Production

I did a lot of talking during pre-production about what I wanted this project to be like, and now I have finally begun the actual production for this video. So far I am very excited and happy about how things are turning out. As of now I have interviewed six people, two of them were close friends that had verbally agreed to help out, one of them was a classmate who also happened to be part of the FYS where she had to unplug, the other one was a first year student who is my friends brother, and the last two were faculty members who I got in touch with through email.

I have only slightly looked over the interviews and am planning on loading them later this week onto the computer so that I can really start to analyze what people have said. Once I have done that I am planning on uploading one or two short clips of the things I have found interesting onto the blog. However, one thing that my friend Sam said that I made a mental note to go back to when filming was the way he uses facebook to represent himself. He spoke about how now that his mom is on facebook he has to be more careful about how he represents himself, and be much more aware of what he chooses to upload online.

What Sam mentioned about representing yourself made me think back to some readings I have done that talk about how social networks are used as a way to represent yourself in the most attractive way to your peers. For example, in the reading, Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook, the article mentions, "With the advent of new social technologies, users no longer have to rely on an individual's self-composed emails...to garner impressions about a subject" (531). Essentially what this is saying is that now with social networks and new forms of technology that allow us to portray more of our selves then let's say written text it allows those on the receiving end of this information to pass judgment on what they are seeing. People are starting to share their social lives online and whether you are like Sam, who feels the need to be more careful about what he is sharing, or whether you want to share everything, there is always going to be someone on the receiving end viewing this information and sometimes "the information on these sites contains information provided not only by the creator, but by the creator's friends" (532). Who is posting on our facebook walls and the amount of wall posts we get says a lot about ourselves just as much as what we reveal to people such as our "hometown, birthday, preferred activities etc" (532). Not only does the information we place on these sites say a lot about us, but "another source of information on one's profile comes from other social network members: An individual's friends can leave messages on one's profile" (533).

This quote actually reminds me of a personal anecdote that took place my junior year of high school, since it was so long ago I cannot remember the exact details, but what essentially happened was I posted a message on my friends wall. By posting on her wall instead of sending her a personal message, this made what I posted open for all of those who can view her profile to see. A few days later when I went back to her profile I noticed that what I had written on her wall had been deleted and it wasn't by me. When I asked her why she deleted it, she replied that she didn't want people to see it. "Recent research has shown that friends' wall postings also affect judgments of profile owners" and according to Walther et al. he has "found statements made by the profile owner's friends had significant impact on observers' ratings of the social attractiveness and credibility of the profile owner" which is called the Brunswick Lens Model (534). Therefore, it is obvious that my friend was embarrassed by what I said and how it reflected on her so she deleted it.

Facebook has allowed people to (again going to reference to the movie the Social Network) but it has allowed us to live our lives online, but this online life is different because we are protected by a computer screen. There is actually a spoof youtube video called, "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" and although the video is a joke it touches upon some interesting concepts. One concept in particular is when the lyrics say, "What role do you wanna play?/ I'm just a click away night or day/ And if you think I'm not the one/ Log off, log off and we'll be done." The lyrics are saying that you can hide behind this avatar you have created and whenever you want to go you can sign off, you can deal with online life whenever you want. Although, avatars usually refer to role playing games like World of Warcraft, I believe that facebook has become a place for the creation of avatars. Think about it, on facebook you have a profile picture, and majority of people put up pictures that are show them in a good light and make them attractive to their friends.



According to the Social Information Processing Theory, which "suggests that people avail themselves of whatever information is available within a CMC environment with which to form impressions, despite the absence of the nonverbal cues that typically drive impressions in offline communications" (533). Meaning, people are still finding a way to have the same sort of social interaction they would have face-to-face but online. They are still making impressions of their friends and there is still a "sociometric popularity-that which responds to the number of friends or connections one has, which may be reflected in the coefficient of friends displayed on the profiles of Facebook users" (535). To garner these friends, people create profiles that make them attractive because "previous research suggests that people simply prefer to associate with those whom they find physically attractive" (535). Therefore with one or two clicks of the mouse you can create a profile that makes yourself attractive to others, and "given that there appears to be reciprocal relationship between popularity and attraction (and other evaluations), it seems plausible an individual who appears to be popular on Facebook (i.e. has lots of friends) is likely to be seen as more physically attractive" (536).

Therefore, as my friend did to me and as Sam has started to do with his Mom they are altering there profile, whether deleting unwanted comments from their profile or de-tagging photos that show them in a poor light, people are constructing images that will make them most attractive to their peers.

Works Cited

Walther, Joseph, Stephanie Tom Tong, Brandon Von Der Heide, and Lindsey Langwell. "Too Much of a Good Thing? 
              The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook." Journal of 
              Computer Mediated 13 (2008) 531-549.