Blog post 4: Quotations from each section of Buck’s article

In Buck’s introduction she writes about every time Ronnie wakes up he lets his friends know that he is awake, she writes that “Rather than leaving a paper note for them in the kitchen, Ronnie visits their private group page on Facebook.” I think this is interesting since it says something about how social media has transformed into something that is “mobile” and a part of people in today’s society’s life. With the use of iPhones and other devices it has become more convenient for people to write a message through their social media page rather than on a note. The chances of more people seeing the note and take in the message is today higher if you write it on social media instead of delivering the message in a handwritten form. In the introduction Buck also writes; “While he often works alone, Ronnie is always connected to friends on campus and across the country through his use of social network sites, his daily offline activity integrated into his online identity.” This also shows how mobile the technology has become and more people become more available to other people. Because of social media sites and the advance of having our social media on our phones, in our hand “all the time”, we are now reachable “all the time”. The availability of course can be up for discussion if it is good or not. Is there at any times when we do not want to be available “all the time”? Are the benefits of availability through social media greater than the fact that we sometimes don’t want to be available?

In Buck’s method section I got very inspired by her “Time-Use Diary”. This is something that I think would be interesting for me to do in my paper. Making my partner create a time-use diary for three average days would probably make it easier for me to understand how he distributes his social media usage in his daily life. Also I have highlighted when Buck writes about the “profile tour”. This is something I do for my paper as well and the reason why I highlighted this is because I am planning on using my partner’s screencast to gather information on what perception he has about herself. I am planning to use this as my “So What?” in my paper.

What I found interesting about Buck’s results section was when she is writing that Ronnie “saw his social network site activity as an important part of his self-branding” She continues on writing how Ronnie reported that he often joined new sites “to “claim real estate” to reserve his username on the site in case it became popular later.” I think this is interesting since it says something about how Ronnie is aware of his image he has on his social media sites. It says that he might be concerned his image will get lost and someone “takes” his own created identity on this new social media site. Also she writes “On Twitter, Ronnie was conscious of keeping his number of followers higher than the number of people he was following. For him, this number indexed his identity as a producer rather than a consumer on Twitter.” I think this is interesting since it tells me how he sees himself as. He view himself as a “producer” for other users on Twitter rather then a “user”. So then a question raises, if you are a “producer”, aren’t you a user as well? What determines if you are a producer or “normal user”?

In Buck’s discussion section she talks about how Ronnie changes his privacy settings into fake information; “He changed his high school to Hogwarts’ School

of Witchcraft and Wizardry and his current employer to the Ministry of Magic.” I highlighted this because I think this is very interesting. I think this is a kind of “hiding behind social media” which I think is somewhat common today. People that don’t “want to be themselves” can become the person “they want to be” with help of social media. She also writes that Ronnie “want control over the information about himself on social media”, which I think is very common among more and more people in today’s society. I find it very interesting when Buck writes how Ronnie isnt very concerned about “his information being online and publically visible…” but what Ronnie was most worried about was “who owned his information and what they could do with it.” I think this is interesting since we do not know what all the information goes to. Do we really have control over our image and info on social media? Can a social media profile and identity be a victim of identity theft? Also Buck continues on saying; “Ronnie’s anxiety over ownership of his information and his continual attempts to control its presentation demonstrate the constant work individuals like Ronnie engage to manage their life and identity on social network sites. Frequent technology changes means that these practices can be both time consuming and never ending.” And my question here is, is it never ending?

In her conclusion Buck says “Studying students like Ronnie, then, calls attention to the stakes for literacy and identity representation within social network sites, most especially rhetorical questions of authorship, audience, and privacy, as individuals share information through structures that flatten multiple groups of contacts into one audience.” I think it is interesting because I think more and more people start to think about privacy online, is there any privacy at all within social media?

She also writes in the conclusion that “The online activity that individuals engage in on social network sites does not just stay online; students integrate social network sites into their daily literacy practices.” And she is continuing on “Viewing this rich literate activity as part of students’ everyday lives will give us a greater understanding of the literacy experiences they bring with them to the classroom. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of student writing at Stanford, Lunsford et al. (2008) argue that students are not only writing more, but are also effective in crafting and communicating specific messages to specific audiences. According to this study, 38% of the writing that the student participants completed happened outside of the classroom, and much of this writing happened online.” From this I am thinking about social media as a tool to make people actively write more. People get to analyze more about events and happenings around them which can only be developing. Social media only made the writing world better, and maybe it made us people better-rounded with higher analytic capacities. Maybe the ongoing development of social media is only making us smarter?

Blog post 3: Brainstorming Questions

In this post I am brainstorming some questions I think would be interesting to ask my partner. This list of questions is of the purpose to help my partner making the screencast tour for my first project in this class. By asking these questions I think I will get a pretty good idea of how my partner sees himself on social media and what role social media plays in his life.

Questions I want to ask my partner:

1. If you would analyse yourself, what kind of identity are you trying to create on social media?

2. Do you think that this image you want to convey is received by others in the same way?

3. Do you see yourself as a different or the same person “online” as “offline”? Describe your online vs. offline life.

4. Do you sometimes feel like you don’t get your point trough on social media, if you have limited characters to use?

5. Do you sometime post things on social media “for likes”? If so, what purpose does “likes” play in your life?

6. Why do you “retweet” things on Twitter? What purpose does that play? Do you think retweeting says something about your personality?

7. Do you sometimes choose not to “retweet”, “like”, write a status or post a picture thinking of what others will think?

8. What kinds of people do you “follow” on social media? What does “following” mean to you?

9. Which social media communities do you identify yourself with? What made you “join”? And what are some actions you take within these communities?

10. Have you ever created/started a community on social media? If so, what kind of community?

11. When you “post” on social media, do you think of “how this will look in the future” for ex. Future jobs etc.?

12. Are you active (=as the term of being online) daily on social media or do you log on only sometimes? Are you an “observer” (=not taking that much action once you’re logged on) or are you “active” (=in the term of taking much action once you’re logged on)?

Blog post 2: Social media and discourse communities

Jones describes in her article how poets gather on the social medium Twitter. By using retweets and commenting on other poets’ work they post on picture they have created some kind of community. On twitter unknown and known poets can meet and share opinions and ideas about others work. The comments on a poet’s poem can be very useful for them as feedback according to improve their work and develop and continuing on their thoughts on a certain subject. The retweeting is also a good way for poets to “get out there” so other poets and non-poets will become more familiar with their work. Creating communities on social media, such as Twitter, can be leading to great opportunities for such people as poets as an example. There are some living proofs that the power of social media can recognize talents and even lead to great job opportunities for some.  This poet community on twitter is probably what Harris would describe as a “discourse” community. According to Harris’ article “Discourse community” is defined as such; “…the common space shared by its members is replaced by a discursive "forum," and their one-to one interaction is reduced to a system "providing information and feedback." And from taking this definition word by word, this is what Jones describes in her article.

NPR posted an article about the power of the “hashtag”. In this article it describes how a discourse community started by the creator of the hashtag #WhyIStayed. Within this community people started to discuss abuse and divorce. The community of commentators and “hashtaggers” raised this question and got other people interested in it with help of the hashtag. This hashtag became a community for those people interested in this topic. From my own experience I have seen these “hashtag communities” raise and grow with my own eyes. On a smaller level, a wedding hashtag that follows two people getting engaged and then married is an example of a “hashtag community”.

Zammett Ruddy writes in her article about how she took a picture of her kids making a snowman, but when she was about to post the picture she realized that her picture was “fake” and showed her kids smiling and being happy, the complete opposite that the kids had been while building the snowman. The problem she writes about is probably something many people out there face daily. I am one of them. Name any social media, Instagram, twitter, Facebook, the majority of the users of these social medium uses them to create an image of themselves, either for self-purposes or to “show off”. I think this article is very interesting since I honestly catch myself thinking the same thing daily as this mother; “should I post this picture that looks absolutely great, and write about how great this event was even if in real life it isn’t that great?” the author calls this “fakebooking” and I think this is a very interesting term she chooses to use, and also a pretty correct one. I think that fakebooking is a phenomenon in today’s social media based world. I believe that many people have an obsession to be seen as “perfect” and therefore post “perfect” pictures with “perfect” captions on their social media accounts. The author is mostly discussing Facebook in this article, but from my own experiences with social media I think that Instagram is probably the number one medium where most people uses the term “fakebooking” daily. Instagram is about the pictures and “pictures can speak a thousand words” as a Swedish expression says. Instagram users take advantage of the photographing super powers. An ordinary breakfast meal can suddenly look like “the most amazing and fabulous meal ever”. More often Instagram users don’t even write a caption to the pictures they are posting, just letting the picture speak. And this is when the term of fakebooking is becoming even more certain.

I have personally thought about for a long time how fun it would be to make a “behind the scenes” account on Instagram which would only post pictures of other people taking a picture they are uploading to Instagram. I think this would be a fun thing to start, to recognize that the world isn’t perfect and there is always a “behind the scenes” or “the reality” to show. I think starting up an account like this might change people’s perceptions of what perfect is and that things doesn’t have to be perfect all the time. Maybe, hopefully, people would stop pressuring themselves to become so “perfect” in other people’s eyes.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Harris talks about “interpretive communities” and “speech communities”, I think that these two can be found in discourse communities as well, not just in “the life outside the internet”. I think that discourse communities evolve because of peoples obsession in belonging to something. And probably people are looking to join both an interpretive community where they share the same values and beliefs as the other people in the group, and a speech community where they are grouped together with people that are at the same place and time as themselves. An example of a “speech discourse community” I am involved in is for an example “UNL international students community” on facebook. Here I can find people that happen to go to UNL at the same time as me and are international students as I am. I am also involved in an “interpretive discourse community”, for an example my “BEST FRIENDS” private Facebook page, where I feel connected to the people in that community because of our similar values and beliefs.

To just sum this up I do think that the majority of all the people out there in this world that has some sort of societal connection and computer access are involved in many different discourse communities, even if they aren’t aware of it themselves. 

My first blog post: Harris and Writing

I am the kind of writer who is very inspired of things that happens in the environment around me. Because of this I prefer to sit in open public spaces instead of in a separated room when I write. I often have many ideas, sometimes too many, which can be challenging sometimes. I tend to not want to take any short cuts and make it easy for myself. I am a writer who reads my own texts out loud and also think out loud. That is the way I remember my own ideas and the way I easy can correct my own mistakes in my writing. I am a writer who enjoys brainstorming my ideas with other people and listen to their opinions and thoughts. I am a writer who never stops writing.

By reading Harris I understand a community to be a kind of unspoken relationship or bond between certain groups of people. It can be divided in to two communities; “interpretive community” where like minded people with same values and beliefs are grouped together, and “speech community” where people that are living in same space and time are grouped together. I understand it as the one most people are drawn to is the interpretive community where they can find people sharing their views of what is “normal” or “abnormal”. A community is where alike people turn to as a comfort and where they also can identify themselves as individuals but also see others acting, thinking, and believing alike themselves. However, individuals can belong to and identify themselves to more than one community. Communities can be both small and big such as “English 254 class community” or “US upper-class community”.

I see myself belonging to many different communities, big as small. On the big spectrum I identify myself as being a part of “the Swedish middle-class community” and also “Swedes in America-community”. Smaller communities I understand myself to belong to are for an example “English 254 community” or “UNL International student’s community”. Either a big or small community, all the communities I identify myself with is ones that I feel like I am surrounded with people thinking the way I do and view the world the way I do. These different communities I understand come from social status, culture, values and beliefs, and educational status.

Writing and language play a role in making communities since different communities value the tone and the way of communicating differently. I would assume this probably has to do with what certain groups of people see as “normal” or not. For an example, in a community of a university the tone and way of communicating is probably more sophisticated and grammatically correct compared to e.g. a sports community, such as a football team, where grammar isn't in the focus and slang might be used acceptably more often.

After reading Harris I believe that every individual is a part of a community. I believe that it is also important for the individual to feel a part of a community according to identify themselves and find safety in life.