Extensive summary of all articles of Social Media and New Media
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Course
Social media and New media
Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
This document contains an extensive summaryof all articles provided during the classes of the course Social Media and New Media (LET-CIWER802).
The text contained in the document is sufficient for the final written exam.
Extended self: Belk (1988) – no SM, no virtual worlds, no Internet, no smart phones. Today, with digital technology
the self-extended formulation has been extended. Our possessions are part of our selves. The categories of the
extended self are: our body, ideas, experiences, people, places and things to which we feel attached (the last 3 are
the most extended). The self is seen as embodied and material things extend it. Possessions form impressions about
us and create individual and collective memory. The self is constantly changing and gifts, photos and souvenirs are
memories.
5 changes emerging from the digital age:
1. Dematerialization of possessions: info, communication, photos, books, music, games and messages are invisible
and immaterial, stored in hard disks, devices or clouds. This is a new collecting with ease of acquisition and
sharing with others.
Attachment and singularization: virtual goods are positioned between the material and imaginary world,
but they lack material substance. But there’s no completely immaterial consumption: we spend money when
we buy virtual goods or services and they are able to satisfy our desires as material goods. Their use is just
restricted to certain situations. Digital and material goods are different, but digital ones can stimulate
consumer desire, make real dreams and fantasies (being a magician) and facilitate experimentation. These
identities are virtual but our identity and sense of self are subject to reform. E.g., online shopping, avatar
clothes, virtual furniture in games that would be difficult to buy in real life. Consumers get attached to them
(due to the time spent to acquire them) and develop fear of loss (leading to backups), thus extending their
self. Virtual goods as photos are now one of the most valued. E.g., singularizing is receiving a gift online.
Lack: some people consider digital goods as less authentic due to the less physical presence and ease to be
reproduced (not unique). They also lack the aura. FB friends may compose our extended self only when they
are online. Young people see digital possessions more as past f their self.
2. Reembodiment: breakout of the visual: losing the physical body, taking on whatever persona we wish.
Discrimination turns into equality. We use photoshop. We are disembodied and reembodied in avatars (digital
representations of ourselves), photos and videos. Creating an avatar is a progressive process (giving a name,
learning to operate it) and we start to identify with it. Avatar is partly ourselves and partly a separate entity. It
represents our ideal self, possible selves and aspirational selves. We are the avatar and can do self-
experimentations, finding out who we are by being who we want to be. While we’re wearing a mask, we can’t
see ourselves and rely on others’ feedback, but with the avatar we are inside, anonymous, but also outside
looking at ourselves.
Attachment to avatars: players get attached to them or see them as children. They can have memories with
the avatar of interactions with other avatars.
Effects: differences between our avatar and real body may have effects on our behavior. A tall avatar
increases confidence. The mind is reembodied and extended into an avatar.
Multiplicity: multiple characters/alts to gain anonymity or explore different personalities. There can be
multiple selves in online activities, but having multiple personas is difficult in a digital age (with FB containing
different audiences). There is no singular core self, even if digital extended self leads us to perceive control
over possession and to feel that they are part of us.
3. Sharing: there are commercialized sharing models (.com) or noncommercial (blogs, SM, photos). Digital devices
help us share more and more broadly. FB is a key for self-presentation and some FB friends know more than our
actual ones, leading to oversharing to appear more attractive FOMO, or compulsively checking the news. The
lack of FTF, the anonymity and invisibility free us up disinhibition effect (to feel better with presenting the
true self online or share confessions on blogs – helps to discover the true self and works as a therapy, due to the
lack of eye contact).
Self-revelation: it’s now normal to present something that offline is considered rude or naïve (car, house).
Loss of control: sharing of self-representation is not fully under control, many audiences may see it.
Shared digital possessions: jointly owned things and being part of online communities aggregates the
extended self, creating a feeling of belonginess.
, Shared cyberspace: a public space occupied by a set of participants: blogs, web sites, SM, domains re-
worlding. Online places can be part of the virtual identity and aggregated self that we share with others (we
feel as if we are with the others at the so called “third place”.
4. Co-construction of Self: most digital involvements are social: comments on blogs, interactions on the phone,
taking pictures they construct our individual and joint extended self the collaborative self. Friends help in
the co-construction, adding tags, comments and pictures with us. Blogs are also affirmation seeking, inviting for
feedback. Co-construction also takes place offline. Shared messages with friends/lovers become possessions of
the joint expression, as they both composed them. An example of aggregate shared self is having common
opinions.
5. Distributed memory: nondigital objects can be part of the extended self as they provide sense of past
(souvenirs, furniture, photos). Technological extensions of self are also included (contacts, calendars, files)
that leads to outsourcing: digitalizing photos, documents, books, meetings. Autobiographical memory is
composed of:
- Self-memory: autobiographical knowledge
- Social memory: to bond with others through sharing stories
- Directive memory: to learn from the past (through pictures) and guides us towards the future. Our
memories benefit not only from our online actions, but also from the others’, as our self is co-constructed.
The rise of virtual self leads to an immortal virtual self: we can have online representations of ourselves after
our bodies die.
Digital clutter: the strategy of keeping everything and searching for what we want to reconnect with later;
digital traces of files, links, e-mails less likely to be discarded because of the unlimited online space.
Narratives of the self: our identity is in the capacity to keep a narrative going, by integrating events in the
offline world into out self-story: travel stories, child adventures.
Sense of past: digital memory also contributes to the collective memory and aggregate extended self by
photos, posts, blogs that link us to the past.
Digital collecting: blogs, web pages, SM they are also part of the extended self.
Gift giving: online it’s unique because it can’t be lost. E.g., music, photos, software, messages. They still require time
and efforts even with less costs and material loss, and can strengthen friendship. But the less effort and costs
diminish the perceived sacrifice. Such gifts also create a sense of aggregate self.
Rematerialization: even if we leave small environmental footprint, there’s material and financial support for our
digital possessions: we need a TV, console, Internet, software, subscription, USB, phone.
Digital relationship: we are alone together; we experience networked individualism.
, 2nd article: THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: DISTINGUISHING PERFORMANCES AND
EXHIBITIONS ONLINE
Goffman’s presentation of self explains differences in meaning and activity online. Self-presentation can be split
into:
performances, which take place in synchronous situations;
artifacts, which take place in asynchronous exhibitions. SM employ exhibitions as status updates, photos
and chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual curator that manages the digital content.
Goffman’s dramaturgical approach focuses on situations and explains how an individual presents an idealized rather
than authentic version of himself. Life is considered as a stage for activity. Individuals engage in performances
during a period marked by his continuous presence and a set of observers. The continuous presence allows people to
self-monitor their behavior impression management.
The actor: performs in real time for an audience that monitors him.
The artifact: the result of past performances and lives on for others to view on their time.
Front region/stage: here we present an idealized version of the self, according to a specific appropriate role.
Musical tastes are a front stage. Some people carefully select which tastes to show.
Back front/stage: a place, relative to a performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is
contradicted as a matter of course. Here we do much of the real work to keep up appearances.
Activities take place in bounded behavior settings:
Specific geo location
Temporal boundaries
Perceptible boundaries
Behavior settings exist independently of any person’s experience
Behavior is guided by norms and goals and is bounded in space and time. Actors perform their role as convincingly
as possible and do a lot of work behind the scene to succeed. By scheduling of the performance, it’s possible to keep
the audiences separated and to have a few moments in between performances. Its impression and understanding
define the region and the time so that anyone located here will be an observer.
The world is not only a stage but also a library and a gallery. We don’t move only through stages but leave multiple
data traces as we go. In the era of SM these traces document our passage in life and mediate our parts. The world is
also a participatory exhibit.
In online spaces actors behave with each other. In exhibition spaces individuals submit artifacts to show to each
other, without directly engaging. An exhibition is a form of presentation of self. Offline personal exhibitions can be
found in photos in someone’s house. People choose what to display and consider it a form of impression
management.
Audience: those who, on a front, observe a specific actor and monitor his performance. The front consists of
selective details presented to foster a desired impression. Audience is bounded. A front requires continuous
adjustment of the self-presentation based on the others. A specific front that has to be presented always is a time-
space-identity locus.
Focused interaction: when people sustain a single focus of cognitive and visual attention.
Unfocused interaction: when two strangers across the room, they modify their front because they are under
observation.
Backstage is not private space: SM provide a window into the private lives of others. Anywhere can be a backstage
to another front stage. Some view FB as a backstage. Workers in an office present a frontstage to the colleagues,
showing hard working. Online, backstage doesn’t capture the role of a third party in regulating who has access to
personal information. That FB allows only friends to see specific content, doesn’t mean it is a backstage. Rather, it
means that some are classified as appropriate for this specific information. There’s a third party that knows the
audience that is considered appropriate FB’s servers.
Artifacts are representations: a profile/blog doesn’t stand for a person, but is that person.
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