David Marshall describes the term “specular economy” as where collectively we are becoming more conscious of how we present ourselves and how others perceive us and this change is migrating to the epicentre of our knowledge economy. (Marshall, 2010, p 498)
For years we have studied how we portray ourselves and how we plan our identity we portray to the outer world. In the poem ‘All the world’s stage’ by William Shakespeare, he describes how the human being portrays itself different depending on their surroundings:
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
(Shakespeare, 1623)
The notion that we change our identity to match our surroundings has later been described by a lot of scholars, one of the most popular being Erving Goffman. In his work “The presentation of self in everyday life”, Goffman describes how we construct our identity. Using the terms “backstage” and “frontstage” from the theatrical world, he describes how we as humans work as actors on a stage, with backstage being the behind the scenes where we construct and plan our identity, which we present to the outer world on the frontstage.
Before the internet we constructed and presented our identity through the different social spheres we moved in. E.g. at work you would act professional and behave accordingly to what is expected by you in the workplace, while you would behave different around your friends down at the local pub.
With the internet and new technology, “we now have an incredibly complex presentation of the self through the screens of social media via the Internet and mobile communication.” (Marshall, 2010, p 499.
On the Internet we have a lot of different profiles and thereby also a lot of different identities we must construct, present and maintain.
As in real life, the Internet provides us with a set of different social spheres where we construct and present our identity.
Given the Internet is a digital medium; there are differences in the way identity works online compared to offline. On the Internet the identity is not strictly attached to the body, thus given “disembodied identities” (Baym, 2010, p. 105).
The disembodied identities online, gives people better options to lie and adjust how they represent themself. In real life the options to alter your personality such as what sex you are and age. (Baym, 2010, p 106)
According to Baym, the disembodied identities works in a way similar to the way Shakespeare and Goffman describes it. E.g. your identity you represent on an online porn forum (hypothetical example) will in most cases differ from your representation on social media networks such as Facebook where you present yourself to family and friends.
The same goes for me. I started using the Internet in the end of the 90s when I was only around 9 years old, and signed up for a community when I was around 10. The first site I signed up to was a front-runner for social media sites in Denmark, called “Netstationen”. It worked as on online chatroom where you had an avatar and then where able to walk around in a big hotel-building with themed rooms and even rent your own private room for the virtual currency you would be credited with for the amount of time you stayed online (this was in the 56K modem days, so staying online was not for free).
I stopped using Netstationen back in 2003. Even though this is 10 years ago, some of the ways I created my online persona has similarities to the way I do with Facebook and other social media sites now. As Netstationen was by far the most popular network of its kind in Denmark around the new millennium, most of my peers used the site as well and we all know who we were on the site. This meant, that the way your represented yourself on the site, would also have an effect on how people portrayed you in real life.
Having a strong profile on the site had an impact in real-life. Most of this was based on the stuff you could buy. By having a private room with furniture, you would stand out as being ‘cooler’ than the rest of the users and it even came to a point, where the kids on my school would approach the other kids and ask to be invited to the virtual rooms to hang out and would even pay for it!
To have a strong persona online you needed to personalize your profile. On Netstationen most of this was doable by spending the online currency on the site to buy new clothes, rooms and furniture. Other parts of the creation of the profile were updating your profile info and chose a nickname.
According to Baym, the name is one of, if not, the most important parts of the online identity. (Baym, 2010, p. 109)
On Facebook, a lot of credibility is based on the name, as most people expect of you to use your real name, where as it on other sites, it is not expected that you use a real name and the nickname you pick will be a basis for your identity.
For me, the ‘name’ on social sites has had a whole different meaning given that I have frequented, what I would personally define a lot of spheres on the Internet. My online nick, which I unfortunately can’t reveal here, has been the base for my persona on a lot of different sites and networks. I have used the nickname for online gaming, poker, software-forums and for illegal activities such as hacker-forums and online music/movie/software piracy. Using the same nickname has connected my disembodies identities throughout the internet, and people who search for me by looking at my nickname on a harmless message board will, if they search long enough, find information on me related to illegal activities.
Doing this can have negative impacts, as people will be able to connect my harmless identity with would can be called a ‘darker’ side of me. One of the reasons I used my nickname to widespread is because of the strong persona I had built up surrounding it. As an awkward teenager it was a great achievement to have built a strong online persona surrounding my nickname.
Where as my online persona using my nickname on the message-boards are mostly based on what I write and showcase in the related contexts, (Baym, 2010, p. 109) my online identity connected to my ‘real life’ identity is based on a lot of other factors.
On Facebook I have learned from my prior mistakes and keep a distance from all the illegal activies online and on purpose keep out of debates regarding subjects such as online piracy and hacking/cracking when they show up on my feed and also I do not ‘like’ groups related to this.
One of the factors of the online identity is based on the groups we like. We built our identity by liking and joining groups (Baym, 2010, p. 111). So if I liked certain groups such as fanpages for “Anonymous”, people will connect this information about me to their whole portrayal of my online persona.
With a site such as Facebook, information we give out in the real world is missing. People cannot see body language and a lot of the information people have about me is based on previous meetings in real life. The lack of information about people on Facebook does, that your peers built up the ‘missing’ pieces based on how your present yourself through cues such as a profile picture, your name, the way you write, likes, your friends and what they do. A lot of factors are involved when presenting your identity on Facebook. (Baym, 2010, p. 119)
To deal with this, I have taken a few steps to be able to get the most optimal representation of myself. I do not post controversial stuff on my wall, I do not allow strangers to view my profile and I have set my private options in a way, so that I have to approve every thing that gets posted on my wall or that I get tagged in.
By doing this I am able to control the flow of information regarding me and sort out the negative posts or pictures that can have a negative impact on the way I want to portray myself.
This has lead to my profile being more ‘clean’ that it was previously when I allowed everything on my wall and got tagged in a lot of photos that would portray a bad image of me. An example of this when I was tagged in an image where I was marijuana, which was up on my wall for more than 10 hours until I discovered it and removed the tag. In the meantime my family and friends saw the picture and added the information about me to their whole portrayal of my identity.
Sorting out information can have a negative impact though as people may be seeing my online persona as being ‘shallow’ compared to my offline persona and this also means I risk getting ‘caught’ with my untruthful information. I try to avoid this by letting in information that may seem to be harmful for the picture I try to represent. This can be a drunken selfies taken from the night before or posts where my friends make fun of the football-teams I support.
I do this to add authenticity to my profile, that people hopefully will acknowledge and thereby accept the me I present to them (Baym, 2010, p. 120)
References:
Marshall, P.D 2010, ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no. 6
Baym, Nancy 2010, ‘Personal Connections In The Digital Age, Polity Press
Shakespeare, William, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, 1623
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