Identity

Among the general themes for this week are:

* Embodied and disembodied communication, including the idea of "presence," in the construction of identity.

* The contrasting identities of audience and user, consumer and producer.

Turkle says that interactive technology encourages us to explore and express our own multiplicity of identities.

"The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings and different times.

"The life practice of Windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time" (Life on the Screen, 1995).

A decade later, applications such as chat and IM have, I think, moved us beyond the interim step of creating characters to articulate identity (for instance, through MUDs or even MMORPGs) and enabled us to become increasingly fluid in juggling multiple presentations of our individual selves.

What do you think?

Does technology enable or facilitate -- or hinder -- multiple expressions of personality or identity?

If so ... is that a healthy thing?

Let's accept that our identities are multi-faceted. But are they flexible or fixed -- do our identities change over time, or do we simply access different aspects of our identities in different situations?

What is the role of communications technology in the process?

Presence is "the perceptual illusion of non-mediation."

Many new communication technologies are designed to provide a sense of presence: the illusion that a mediated experience is unmediated.

Lombard and Ditton offer a thorough (dare I say exhaustive?) exploration of how and why our experiences with these technologies seem more or less “real.” Variations in both the medium and in the user work together to create greater or lesser degrees of perceived presence.

They offer six ways of thinking about presence, as:

* Social richness (intimacy, immediacy).

* Realism (accuracy of representation).
* Transportation (“you are there,” “it is here” or “we are together” in shared space).
* Immersion (outside world is shut out).
* Social actor within medium (para-social interaction
with media characters).
* Medium as social actor (relations with anthropomorphized machine itself).

Although there are many aspects of presence, probably the most relevant for us is something that has been called social presence. Social presence can be defined as the degree to which one individual perceives another as a real person, and the degree to which we perceive any interaction as a relationship.

Different media convey different degrees of presence. In general, online media have been seen as having less presence (or being less "rich," a related term) than media that use more sensory channels to convey a message.

But as online media become increasingly MULTImedia ... does that change?

To what extent do you think presence is a requirement for creation of online identity (or, for that matter, of online community)?

What do people do to increase the sense of presence among online communicants?

Does it work? What are the barriers?
How is this sort of mediated presence different from actual, physical presence? How much "filling in" do you have to do to construct a rich view of others?

Dreyfus says it is impossible to create identity (or community ... or true learning) from a disembodied state such as that involved in using the Internet.

One reason has to do with context, which he explores in the chapter on hyperlinks. We know where we are and where we want to get to from here because of our physical presence -- our situated embodiment -- in the world.

Cause and effect: Dreyfus says a computer can never think -- not so much because it has no brain (we actually can build one of those, or a network that simulates a brain) but because it has no body.

A computer can never effectively or efficiently know where it is in the world, and thus make sense of that world, because it can never know what is important and what is not at any given time. In other words, it cannot grasp context, which we know and understand intuitively because we are physical, sentient beings.

Do you agree? Can understanding exist without context? Can you understand context without physical presence?

He extrapolates that idea to the Internet and, in particular, to search engines, which he takes as the best attempt to organize the Internet in a way that fits its architecture.

He suggests, for instance, that the Internet is about inclusiveness rather than quality, availability rather than authenticity and so on. Agree?

He also compares retrieval methods and criteria for "successful" retrieval. For instance ... what's the difference between "I want to know X" and "I want to know ABOUT X"? Or the difference between correctness and utility as criteria of success?

As scholars, which are closer to your goals? How does the Internet shape what you find ... and what you know?

In the third chapter of the book, Dreyfus returns to the idea of distance education. He takes on Descartes ("I think, therefore I am") and says a better notion would be "I move, therefore I am" -- that is, I have a physical body so I know where I am in the world ... and where you are, too.

He gets into the same sorts of issues that Professor Bugeja talked about in seminar this week, such as that without physical presence, we lose a sense not only of touch but also of trust. We must be able to experience real risk in order to truly trust or truly learn; the feedback among actions, reactions and results in the real world is vital.(He does, however, acknowledge that disembodied learning may have a value ... just not the same value as in-person experiential learning.)

What do you think?

Is physical presence mandatory for learning? For identity development? For community formation?

Does communications technology bring anything to the party? Or, better: What might a complementary but disembodied media form look like?

Another key idea this week is the suggested contrast between consumption and production of mediated content -- between audience and user, or consumer and producer.

Interactive media, particularly the Internet, move us away from our concept of audiences (even active audiences, as in uses and grats) and even beyond the cultural studies approach to seeing media products as texts from which people ultimately construct their own meaning.

Interactive media take us to idea that individuals are the original producers of content. So we move away from effects research altogether, and start looking at media as a site for the creation of forms, information -- and identity.

What do you think?

Are we constructing content online ... or ourselves ... or both? How might such mutual constructions intersect?

What are the implications of a public space that facilitates such constructions -- or that make such constructions fluid, impermanent, mutable?

What happens to our identities when we can change ourselves with every upload?

At the end of the Web Theory chapter for this week, the authors offer several areas they see as worth exploring:

Anonymity, or the extent to which we are not known to others online, at least beyond what we choose to communicate at any given time (a notion related to embodiment, obviously).
Language, largely an issue of hegemony, and a very fluid aspect of the Web as people are constructing themselves in English but also, increasingly, in their native tongues.

Narcissism ... think, say, blogs. Is the identity we construct online inherently narcissistic? Can it ever truly move beyond "So let's talk about me"?
Collective identities, which involve community ... more on that topic next week.

Gender (also the focus of the Society Online chapter), emphasizing that access is less of an issue than what men and women are doing online -- which is not identical.

Women seem to tend to be more concerned with personal identities, particularly with personal connections to friends and family; men seem to tend to be more concerned with public sphere participation and identity (news, politics ... sports).

Does the emphasis on production rather than consumption challenge "the now-arcane binaries" of production / consumption = male / female," as the Web Theory authors ask?

Are current trends leading to a differently transgenered public sphere? What might such a thing look like -- and how might you study it?

We didn't get to talk last week (at least I didn't) about hegemony. Here are a few more or less random thoughts from those readings.

First, the one from Communication Theory offers a useful summary of the ways in which the introduction of technology into a culture has been considered -- and how it might be considered or studied (or implemented):

Determinism: Introduce a new medium or technology and boom -- immediate, apparent and direct effects on a society. That society is the better for modernization that tech brings.
Technology as change agent: Similarly top-down, but incorporates assessment of whether people’s lives are actually better within their own social, political, economic context.

Dependency theory (and reactions to it): Cultural identity and context become dominant in this more grass-roots approach. Ideally (and idealistically), tech enables self-determination.
Integrationist: Tech influences culture; culture influences text. Many contexts, many local alternatives co-exist in a fluid, non-linear, interrelated system of multi-directional change.

In his article about marginal voices online, Mitra says the Internet not only gives “voice to the voiceless” but also allows -- even requires -- them to issue a call that must be acknowledged by those in traditional positions of power.

In other words, interactivity and accessibility of the medium act as a mandate for at least some degree of leveling of global social structure. The powerful can no longer systematically drown out the marginal “Other.”

Indeed, Mitra says, “those who have traditionally been subjugated cannot blame anyone but themselves for the failure to utilize this forum.” A provocative statement ... what do you think?

Do you agree that the ability to speak online constitutes a call for acknowledgement?

What happens if such acknowledgement is not forthcoming?

Mitra also says that "those who have traditionally been subjugated cannot blame anyone but themselves for the failure to utilize this form."

Do you agree? Does the medium shift not just the ability to speak but also the responsibility to speak and be heard?

Writing about Kuwaitis' use of the internet, Wheeler proposes that local culture trumps the influence of globalization and the purported trend toward cultural homogenization.

“The simple introduction of a new communication tool does not wipe the cultural slate clean.” As they go online, Kuwaitis are adapting the medium to their own cultural needs, practices and narratives, maintaining “local consciousness of self and distinctiveness in a networked world.”

Do you agree? What are some of the ways in which local culture prevails?

In what ways, if any, is it changing in ways that may be related to changes in communication forms?

As researchers, how might you go about studying a culture different from your own? What obstacles would you need to overcome? How would you do it?

Clearly, the issue of hegemony is open to widely varying interpretations and a range of challenges. A few final questions ...

If local actions influence the system as a whole (Houston and Jackson), then the effects of globalization are multi-directional. Agree?

If the Internet not only allows the voiceless to speak but demands that they be answered (Mitra), then hegemonic forces no longer control the world’s agenda. Agree?
If local groups can easily adapt their use of the Internet to their own linguistic (Warschauer et al.) and cultural (Wheeler) purposes, then the implicit and explicit power of Western language and culture is mitigated. Agree?