact with each other without the constraints of geography, time zones, political or economic situations, weather, or demography all that matters is that they are able to come together to form a culture in which they

Communities are all about groups of individuals who share something in common. This makes going on the internet seem like an odd way to find more communities, form new ones, or strengthen pre-existing ones. The internet however is full of communities. Communities can be based upon religion, location, ethnicity, an interest, or a personal matter. The internet itself is “a global distributed data communications network” (Kirmayer, Raikhel, & Rahimi, 2013, p. 166). This is what makes the internet so full of communities because communication is the key to putting multiple individuals with commonalities into communication, which is the basis of any community. Online communities differ from communities that exists off the web in a couple of

Online social networks have become increasingly populated arenas for much of today’s population, especially with regards to high school and college students. Networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc., enable users to create an identity and present it to others by allowing them to share various aspects of their lives. Because individuals select their own content, the resulting representation can be either a true or imaginative reflection of the user. The attitudes, perspectives, behaviours and actions each individual chooses to present, shape their identity within the social media universe. Like most other web-based content, the pursuit of authenticity is assumed to be at the heart of these social media networks, playing an important role in our online interactions and our decisions about what web content we believe to be reliable. But, what about when the network structure allows users to create, post, and interact with anonymous identities? Anonymity eliminates the need decipher authenticity, however, it creates an issue by protecting the negative actions of empowered users.

The second concept I want to talk about is virtual communities. Virtual communities are social groups whose interactions are mediated through information technologies, particularly the internet. Like modernism, virtual communities are very dependent on technology and the internet. Since science and technology has advanced in the past decade, people don’t need to go to different places to meet different people and can meet others over different social media platforms or even video games. Sometimes, those people met over the internet can become very close friends. For example, I play a lot of video games and I have acquainted myself virtually with many people playing those games. Some of them I even ended up meeting in real life and are still friends with today. Virtual communities have become such a social norm, that soon, people will have friends all over the internet. I think the aspect of virtual communities is good for society, because it allows people to have a greater awareness of other cultures all over the world. With more insight of how other societies and cultures operate, there is a greater chance to expand one's own social

Social media is quickly evolving in front of our eyes and it is almost impossible to reject and hide from this new form of media. Not only is it an important part of socialization within peer groups but now it is used to market and motivate people to become a part of a larger community. It is undeniably changing the way one communicates and how one finds and shares information. Most websites offer communication through the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and many various blog formats. With new apps on smartphones and photography and video made digital, media can be created, edited and shared quickly and once it is in this new digital cloud it is not yours anymore. Through these new advances in technology one can share things

Social network sites (SNSs) such as such as Friendster, CyWorld, and MySpace allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others (Ellison, 2007). These sites could be used for work related situation, romance, connecting with individuals with shared interest, or creating a connection amongst college students. Facebook enables its users to present themselves in an online profile, accumulate ‘‘friends’’ who can post comments on each other’s pages, and view each other’s profiles (Ellison, 2007). Individuals can write on the wall of friends, send private message, comment on posts, as well as chat via instant messaging. Much of the early research on online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography (Ellison, 2007).

Social sites are a beneficial way to communicate, however, it affects a person’s ability to communicate face to face with others. Many people spend much of their leisure time online rather than connecting with the offline world. In a specific article, a participant spends several hours each day updating her profile instead of talking face to face with others (Livingstone 399). Being online more than offline, decreases people’s abilities to interact with others who are disconnected. Furthermore, by communicating online also contributes to misrepresentation, which leads to misreading a text, leading to mixed emotions of a person who wrote the message. Therefore, social networking reduces an emotional aspect between people as it is hard to tell what a person is feeling through text. In addition, people lack confidence talking to an individual physically rather than virtually. In an