Ch.16 "Shaping the 'Me' in MySpace": Social Network Sites Also Lacking Authenticity?

"Dos and Don'ts When Using Social Networks" Video

"Web 2.0 Summit: Self Expression through Social Media- Chris Poole" Video

As stated previously, “the ‘rules’ of what counts as a digital story are often clearly defined” and “certain forms and content are clearly encouraged” (287), since each digital story contains the same voice, plot, and montage. This standardization in digital storytelling might then prevent its author to fully express themselves, thus lacking some authenticity and realism. But when comparing digital stories to social network sites (SNS), it appears otherwise. In this article, David Brake, a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Communications at the University of Bedfordshire, evaluates whether SNS like MySpace prevents the self-expression its users through its unauthentic programming. And I agree with him after reflecting how I use SNS like Facebook and YouTube to not define who I am as a person but to connect to the other people who share the same music, games, and movies interests as me. By SNS’s constant display of mainstream movies, music, restaurants, and other consumerist goods that generally define popular culture, users are limited as to what things they like and don’t like. Likewise, a user is encouraged to “‘commoditize’ one’s self” to the degree of defining his or her personal attributes to material things (295). As seen in the second video above, there rises the issue of SNS being a consumerist space and not a democratic space, through its overly simplistic and standardized programming of giving its user only one page to describe who they are.  Users thus connect to other users not for the basis of understanding one another’s identities but for the basis of consuming and advertising products. Users generally make up consumers and not individuals. This is also clearly seen in the first video which reveals the constant advertising on social networks while ironically advertising its sponsor, Mc Afee. So SNS appears to have less authenticity than digital stories, since they are standardized spaces for the communication between consumers, not between human beings.