Just Like Me Only Better response

The article, Just Like Me Only Better, brought up some very interesting points and opened my eyes to a completely new world of Second Life. The article begins by giving us a brief background on the term Avatar, and discusses the purpose behind them. The article tells us thatAvatar originally comes from the Sanskrit term which means the human form that differnt God's took when they entered Earth. I found it very interesting to see how the term has changed from its original meaning to a cyber representation of self in today's world.

I also found it very interesting in the article when Erwin Goffman is quoted. I found it very precise and elegant when Goffman stated " in all social interactions the desire of each participant is to regulate the impression that is transmitted to others, through roles". If we as humans constantly want to regulate the image of how others perceive us, creating an Avatar is an ideal way to control how other people view us. I think this is the main reason why Second Life and the creation of an Avatar is becoming so popular. By creating an Avatar we possess all the control of how others view us. In face-to-face communication we can not completely change the way we look or the sound of our voice in order to manage others opinions of us. However, in an Avatar world we can create our own physical appearance exactly the way we want it.

According to the results of the study, the stereotypical standards of western beauty are the most predominant choice of people creating avatars. Fair skin, straight hair, and large eyes are often equated with beauty although people from all different nationalities create avatars. The article inferred that western beauty ideals are often prevalent because the users are trying to portray a positive impression to other users as Goffman stated earlier.

Uses and Gratifications Response

The article Explaining Why Young Adults Use Myspace and Facebook Through Uses and Gratifications Theory, presented an efficient and easy-to-read analysis of why young people use social networking sites to fulfill their social needs and wants. The introduction to the research, talks bout how many young adults have turned to the use of SNS because of the ability to instantly gratify their wants and needs. While more traditional forms of communication and media, such as face-to-face interaction and television are still used frequently, sites such as Myspace and Facebook allow users to communicate and experience entertainment at the same time. I found this very interesting, as it has definitely been accurate in my own personal use of social network sites. Before the days of SNS, I would often use some sort of combination of movies, radio, television, and face-to-face communication to fulfill my social needs as well as for entertainment and relaxation purposes. However, with the creation of SNS, I was able to relax, be entertained, and communicate all at the same place: Facebook or Myspace.

The results of the research conducted found that young adults use SNS for the efficiency, convenience, popularity, curiosity of others, and relationship formation and reinforcement. These all seem like logical reasons why SNS would be popular, especially amongst young adults. The ability to instantly meet our social needs and wants will continue to push SNS as the main form of communication for young generations.

Social Selves Ch. 2

The second chapter of Burkitt's Social Selves, touched on some really fascinating material and philosophies regarding consciousness and the pragmatist view of the self. I found it especially interesting regarding William James opinions toward consciousness: "consciousness could no longer be seen as belonging to some inner transcendental self, but had to be understood as an evolutionary product"(pg. 33). After the publication of Darwin's views on evolution, James thought that human consciousness was a social way to transcend biological evolution. He says that consciousness gives people a choice to ignore their natural instincts, and create a society where physical and instinctual strength is somewhat obsolete. He uses the example that consciousness gives humans a moral system to take care of our elders and the sick, whereas natural selection would promote the "survival of the fittest" scenario.

The ideas in chapter 2 could relate to social media, because our social network profiles are extensions of our self-consciousness. Our profiles are socially constructed extensions of self that each promote our own personal moral codes and ethical boundaries.

Consequences of Online Social Networking response

The study Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior, published by Adam Acar, was an interesting experiment used to identify different aspects of social networking and to compare online social networks to normal social networks. Because of the lack of academic writing on this subject, Acar has virtually no evidence to compare his findings too. In his experiment he hypothesized that people with lower self esteem have fewer social contacts, people with poor body image have fewer contacts, and other conjectures regarding anxiety as well as extroversion/introversion. I found his hypotheses were very logical and rational and if found to be true would offer very important information about social networking.

To find his results, Acar used a survery based experiment with about 400 students. 94% of those students had a facebook profile and another 29% had a myspace account. In his results he found that online social networks are significantly larger than ones offline. He also found that social network sites have no substantial effect on anxiety levels or body image. One aspect of the survey I found very interesting was differences based on gender. While women are often though to be much more selective of whom they let in their network, woman have much higher friend acceptance rates and are "poked" much more often than men. I also found it interesting that people with more strangers in their network are found to have lower self esteem. Initially it would seem that people with more strangers are more extroverted and have higher self esteem, however it also says to me that people who have lower self esteem are desperate for more contacts and thus have more strangers in their network.

The Medium is the Message response

I found Marshall McLuhan's article The Medium is the Message very thought provoking and somewhat radical. I have always regarded the medium of a message important, but never to the extent that McLuhan promotes. In practicing communication throughout my life, I have always taken into account the medium of the message I am sending, however I never thought that over a period of time the medium is in fact more or as important as the message. The first interesting idea I gleaned from McLuhan was the lightbulb example. He states that a lightbulb has no message or content at all, but the medium is so profound that it can change society. Although the lightbulb is not delivering a message with text or voice, the medium has the power to enable people to bring light where there is darkness and ultimately offer a huge social change.

The next thing that really jumped out at me during this reading was the analogy of a burglar with a piece of meat. McLuhan compares the message to a chunk of meat,  the burglar is the medium, and society is the dog. Instead of noticing the burglar in our house we only see the meat, and are blinded to everything else. McLuhan says that as a society we ignore the medium too often, which can be dangerous. McLuhan argues that over a period of time, the medium in which we receive our messages can shift society down a dangerous path. After reading this article is has become more apparent to me that the medium through which we receive our messages does say a lot about society that we rarely think about.

Social Selves Ch. 1

In reading the first chapter of Social Selves, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the breadth of ideas regarding self. The idea of Self, as well as asking the question who am I?, are enormously complex concepts which require the help of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Durkheim, and Kant, and many others, to even begin to fathom the possible answers. Burkitt dives in head first into the many different ideas to help us grasp some sort of interpretation of the relationship between self and society.

In the first chapter I received a crash course into the philosophy and psychology of understanding self. I learned about the connection of self to society, and how many philosophers such as Durkheim and Marx believe the self is a construction of a capitalistic society in which society is not something external to self. I was somewhat disappointed that the author chose only to focus on the western ideas of self, as I feel it would be very interesting to contrast some eastern philosophies of the illusionary self with our society today.

I thought the ideas in the first chapter of the Burkitt text were very interesting when related to the social media explosion we have experienced. It's interesting to ask why we feel the need to create Facebook and Twitter accounts , and how our interactions on these social media sites affect our interpretations of our selves.

Man-Computer Symbiosis response

In the article Man-Computer Symbiosis, it is interesting to see a 50-year-old perspective on something that is becoming more real and real each day in our society. To have read this article when it was originally published would’ve made me laugh, with computers the size of warehouses. However, as technology continues to progress at an unprecedented rate, I can definitely imagine a real symbiotic relationship between man and machine in the near future. As computers continue to become more powerful while shrinking in size, soon we will be able to computerize cells in our body and program them to fight disease and repair organs. It sounds scary, but futurist Ray Kurzweil doesn’t think it’s that far off.

It’s hard to imagine a world with machines and humans living together as the author does, and even if we imagine it, its hard not to be cynical. However, I do believe it will soon be a reality and its up to the computer engineers and scientists to responsibly harness the incredible power of these machines and use them for the good of the human population. Yet it’s hard not to be scared that our world ends up like the Matrix and we all become slaves to technology and the relationship turns from a symbiosis to one where we are merely slaves to machines.

Response to: Quality of Online Social Relationships

The article Quality of Online Social Relationships was very thought provoking and interesting. It also confirmed what I thought to be true in that face-to-face interaction is generally more effective in creating and maintaining a social relationship. The experiment amongst college students in the article show that while most often in work and social settings, face-to-face and phone communication is most useful, in terms of exchanging information, e-mail is more efficient. This made sense to me because often I use e-mail for short questions and exchanging information in order to arrange a face-to-face meeting. However, in sustaining or creating a relationship, I have never found e-mail to be much use at all.

When the article discusses the statistics on Internet social groups it was interesting to see the overall ineffectiveness of Listservs to create and maintain a social setting with high interaction and little turnover. The data in the article shows that Listservs are most effective with a small number of people ranging from 3 to 15. However when the group becomes larger, the turnover of the group rises and interaction and responses to e-mails within the group plummets. I have been in these types of social groups before and I never felt a sense of identity from the group or responded to the emails.

In conclusion I was not surprised to learn that relationships started and maintained over the Internet are not as effective as other means of communications. This article made me think what the results would look like if similar experiments were conducted with social media sites such as Facebook and twitter, in place of e-mail. I have a feeling results would be much different because of the ability to chat instantly and post pictures of yourself on these social media sites. What do you think?

Intro

Hi Everyone, my name is Alex and I'm a junior at SJSU. I am a communications major hoping to minor in public relations. I love the field of communications because it is so broad and can be applied to every profession and situation life presents. I have only taken a few communication classes but so far my favorite has been a debate class I took last semester. I love to argue and debate and I feel it is a skill that can be very beneficial no matter the setting. I am excited to be in this class because new media and social networks are such an important part of business today and will only continue to expand in the future.

I was born and raised in Santa Cruz and love surfing, playing sports, and backpacking. I have an Australian Shepherd puppy who I take to the beach everyday and he loves the water as much as I do. I work in an italian restaurant as well as attend school and try to travel whenever I have time.