Facebook vs. MySpace – Reclaiming and Reinventing Identity Online

I’m no stranger to virtual communities.  In addition to being well read on the theory and research on the topic, I have been a member of a variety of these communities since I got ‘online’ over 10 years ago.  Last May I became a member of MySpace, the largest virtual community in existence to date.  It wasn’t long before I developed a full blown addiction to online communication via MySpace.  I am intrinsically motivated by interaction and communication; and MySpace provided me with a social venue to explore while I was confined at home taking care of my two autistic children.  It quickly became a place for me to write, interact, play and meet new people.

Due to the nature of the Myspace venue…you get to build your own neighborhood by making “friends” with people who share your interests and ideas.  While I sought out a number of my “real-life” friends and acquaintances through this venue, I was far more interested in expanding my own personal network into a global context.  But before I could forge my network pathways I had to transform my self into a digital self and translate my identity into html.   

People represent themselves online in a variety of ways.  From their avatar to the “tone of voice” they display with their choice in font.  From a practical point of view the selections users make online when they go for a roam around their virtual neighborhood are akin to those that they make when they venture out into their own physical realities.  Likewise they decorate their virtual “home” with animated gifs of dancing Homer and glittery graphics of faery queens.  Embedding code in a profile page allows the user to expand and play with their self; creatively expressing and expanding identity through these simple elements of text, colour, design and graphics.  

Personally my own virtual translation is carefully considered and very fluid.  I try to represent my true self  as much as possible on my own MySpace profile.  Granted there are serious issues surrounding the notion of the true self when it is one which is so deliberately manipulated; identity construction on Myspace can be as a reflexive process as identity construction in the so-called ‘real world’.  Users get reactions from other users; which in turn influences how they maintain their personas. 

While there are a number of limitations to the translation of identity into a two dimensional context, there are also many liberating aspects in re-creating your self into code.  It is well documented that online communication can help an individual overcome issues that may interfere in real-life situations.  Gender, race, appearance, and personal history, elements of the self which can create barriers in face-to-face interaction, can all be minimized on a site like Myspace; especially if you only befriend people who have never met you in a real-life context. 

As is the case with accelerated interactionists such as myself, I started to explore other social networking sites.  While MySpace was a good venue for expanding my identity into a global context, there was a lack in interaction among people I knew in my real-life.  I had tried hi5 and was unimpressed, and use of Yahoo 360 resulted in a few odd requests from Spanish strangers looking for a “good time.”  A few of my anti-MySpace friends had been raving about Facebook, and why it was superior to MySpace, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Once I had my account set up, I imported my list of gmail contacts.  I was surprised at the number of contacts who were already on Facebook… far more than MySpace.  Not only were there more local people, but there were more local groups.  As I started to add my present real-life friends, faces from my past began to emerge as well.  I couldn’t believe that there was even a group dedicated to my elementary school.  It was astounding (and slightly unnerving) to be instantly reconnected to those long repressed and forgotten experiences of growing up. 

Facebook operates different than MySpace though.  It works on a more closed system network than the free-for-all on Myspace.  There are very few profiles that exist who do not belong to the real-life people that operate them.  You won’t find a dozen profiles dedicated to Nietzsche or Kermit the Frog; neither will you find bands desperately seeking an global audience of fans… you will find people on Facebook, people in their closest representation to their true selves online.  There is no place for personal code on Facebook either; all profiles are the standard blue and white issue.  The photo tagging element adds a neat little feature, where anyone can tag anyone in anyone else’s photos. 

As I got over the shock of seeing so many ghosts, I started to cruise profiles… find out what people have been up to and if any of those old relationships might be worth starting up again… I began to notice that people who I remember to be mortal enemies in high school were buddies on Facebook; in fact it seemed that everybody in my graduating class were interacting with one another.  As I dug deeper I realized that a lot of these people had moved away and were just happy to be reconnected with familiar faces of home.  This got me to thinking about James Cote.

James Cote proposed an taxonomic identity model which followed through the course (and type) of human societal arrangements.  He suggested that the identity of today’s human was fragmented and uncertain because of the lack of societal markers in this highly advanced globalized world.  Where in pre-modern and agricultural societies identity was so bound up with cultural roles and tradition, there was really no need to question who one was; identity wasn’t tainted by choice, if your father was a blacksmith… you were a blacksmith.

With a global market economy littering people around the planet, a solid sense of “home” community has been largely lost.  Ask someone where they come from nowadays and they will generally ask for clarification “Do you mean where I was born?  Or where I live now?”  Perhaps Facebook offers a little bit of that community identity to those who have scattered their identity across a number of different geographic areas; with every move they leave a part of their narrative behind. 

There is more to be said on this whole identity fragmentation train… but I fear this post is getting far too long as it is.

So which is better… Facebook or MySpace? I suppose that depends on what your looking for in an online community.  If you want to test elements of your identity and become someone else for a little while… MySpace will suit this goal.  If you want to reclaim those aspects of your identity that you have lost or forgotten… Facebook is the virtual community for you.

Virtual Ethnography

(from a 2005 paper)

The Internet is a significant piece of technology that is reorganizing social relations in the larger society.  Researchers have identified three categories of proposed effects that the Internet is having on modern culture and society: it is changing the role of time and space; it is changing communication and the role of mass communication; it challenges the dualisms of representation and reality, the authentic and the fabricated, and technology and nature (Hine, 2000:5).

There are two prevalent theoretical approaches to studying the Internet’s effects on social organization, representation and formation and interpersonal communication.  The first approach assumes that the Internet is a social context in its own right (Hine, 2000:9).  Howard Rhinegold (1993) was instrumental in bringing this apporach to Internet studies.  He argued that the Internet could provide a venue for “real” community formation.  He brought the notion of the “virtual community” into the foray of a variety of disciplinary studies.  Further systemaatic studies used ethnographic methodology to establish that the Internet was a site for “rich and sustained interactions”:

Cyberspace is now crowded with ‘researchers swarming over the virtual landscape, peering around at the virtual natives and writing busily in thier virtual fieldnotes (Stone 1995:243).

The second approach to the Internet is by viewing it as a product of the culture.  This perspective sees the Internet as being a set of programs that allow for expanded forms of communication and information sharing (Hine, 2000: 27).  The Internet is studied in the context of the individuals’ uses of the technology in their day-to-day lives, rather than with the assumption that the computer provides them with an alternative reality.  To study the Internet from only one of these perspectives without the acknowledgement of the other is problematic and has lead to a fragmented picture of the Internet as a whole.

Traditionally the aim of the ethnography has been to develop a deep understanding of a culture through participation and observation (Hine, 2000:41).  The introduction of ethnographic inquiry on the Internet was inevitable, as anthropology increasingly expands into alternative, modern, industrial settings and the ethnography assumes a variety of new forms. 

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed in the design of the virtual ethnography, including the boundaries of the research site, how the researcher “travels” to the field site, and how the researchers plans to interact with the subjects of the research.

Traditional ethnography generally occurs in the context of a physically bounded field site; therefore the absense of physical boundaries in Cyberspace can be problematic for the ethnographer.  However, interactions, and the cultural representations that arise from them, occur in identifiable bounded spaces of the Internet, even if they are only perceptual.  Web sites, newsgroups, MUDs, chatrooms, and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are all examples of spaces available for ethnographic inquiry.  In many cases, the boundaries of the field site will not be established a priori: “The challenge of the virtual ethnography is to explore the making of boundaries and the making of connections, especially between the “virtual” and the “real” (Hine, 2000:64). 

Travel to the virtual field site does not occur by traditional means.  This is possibly the reason why it’s becoming so popular among desk-bound academics.  The term “armchair anthropologist” assumes a new status through the establishment of the virtual ethnography.  The field site can be accessed from anywhere that there is Internet access.  It is not even necessary for the researchers to share the same time frame as the participants, as many online discussions are achieved and can be accessed after they’ve taken place.  This feature offers many possibilities for the scope of the inquiry.  Researchers are able to go back and review all the participant interactions, not just the ones that occured in the same temporal location.  However this feature can also be problematic for the researcher, as it can question the authenticity of the participants’ identities.

Some researchers prefer to combine online interaction with offline interaction to minimize the effects of identity play on  the study.  Baym and Correl’s (1995) study of newsgroups consisted of real-time online engagement, general postings, email exchanged and electronic or face-to-face interviews with the participants.  The need to verify online identity will largely depend on the goal of the study.  Hine notes:

The decision to priviledge certain modes of interaction is a situated one.  If the aim is to study online settings as contexts in their own right, the question of offline identities need not arise (22).

All online settings are heterogeneous; therefore no single predetermined methodology will likely be implented.  Hine notes that the same is true of ethical considerations such as the negotiation of consent, which should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than something which is conducted at the beginning of the study.  The guidelines set out by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in “Ethical decision-making and Internet research” (Ess, 2002) reinforces the notion of continual negotiation.  It is presented in Section II, A. of the document under the heading of “Timing”:

Determining not only if, but when to ask for consent is thus somewhat context-dependent and requires particular attention to the “fine-grained’ details of the reserach project not only in its inception but also as it may change over its course.

The AoIR document was published as a set of universal guidelines for researchers, ethicists and students in the social sciences interested in conducting online research.  The document recommends that consideration of the venue should assist researchers in establishing ethical expectations:

The greater the acknowledged publicity of the venue, the less obligation there may be to protect individual privacy, confidentiality, right to informed consent etc” (Ess, 2002).

There are many futuristic predictions about the Internet’s role in society.  Some believe that the Internet is the tool which will bring about the utopian global village; others are much more cynical and believe the Internet promotes individualism and corporate control.  Regardless of the background of extreme predictions, it is certain that a rapid level of population penetration is occuring. 

There should be no further need to doubt that the Internet is having an impact on current social and cultural relations.  Ethnography plays an important role in the discourse on the technology as it exists in both of its forms; as a cultural context and artifact of culture.  The Internet forces us to reexamine traditional ways of thinking about culture and society including the way we approach social research.