Digital Identities:Social networks and Me

@BeerBergman

Distinguished Lecture SeriesSciences Po Paris // Reims campus

October 1st, 2014

NSFWMistakes allowed

(introduction): Avatars, formats & filters1. Selfies, avatars: selfportraits 2.0?2. « Me » as a collection3. Some critical viewpoints

In computing, an avatar (usually translated from Sanskrit as

incarnation) is the graphical representation of the user or the user's

alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as

in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in

Internet forums and other online communities.

It is an object representing the user. The term "avatar" can also refer

to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an

Internet user.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computing)

Avatars: formats & filtres

« The first four lines of a work of art are its outside boundaries »Matisse

Avatars, formats & filtres

« It is probably no mere historical

accident that the word person,

in its first meaning,

is a mask. »

Erving Goffman citing Park, The Presentation of Self. 1959

Authenticor

fake?

Selfies, avatars :selfportrait 2.0?

Cultural differences?

http://thecarceralnet.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/selfie-bingo/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJAPLypDnE

#HolidaySelfie

« For symbolic interactionists, the self is first and foremost a reflexive process of social interaction. The reflexive process refers to the uniquely human capacity to

become an object to one's self, to be both subject and object »

« The self conceived in this way allows for agency, creative action, and the possibility of emancipatory political movement. (…

Just as important, this configuration is not inconcsistent with new postmodern approaches to self and power. » (Peter L. Caller, The sociology of the self)

« This man, that we may call homo poeticus, endowed with a narrative and

multiple identity, is both auctor and histrio, dramaturgue and actor.

The fictive histories he is telling himself but specially to the others

contribute to consolidating the neoliberal man’s « projected me »,

an augmented me, the refined me, performing as he is, fictif,

a « social fake ».

http://fr.slideshare.net/louisem/de-lidentit-la-prsence

« The public person is not made in the

image of a unique self;

rather, an interpretive picture

of unique self is made

in the image of the public person »

Cahill, SE. 1988. Toward a sociology of the person.

« Me » as a collection

• Declarative traces

• Behavioral traces

• Documentary traces

• Reputational traces

« The individual as a collection of traces »

http://fr.slideshare.net/louisem/de-lidentit-la-prsence

« The individual as a collection of traces » : declarative traces

http://ow.ly/C2ng4

« The individual as a collection of traces » : behavioral traces

https://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/5352881586/

« The individual as a collection of traces » : documentary traces

« The individual as a collection of traces » : reputational traces

https://twitter.com/wef/status/499072828587909121

http://webscience.blogs.usj.edu.lb/2597/les-identites-numeriques-seminaire-avec-d-cardon/

Social capital

Trust

Reputation

Status

?

Reputation, Trust« What people say about you. »

E-reputation« What people say about you online. »

« Strategic online self-presentation plays an enormous role in increasing one’s

Social status, how one is viewed both online and off. »

Status« One’s value and importance in the eyes of the world ».

Status is what your peers think about you, whether they hold you

in esteem or contempt, and the privileges that accord from this

position.

Status is a powerful tool that reveals the values and assumptions

shared by a group ; it shows power and dynamics and the limits of

egalitarian ideals

Alice E. Marwick, Status update: Celebrity, Publicity & Branding in the Social Media Age (2013)

Strategic online self-representation ?

Personal Branding?

My personal Web Strategie?

Me as a collection of persons?

« Me as a collection of persons »

« Authenticity » and « Being yourself », advice that is emphasized over and over again in social media discourse, have become marketing strategies that encourage instrumental emotional labor » / Alice E. Marwick

A neoliberal perspective insists on

seeing all social actors, be they people,

communities or nation-states,

in terms of corporate individualism—

a flexible bundle of skills that reflexively manages

oneself as though the self was a business

Alice E. Marwick, Status update: Celebrity, Publicity & Branding in the Social Media Age (2013)

« Me as a collection of persons »

Photographer

« How can we,

as individuals and as communities,

develop nuanced and multiple ways to

explore how to behave well? »

Ilana Gershon, Neoliberal Agency

(neoliberal culture)

Strategic online self-representation

Reflexivity and development of self

(…. culture)

What alternatives can we develop?

Questions?

Thank you for your attention.