Category Archives: Participation Entries

Self Assessment; it’s all over.

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Heres my original self assessment matrix - SelfAssessmentMatrix, click on it to view the specifics of what i’m assessing myself on…

1.  Attendance

Throughout this half of the semester, I have maintained a consistent level of attendance in both lectures and tutorials. As outlined in my original matrix, merely attending class was not enough, I aimed to be an active and attentive class member who consistently contributed to discussions and asked questions. I feel I have definitely met this area of my self-assessment. I was an enthusiastic member of class discussions and participated in debates on the readings and offered a lot of considered opinions during discussions of the major project. I tweeted during lectures and reflected on the ideas via my blog. I pinpointed key areas of interest and elaborated on them further including experimentation with how I could apply the theories to my own practice. I also took my interaction in the Twitter feed one step further, by engaging in dialogue with guest lecturers and other class members in order to troubleshoot, strategize and get feedback on proposed ideas and pieces of work I was in the process of producing.

 Overall Mark: 96/100

 2. Textured/Consistent Blogging.

I really focused on quality in my blog and developed a range of different posts that reflected my own personal journey through the theory and ideas posed to me. I think my blogging really improved this semester as it was a lot more analytical rather than me simply recapping the ideas I found interesting and engaging in dialogue with them – this time I went further and really looked at the ideas and how they could be seen in the work I was producing. My blog has a lot of images I find inspiring and have used to further my ideas and explorations into the journey we took with our major assignment. I think my blog provides a lot of insight to my own personal journey through the major project and the theory, and my voice has developed a lot more, developing a distinctive tone of informed fascination with the ideas I’m engaging in.

 Overall Mark: 95/100

 3. Online Presence.

Developing and maintaining an online presence proved to be the most difficult task in the outset of the course. However, as I progressed, I found myself drawn to the new platforms I had begun to experiment and engage in.  Participating in their dialogue has become sewn into the fabric of the way I use the Internet and form connections with others in the media world. I have become particularly active on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as the three work in wonderful harmony together allowing a textured representation of me to develop online. Twitter has allowed me to form connections with industry professionals that would have otherwise been unlikely. In forming these connections, I have opened myself up to a range of potential collaborations in the future. I feel my online presence has been enhanced by my knowledge of hash tags and tagging all my updates, which has been directly influenced by my engagement in the online world. By developing a glossi page, I can also combine all my social media activity into one space that I feel ‘sums me up’ in an aesthetically pleasing way. In my matrix I said I wanted to find a community and find places to show and develop my work, and I feel this is definitely I goal I have managed to reach beyond the confines of the course. I could have experimented more with other platforms and gone beyond the major three I was instantly drawn to, but I felt that by using the ones I most enjoyed engaging in, I would be able to produce more consistent and quality driven posts that were relevant to me.

Overall Mark: 90/100

4. Readings

I completed all the set readings of this half of the semester and did so with a great deal of reflection as evidenced on my blog. I think I managed to apply the ideas posed in the readings to my own work and show the implications of their suggestions in the evolution of my perspectives on the media landscape and how I can be an active driver of content. Harold Jenkins theories on Media Convergence were particularly thought provoking and I think my engagement with the ideas is very evident in the progression of my blog.

Overall Mark: 95/100

Add it up…

(96+95+90+95 = 376)/400 = 94

 Overall Mark = HD

Self Assessment Time.

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I guess it’s time to see if I followed the recipe…

Heres my original self assessment matrix - SelfAssessmentMatrix, click on it to view the specifics of what i’m assessing myself on…

1. Attendance

This semester I have attended every class/lecture possible excluding the ones I outlined in my Matrix due to prior Room with a View broadcasting commitments. I also completed a blog post each week reflecting on the ideas discussed and concepts put forward during each tutorial. I feel I was an active member of class and prepared material to share when asked to. I had appropriate comments to contribute and had no issues engaging in discussions on the readings or in general. During lectures I was an active live tweeter, especially in the Jonathan Hutchinson guest Skype lecture and engaged consistently with the #im212 hashtag. I think my follow blog posts on ideas we explored during tutorials go beyond mere recapping and delve to explore beyond the course material.

Overall Mark: 95/100

2. Textured/Consistent Blogging

I think my Media studies blog is a highly textured space and explores a lot of related yet diverse ideas. This semester in particular, I think it provides a great map of my exploration into the world of social media with a good amount of reflection from outside. It also contains a lot of screenshots of my own work and interactions with others which I think provides a good picture of my progression as a student.

Overall Mark: 85/100

3. Online Presence

In my matrix, I outlined developing an online presence as vital yet challenging. I surprised myself with how active I became in developing my presence online and how quickly I was rewarded when I joined specific communities. I experimented a lot with different platforms at the beginning of the semester and in the last half decided on the platforms I preferred to use and began posting to them regularly. On Twitter I have built up quite a good list of relevant industry people that I follow which connects me with emerging ideas in the media industry and helps me to develop my own online ID. I think my Tumblr is another fine example of a community I contribute to regularly and receive comments, feedback and interaction from other users. My contributions on POOL is where the most collaboration has happened with other users remixing and readapting my own orignal work.

Overall Mark: 90/100

4. Readings

Once I actually figured out how to access the readings (library home page DUH!), I completed and enjoyed all of them and they definitely enhanced my understanding of the importance of developing an online identity and what being a writer in this new online paradigm of user generated content and self publishing that Web 2.0 is constructed on. I think I was able to connect ideas set out in the readings to the formulation of my Online ID Slideshow with clarity and ease due to the way I had kept a record of my responses in my blog posts.

Overall Mark: 85/100

(95+90+85+85)/400= 88

 

SELF ASSESSMENT MARK: 88/100 


How I will Assess mah self.

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(53) Wall Photos

1. Attendance - This doesn’t mean merely rocking up for class. This relies on me being attentive and present in discussions via contribution and asking questions, it means taking notes in lectures and recapping on them later on to find out about things that surprised or intrigued me.

NUTSHELL: – 3-4 Posts a week, varying in length.

2. Consistent/Textured Blogging – Blogging my academic life has become quite normal to me, and I think I do this quite well, it important that I publish often and with a range of ideas expressed on varying platforms. I would also like to enhance my blog and make it more reflective of my presence on the net as a whole – relevant research (and documenting of the process) here is key. Posts should include a range of content such as reflections on coursework, readings, tutorials and lectures as well as troubleshooting records, milestones I reach and new ideas and programs I encounter in the process as well as a weekly post reflecting on the week passed.

NUTSHELL: 2 Posts must be directly related to the ideas of the course rather than me bringing things from outside.

3. Social Media Profile – I want the blog to be a kind of evolution of my own social media profile and I think this criteria can really only be assessed at the very end once I have discovered how far this can go/the implications on my blog and my ability to spread the words of my blog onto other platforms. In addition, I want to become a more active blogger/social media presence by forming a more solid and interest specific community, this will involve formulating more comments and interacting more the environment around me such as using #im212 hashtag, accessing our class blogroll, examining social media profiles of professionals in the field and so forth.

NUTSHELL: Stop lurking start contributing.

 

Tutorial Notes – Wk#2

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Donath//
  • Social implications of social networking sights on one’s identity - how you profile yourself online can be so different from your ‘real-life’ self
  • You can form a chain of connections upon the identity you craft for yourself
  • Decontextualised Links – you can’t see where the connections happen, nor the web of networking that could potentially stem from them.
  • Public sites (Twitter) and more niche discussions that you can have more control over and where smaller more focused discussions can manifest. You can define yourself by these smaller more intimate groups, or form yet another identity while using them.
  • How reliable is social networking? Can you trust the connections you form? Is it a reliable depiction of one’s true self?
  • Social Networking grants freedom to those who feel unable to express themselves, however this can become a complex social problem that leads to circumstances where people kind of forget how to interact in social situations or in contrast, loose the inhibitions which regulate behaviour in real life.
  • Authenticity online doesn’t really exist.
Remember More Than You'd Like To ForgetRosen//
  • Focuses on citizen journalism – he is a journalist, and due to this his writing style maintains a level of professionalism but is highly engaging and less academic than the Donath readings which exhibit a far more traditional format.
  • The readings pose exciting prospects for us as contributors and members of this new audience who are afforded a new level of control over what were once sole authorities.
  • The writing readers – observers turned reporters, we have control. Blogs as news. We no longer ‘look up’ towards traditional news sources, we ‘look sideways’ to other citizens via social networking and blogs.
  • If all should speak, who will be left to listen? The audience is no longer at the mercy of the media, and we own the eyeballs.
Assessment//
  • Reflective learning journal – Self assessment Wk 6 & Wk 12 (Include summary post on your blog)
  • Develop 4 self assesment criteria you can work to throughout the semester.
Examples//
  • Regular posts – shows enough engagement in the content of the course.
  • Posts about things outside the course
  • Blog needs to have texture – doesn’t have to be purely text based, bring in links, video content, images etc
  • Draw everything together in the final summary posts and provide links to show your journey throughout the semester.
  • Go deeper than simple summary – include critical analysis of readings and bring in issues that relate to the course in an academic way
  • References to other blogs and the way they have inspired evolution in thought/creative practice.
  • Comment on other people’s blogs, ‘Ping-backs’, create an internal community and reference their work in relation to own. Look at communities as a new kind of web phenomena and analyse the way they work.
  • Readability, accessibility and navigation must be easy on your blog – Tag & Categorise your posts to make them more widely available to expanses of audiences
  • Reflect, Reflect, Reflect!
  • Note lightbulb moments and highlight important things you have realised or noticed during the semester.
  • Make connections.

Sunday Session.

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Tumblr_m25nxrnkb01r3fceto1_500_large“everything will be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, it’s not the end”

This is a quote from the movie I just went and saw – Mum’s choice and really, it was a bit over my head. A group of seniors on a sort of last grasp ‘gap year’ in India, staying in a hotel, which like them is past their prime traverse indian culture and are entertained by the young owner who is responsible for the above quote.

As usual, I found myself linking things back to Integrated Media, I have found this to be happening a lot during this course, probably more than in any other even. I think it’s these kind of universal questions about ‘why we are the way we are’ that are so often pondered in films are the kinds of questions we explore in a more grounded, specific way.

During the movie he also says – “you are the man my mother wishes I was…you see things as they are, not as you wish they could be”.

I think both these quotes are extremely important in relation to the ideas of making do with what we have, of recognising what surrounds us and the potential that brings, it’s not about perpetually looking for something that isn’t there, it’s about using things that have always been there to create something that wasn’t there before. This is probably the most important lesson I have learnt this year, and something which I see as resulting from my participation guidelines from the start of the year…

In our first lecture, Adrian spoke about naivety as something which opens the gateway to becoming something after naive, and I think what he was saying was that by opening ourselves up to unknown concepts, we are, by definition becoming naive to our ideas of the past and opening ourselves up for the absorption of the new, and I wrote that I wanted to

5. Become illiterate in taught literacy.

I was being a wanker, but I think this wanky comment actually translated into what has happened. I have begun to totally reconsider the way I work in the medium and this has cancelled out the two ‘most important’ participation criteria I set out

1. Dig deeper if we don’t understand something, don’t just palm it off as unachievable, research.

&

2. Spend time doing things you dont like doing – this means spending actual time reading programme manuals, online forums and experimenting with the programmes.

I know now that knowing how to ‘drive’ these programmes means nothing, it gives me the tools to create, but tools are not enough. It’s not enough to know a programme manual back to front, you have to know what to do with the affordances it offers.

So, in terms of participation criteria, I guess, by definition I have failed dismally, but in terms of my participation in my own learning, my engagement with the ideas of the course, and my overall feeling about myself as a student, as a ‘maker’ and as a person – I feel fulfilled, and a hell of a lot more relaxed about my own work, and for me, thats enough…

I DID IT MY WAY

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Yes ladies and gentlemen, boys and girl, I, Zoe Annabel conquered a new program ALL BY MYSELF which i outlined as something I wanted to do in my participation entry

I decided to give iMovie a go as a simple, fast alternative to Final Cut. I know, most of you will be about to kick my ass for using such a primitive/simple piece of crap and moreover for actually thinking that im awesome for figuring it out, but baby steps cynics, baby steps.

For what I needed, iMovie was actually really good – it has a simple yet effective interface which is great for quick yet precise editing.

You can split clips, insert music and put a simple range of effects on easily such as slow mo, fades, transitions etc.

One thing I don’t like is it’s seemingly undying love for iPhoto and iTunes as they are the only places they provide on the home menus to select files from easily. This is annoying, especially as I dont use iPhoto to store video – funny that.

One fantastic feature is it’s ‘Share’ menu which allows me to link iMovie with my Vimeo account and upload directly.

Overall, iMovie did what I needed it to do, it reduced a lot of fiddling which I would have done in Final Cut. I think this is a valuable tool to have while making these sketch videos as it is quick and simple and won’t unrender randomly or take up all my disc space.

If anybody is interested (understand if your totes above it) this video from Vimeo is a good source.

PARTICIPATION.

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Tumblr_li22mvukf21qckj3no1_500_large

…Not only a list of things that might make up participation but also then thinking about which two we would find easy to do, which two we would find hard, and which two would make the biggest difference to your experience of the subject (positively!)…

So, what do I find the hardest thing to do from the list, but if I did them, would make the most difference to my work?

1. Dig deeper if we don’t understand something, don’t just palm it off as unachievable, research.

&

2. Spend time doing things you dont like doing – this means spending actual time reading programme manuals, online forums and experimenting with the programmes.

I find it really difficult to understand the language of ‘nerds’ on forums attempting to explain how to use software/applications. I use software in the way that gets me a result, but not necessarily the best result because I don’t push myself to fully understand their capabilities. I also find it hard to be confident in my own work as I feel technologically‘un-innovative’ and like I can’t fully realise my ideas due to this. Over the last year I have become very good at going to peers for advice, but i’m realising this hasn’t exactly helped me in starting to understand ‘nerd speak’ but helped me to use certain applications and softwares. I need to improve my problem solving skills and if I can do this it will not only help me be more satisfied with myself, but it will also help me to produce better and more well rounded, innovative work.

I plan to record my troubleshooting on my blog, and keep a record of problems faced, methods used to combat them, and if I have ultimately been successful and also if I used the help of others. Using new applications online to enhance my practices is also an important part of this criteria. Achieving this particular criteria is important to me because i’m tired of constantly feeling like i’m hitting the same roadblocks and not being able to get past them. 

and…what do I find easiest to do on the list…?

3.Collaborate/seek and give advice – this means working well in class and in groups in terms of sharing and contributing ideas.

The amount of group work and peer assessment in this course is one of my favourite things about it, I feel that by sharing our work we are constantly pushed to make work that is not generic, work that is constantly evolving and work that can always been made better. I love to work in groups because I think it gives us a taste of what ‘the real world’ is like, our industry is so much about networking, collaboration and sharing information that we cannot be unengaged with others or closed to their advice.

&

4. Source and record external sources – this means updating my blog regularly mapping my own creative process and what has influenced it.

i’ll admit it – im a trawler. I trawl blogs, photography websites, art gallery websites, photo galleries, culture sites, entertainment blogs, Facebook pages, Tumblr’s – you name it, i’m looking at it. I think this is one thing I am very good at (and perhaps this is my problem) – finding inspiration and value in the work of others (maybe im just a big pirate…arrgghh). I’m constantly linking and joining bits of work together and finding new and exciting ways to use the internet – if only i could follow their lead!

WILDCARD!

5. Become illiterate in taught literacy

At first, Thomas Pike said this as wanky ‘im a philosophy student’ joke, but as i think about it more and more, I think that being open to reconsidering traditional concepts of how we learn and read and approach our own practice is going to be a vital part of this course.

In our first lecture, Adrian spoke about naivety as something which opens the gateway to becoming something after naive, and I think what he was saying was that by opening ourselves up to unknown concepts, we are, by definition becoming naive to our ideas of the past and opening ourselves up for the absorption of the new. I think IM is going to be a great subject for me as it seems like we are encouraged to just flow with our ideas, not to over analyse them or stress about perfection, but to find perfection in imperfection and glory in spontaneity and success in failure. Hence, my liking for the paradoxical criteria.

Participation

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par·tic·i·pa·tion

[pahr-tis-uh-pey-shuhn]

noun

1.

an act or instance of participating.
2.

the fact of taking part, as in some action or attempt:participation in a celebration.
3.

a sharing, as in benefits or profits
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“This participation task is designed to get you to start becoming responsible and self-directed as a student in preparation for becoming a media and communication professional.”

In my first post on participation I defined what participation meant to me:

  • To me, participation means to take an active approach to your own learning, to be constantly self critical and perpetually open to new ideas and concepts.
I feel I have been super proactive in this course, probably more so than in any of my other classes. This is mainly due to the fact that I found it was increasingly impossible to live my life without being literally confronted with the ideas of the course and I was keen to build on them. If you engage in the Network, your engaging in the ideas of the course. I found this to be highly motivating (and convenient) and highly conducive to allowing me to be open to new ideas and concepts, which, much to my surprise, I found to be really quite exciting.
  • Participation means to fail spectacularly rather than to coast through along the safe path, and requires a degree of honesty and the ability to recognise own mistakes or misguided ideas.
I think it’s fair to say I haven’t experienced that rite of the ‘spectacular fail’ as of yet, sigh, will have to wait till second year. I managed to ‘get off’ the safe path in about week four, about the time I wrote my second participation entry. I changed the theme of my blog without breaking it, I started coding, I downloaded Dropbox and Cyberduck, learnt what a Googledoc was and popped my Tumblr cherry.
The second area of participation I identified was:
  • In a nut shell – part-icicpation means to take part in your own work, assess it constantly, measure it against other standards, revisit it, don’t be afraid to trial new ideas and be accountable for the result – just go for it.
I really focused on this area of my criteria, I was constantly seeking out work to find inspiration and foundations. I developed an earnest love for blogging and came across so many incredibly written, designed and maintained blogs that I was inspired to nurture mine and make it as pretty as I could and revisited ideas that I felt were constantly evolving. I exercised the art of ‘Just going for it’ especially in HTML where I felt totally confronted, confused and utterly scared. I decided to take quite a defiant, ‘fake it till you make it’ approach and try not to fret about the outcome too much. I looked at other websites for inspiration and sought advice from those around me, and I’m so so so lucky that the people in this course are so forthcoming with their knowledge and generous with their time (Thanks Jono)
So…
a. What do you think you have done better?
I’m really proud of my blog and I think it’s a complete show of my growth as a student this semester. In my initial posts, my trepidation and misunderstanding is so painfully evident, but as I read back through it, I’m surprised and slightly empowered by the voice I find and the texture I establish. In my blog I really tried to include posts with different kinds of voices/modes of writing via personal and course related posts. I was very wary that blogs need to visually interesting and provide a degree of diversity in terms of content and length. I therefore tried to include visual texture by including quotes, pictures, videos, interesting links etc and by writing in different styles on different topics such as critiquing software, news articles, art, ideas, academia, rambles/rants etc. I also learnt the importance of organisation via categorisation and tagging and now understand it makes my writing relevant in the Network and accesible to others.
b. What do you think you have learnt to do better?
I think I have learnt to participate more in the ideas of the course and reflect on my own ideas and my process and acquisition of knowledge. This has been facilitated by the blog. By learning the power blogs have in the online community, I have learnt to use my blog as an accessible  record of my own learning process – kind of like the most organised notebook I have ever had. I have also learnt to solve my own problems via the plethora of forums on the internet – I no longer slam the lid of my laptop down or exit my browser when i’m confronted with an issue – I google it…duhhhhhh.
c. What do you think you could have done better?
I think I could have been more productive in learning code, although I’m super proud of my efforts in using it this semester. I have done all the required work, learnt how to use Cyberduck and actually taken the time to understand what it’s doing and constructed my own webpages for the Hypertext Essay. However, due to the abundance of tutorials/codes on the internet, I should have taken the time to invest in learning some more advanced stuff to enhance my work from beyond what it is. This is further explained in my third participation entry.
So, overall I feel I have been an active participant in tutorials and have attended all of them and a very reliable attendee of lectures (the online one’s were a struggle to get out of bed for…nooooooooot). I have been an joyful blogger, a supportive group member who participates in idea generation and problem solving and I feel I have completed both the Blogging and the Annotated Bibliography assessment tasks to a high standard. I have taken an active role in my own learning & feel I am more active in the Network because of that.
So cheers to participation, you served me well!

Participation and Justification.

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easy.

This coffee is a delicious accompaniment to the not so delicious task of self-assessment…

So, we are getting close the end of the semester and i’m honestly shocked at how fast this time has flown by. I have really enjoyed Networked Media and I feel it has opened me up to so many new ideas and concepts surrounding the way we write in the media and the network and just how important it is to be competent and informed about these styles and conventions.

Participating in this course, for me, has not been something which I have had to force myself to do – I find the concepts really enjoyable and the ideas both intrigue and excite me. I LOVE my blog, it’s kind of become like my little baby, I feel bad if i neglect it and want to nourish it with a varied diet of content.

In my initial post in on participation I wrote that I wanted my blog to resemble a ‘participation journal’ and stand as a reflection of my own personal learning process throughout the semester. I definitely believe I have achieved this in my blog as it has become a journal and includes varying textures, writing styles and content which is both from the course and made up of my own reflections and ideas I have linked back to the course. I feel like I have made the transition from viewing my blog as merely an ‘assignment’ to viewing it as a legitimate learning tool and a fantastic tool for creative expression.

The main area I cited as needing MUCH IMPROVEMENT was my engagement with new programs and practices online and I vowed to stop sticking my head in the technological sand and start  (to quote myself)

using technology to overcome problems with it.

In this regard, I feel I have come along way. I have documented my processes in HTML and how I have applied what I’m leaning to my own project. I now have and LOVE Cyberduck, Dropbox, Delicious, Firebug and know how to use a GoogleDoc. My life is simpler – but i’m also less afraid to try these seemingly ‘foreign’ and ‘scary’ pieces of software. Im actually enjoying the process of becoming more savvy because being more savvy means being more connected in more ways tat are increasingly convenient and time saving.

My skills in HTML are nowhere near where I would like them to be, but I can make a page, insert tables, text, backgrounds, images and links – I have enough knowledge to build on and thats what I aimed to achieve in the course.

My favourite element of the course continues to be the ideas surrounding Hypertext and this is a concept I feel I have examined in a deep and fairly sophisticated way.

Overall, I think (I hope) in soaring for a HD mark, for my blog especially as I feel that it is what I have invested the most of my self in, yes because it is quite an easy task, but mainly because I really enjoy the entire process of reflecting and recording things I am discovering and revisiting them later on for my own reference.

STRENGTH: Volume of blog posts, Tutorial and Lecture attendance, Links to other blogs and interesting pages I have sourced

WEAKNESSES: Not enough focus on HTML, still intimidated by complex ideas and tend to shy away from them, too much pointless rambling and not enough HTML practicing!

Well, the coffee’s all but disappeared and I think it’s about time to head home. I’ll probably write a blog post about the journey…

 

 

Tutorial #4…or not.

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Okay, so rocked up to class only to find a lovely note on the door letting me know the tute was cancelled, of course, this morning i failed to check my emails. Anyway, i have decided to solider on without Hugh or Seth and update my WordPress blog all by myself. It now has a  block quote button in the kitchen sink…fancy.  Okay, so it really wasn’t that difficult, and after completing the video tutorial on beginning the Hypertext Essay i’m free to kind of blog away. So, i have decided to address one of my points of participation that I have outlined – to read more blogs/academic journals.

So, i came across this idea of Digital Identity which Wikipedia simply defines as; ‘the aspect of digital technology that is concerned with the mediation of people’s experience of their own identity and the identity of other people and things’

So, when we craft an identity on the web, how ‘accurate’ is it’s correspondance with our real selves, and is this a conscious or unconscious decision that we make? Is the way we relate to our digital identity steeped simply in context, do we unconsciously follow a formula for blog writing where we feel we need to project a certain style that fits with the form? I think this idea was referenced by Inger Bergman in her lecture when she said not to ‘pose’ as something your not, to really be yourself and not follow a preconceived idea of what a blog ‘should be’.

In light of this, I did some research on the discourse surrounding online identities.  I found ‘The identity blog’ which although mainly concerned with the legalities and privacy issues surrounding digital identity, provides a great introduction on the issues surrounding it.

KEY CONCEPTS:

  • Digital identity has a complex relationship with flesh-and-blood identity/natural identity. Sometimes we want digital identity to correspond to natural identity, and sometimes we want the two to be isolated, or the knowledge of the connection to be highly controlled.
  • This leads us to conclude that digital identity must embrace both being public and being private.  It must provide both anonymity and pseudonymity.  It must embrace being public and being private.  It always exists in a context, and we expect the context to have the same degree of separation we are used to in the natural world, even though space and time no longer serve as insulation.
The whole idea of identity is one I am continually fascinated by and have found to be even more fascinating in the context of social networking, blogging and online ‘profiles’.  The idea that one can craft an entirely make believe person into existence online, to me, is both scary and intriguing, but not so entirely surprising. After all, after a long day of having to be ‘you’, i think a lot of people would find it therapeutic to lapse into the life of another. I am in no way endorsing creepy dudes posing as 15 year old girls or anything, but i think a lot of creativity, inspiration and knowledge can be found as people find a way to express the passions or ideas they perhaps feel clash with thier daily ‘flesh and blood’ identity.
In signing off, I wanted to divert your attention briefly to this website that my brother told me about. Formspring.com is a Facebook add-on which creates a kind of duplicate wall where ANYBODY can ask you ANYTHING ANONYMOUSLY. Yeah, it’s mostly just people telling you stuff they dont have the balls to say to your face, like that they like your hair cut or that your a slut or something, was my brothers first response when I incredulously asked him why anybody would want a free for all wall of abuse? I guess in these days – its just a different form of communication. As a Formspring ‘Network’ people are connected by the knowledge that the people posting questions have some knowledge of them, and that, i suppose people are noticing them.
This article, published by the New York Times provides an array of different perspectives and begs the ultimate question surrounding the legitimacy of Formspring’s contribution to ‘social networking’ – is it simply a forum for faceless insults and a place where we become unaccountable for what we say? Or does it in fact provide a space where people can exchange a more ‘flesh and blood’ conversation that they would otherwise not?
This book (Online communication: linking technology, identity and culture By Andrew F. Wood, Matthew J. Smith) also has a really interesting case study of  ‘Julie Graham’- an online identity which gathered many followers who were outraged to find out she was a complete fabrication