Thursday, 12 February 2009
Week 4 Topic 2-Networking sites
Facebook can be seen as an ‘online community’ and this would be one community that I am involved in. This website can be seen as a community because it links together different sections of the world in networks. For example, you can be part of the London network the Bristol network etc. This community of people therefore can discuss issues and events which are happening close to them. However, this community may be restricted because it only gives a sample of society. Mainly 17-50 year old men and women use this networking site. This means that these communities are missing out on 50+ opinions, which may mean a distorted version of the community. Unlike other networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo etc, you can only access individual’s people’s sites if you are friends with them. This is preventing the ‘dangerous’ factor of networking sites away, as people are encouraged to only accept people that they know and recognise. This means that Turkle’s idea of personas, because you should only be talking to people who you have already met in real life, meaning that there is little chance of exaggeration or distortion! What social networking sites have you used, and do you notice any sort of personas on them?
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i completely agree with the fact that facebook only allows you to view peoples profile and get in touch with the people that you are friends with on the networking site. Like you said this prevents the 'dangerous' side of what can happen on the inet.
ReplyDeleteI have used all of the ones you have mentioned above and to be honest i have never really come across any certain persona's because i have used the networking site correctly. However, a friend of mine used to just accpet anybody on Myspace and got idiots like that guy on 'He is just not that into you' and she found that he was talking dirty to her etc.
Yeah I think that sums it up, if you use these sites correctly then there should be no problem, but if you add people you don't know then thats when the trouble can start. But you could argue that this defies the idea of the internet and Turkle's argument about meeting new people and trying out new personas!
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