Reflective Post for Week of 3/19

This week in class we read about online identity and online community. To some extent, we’ve already discussed online identity when we talked about anonymity. More than just the ability to be anonymous, however, the internet also provides the ability to completely change your identity—the book gave an example of a man pretending to be a woman or vice-versa. This seems kind of silly and manipulative, but the reality is that people do it all the time. Reading about identity play, however, made me think back to the ethics chapter, and something wasn’t matching up in my mind. I might be overlooking something, but isn’t pretending to be someone else, even if for a harmless purpose, a violation of online ethics? A less extreme example of online identity that we also discussed was not necessarily pretending to be somebody else, but changing qualities about yourself—like, for instance, telling somebody you’re neat when you’re actually messy, in order to make a better impression. Also, I think somebody brought this up in class, but an example that springs to my mind is with social networking sites like Facebook. There is a space in the profile section to write “About Me,” and sometimes people will write about the way they’d like to be or the way they’d like to be perceived rather than the way they actually are. I guess this isn’t as bad as outright lying, because in the long run it could help you achieve goals or change things about yourself that you’ve been meaning to for awhile, but it is still a form of identity play.

The chapter about online community discussed the effects of CMC on both online and offline communities. I found a lot of the material interesting, because as long as the internet has been around, these have been important questions for consideration, but until now, I’ve never really thought about how CMC affects communities. I guess in a way, I’m part of online communities through things like Facebook, IM, and this blog, but I’ve never thought about it like that. As far as CMC hindering offline communities, however, I don’t think that is true. For instance, my best friend from high school goes to Duquesne, and the only way we can talk while we’re both at school is by using cell phones, IM, Facebook, etc. Lately we’ve been so busy that we’ve actually been texting each other to set up a time to talk on the phone! It sounds really pathetic, but without CMC I would not be able to keep in touch with her at all while away at school. So in my opinion, while CMC can definitely hurt the notion of community if used improperly, it can also foster friendships and communities in many instances.