[0:18]All right. Well, um I am assuming that um lots of you are uh using social media and um so I'd like you to imagine two scenarios. Uh, the first one, um, you are on Facebook and you have posted, um, a message and you get no responses back, no likes, no comments, no nothing. So, you conclude that essentially you shouldn't be posting on that topic that you have just posted on, um, especially if you want to maintain your standing amongst your friends. Only come to find out later on that none of your friends actually saw the message and that is because there's an algorithm running in Facebook. An algorithm that picks messages to put into news feeds that ranks messages and so your message never got ranked high enough to pop up in anybody's news feed. Take another scenario. So, you have registered for a an online community using a fake identity. You do not want to be identified. So, in this anonymous state, you are finding yourself um much more gregarious than you usually are, or much more strident in your tone than you typically like to perceive yourself as being. Or in fact, you're much more familiar and you're engaged in possibly even reckless self disclosures in this kind of community. Both of these scenarios speak to the question that I'm particularly interested in studying and that is what is social media and what is technology, in particular, doing to who we are? To who we believe we can be, be, to how we present ourselves to others, to and, and also how others perceive ourselves. So, um, if we think about this, it's basically a question of the relationship between technology and users. And if we look historically, we have relied on tools and technologies to become who we are. Um, so, from being cavemen, right? We relied on all sorts of technologies to be where we are today using our social media, using our cell phones. And so this is a what we call a co-constitutive kind of relationship, which means that we construct the technology, but the technology also constructs us. We become what the technology allows us to become. Um, and so, let's take an example. So, last uh you know recently um um Apple made available ethnic emojis. So, now you don't only have to you don't only just have available to you um yellow faced smiley faces or yellow smiley faces. You basically can color the face of your emojis, right? So, anything from pale to um to to to a very dark uh dark shade of um brown, right? Is basically what you can now select in terms of your emoji set. So essentially we have materialized certain actions, namely being able to express um, you know, a certain racial qualities in our technology and our communication. We've materialized this in technology. The technology then makes these actions of identifying ourselves as, you know, as a racial identity or as a, as a person of of color, um, into um, you know, in terms of how we communicate. But what this is also doing is it's setting up an expectation, um, and it's racializing essentially our communication. Setting up an expectation that you think about what color emoji you're going to be using, um, and how much you're going to express your race in terms of tweets that you post. What would be the appropriate emoji to use. So this is basically the co-constitutive entanglement of technology and human agents. So, um the research that I've been doing has been has relied on data from Second Life, which is a virtual world. And you might ask, well gee, you know, is a virtual world really a social media? Um, and um is Second Life even still around? Um, yeah, well Second Life is certainly not as popular as it was when um I did the initial data collection. Um, but it is a social media in the sense that um you have a profile, you connect with other people, and those connections with other people then make certain information available to you or not available to you. Um, as far as researchers concerned, from a research point of view, it's actually quite useful to um rely on a technology that um is sort of at the extreme end of a class of technologies. And that's where I see Second Life. It really provides a tremendous amount of um and diversity of communicative expressions. So, one of the key things that you have in this virtual world is a virtual body, an avatar. And a body is really a key way in which we do identity, the way we dress, the way we move, who we associate with, um um, you know, the kinds of houses we have.
[5:14]So, so bodies are really a key part of doing identity. Um, and so, having um studying a technology that has as broad a range of expressive media as as a virtual world like Second Life does, essentially provides insight that then becomes relevant to um technologies that maybe only have a subset of those expressive media. Um, and so, you know, we have voice and text and so on and so forth and video, but we also have this body that we can work with. So, one of the key findings, um, from the research is that um, there are sort of three dominant discourses that are embedded or materialized in this technology. So, you might say, well, what on earth is a discourse? Well, a discourse is a system of thought. So, I kind of think of it as shorthand for it would be um a logic, the way we think about the world and thereby construct the world. So, let's take an example. There's a flood, right? We can see the water's rising. Um and this phenomenon basically only gets brought into being, it's made meaningful through the way we talk about it, and that's discourse. So, we might have a discourse that is the religious discourse. So, what, what happens when you start talking about the flood in religious terms? You might say, you know, this is God's punishment being meeted out on a community. Um, what that then does by invoking that kind of discourse is it creates identities. It creates identities of believers and non-believers, and of course it's the non-believers who really are at fault for the flood, we all know that. Um, and it also creates certain possibilities for action then, right? So, what, what should you be doing? You should pray, you should repent, you should convert, right? So, a discourse is essentially create a certain kind of reality with certain identities and possibilities for action. And it's essentially these discourses again are embedded in our technology. They are logics that are deeply rooted in the kinds of activities we can do with our technology. So, let's look at these three discourses in Second Life. So, um, you know, one of the key things with social media is that these are platforms. These are platforms that they then co-produce the value of the platform is co-produced by its participants. So in Second Life, there's a very clear distinction between sort of the producers, right? People who, um, create content, that's one identity, and then another identity is you're a consumer. You should be buying these things. Um, and obviously once you have a body, you need to dress that body, right? You need a whole bunch of stuff, you know, once you have a body. Um, and so, um, what, what we've got going on then is that people are constructing identities, um, along these consumer and producer lines. Um, and so, if you're a producer, if you're, you know, um, then your objective is to, to to be a good producer, you want to make money. You think of yourself as a product, as a brand, you need to differentiate yourself, right? So your identity becomes one of striving for this coveted position of being the top of the heap, right? Making the most money, being recognized in search engines and so on. If you're a consumer, you also think of yourself as a product. So, essentially this is very much a commodification kind of discourse, um, and so, um, what, what ultimately then happens is that um, you know, as a consumer, um, you want to put your best foot forward. You want to show that you're socially astute, that you're culturally, um, uh knowledgeable, right? About how you're supposed to dress, what are good clothes, what are low quality clothes, what are high quality clothes, things of that nature. Um, the play discourse is the one that is typically associated with Second Life because you have this virtual body. And the idea, even the name Second Life applies implies that this should be a life that is different from your real life. It should be separate from your real life and what you should be doing is trying to explore what you would be like, who you would be if only you could get rid of this body. If only you could get rid of the social relationships that you have in real life, right? Um, and so exploring this, exploring who you could be, who you are, right? Your inner self, the search for the inner self, that's the kind of identity work associated with these. And by the way, this cat face over there in the middle, this is sort of an identity known as Nico, um, where people then act feline kind of qualities, you know, being moody and, um, and, um, unpredictable in many ways. Then lastly, we have the sociality discourse, the idea that you should, your identity is defined by the people you associate with, the roles that you play in a certain social grouping. So, um, you know, you're, you're, um, a mother, a father, um, those are the kinds, those are kinds of social roles. Um, and a key part of this um uh identity, sort of a key part of this discourse is that um you essentially um, live up to the expect, sort of the obligations you have towards others. So in social settings, really, I mean, what it means to be social is to be um responsive to others, pay attention to what they're saying, um, uh, and and thereby construct a social reality as well as a social self. So, this is um, and a key part of this um uh sort of uh key part of this discourse is essentially to be real, to make um a connection with your real life, right? That essentially the emotions that you're expressing towards other people in this virtual world that they are based on something real, that they are based on the user as opposed to, you know, just a play discourse like that cat, the Nico that I showed you just now. Okay, so what happens, and what you can already sort of maybe sense through the examples that I've given you, is that um, there are interconnections, sort of the places of overlap between these discourses, but they're also inconsistencies and contradictions between them. So if we take the market discourse, yes, you know, if I have lots of friends, that becomes a marketing network for me, right? And as a, as an entrepreneur, that makes it easy for me to possibly sell my goods. On the other hand, my friends are going to make some demands on me, aren't they? Um, because they now expect that I treat them, you know, with special favors, for example, um, not only that I spend time with them, that I deal with their problems, um, you know, related to my goods or just our relationship. But also that I might give them discounts and things like that. So we can see that they're both um continuities between these discourses, as well as um discontinuities or contradictions. So what does that then mean? So it means, you know, what, when we, when we ask this question about what do you say, social media do to identity, how do they play a role? Essentially, they limit the kinds of identities we can have through the discourses. And this is, this is done essentially through the action possibilities that they, that are embedded in these technologies. So discourses make actions possible, those actions get embedded in the technology, and then you can invoke those certain actions, and there's a limited set of identities that you can ultimately perform. Limited number of things, you know, people, or sort of identities you can be. But what's what um essentially creates a lot of movement here and essentially makes this entire model be um not sort of um not entirely encoded and um are not entirely prescriptive is the fact that they're inconsistencies between these discourses. So what we found is that people create a main identity in Second Life, um that you know, relates to one of the discourses. So for example, they are entrepreneurs, they're there to make money, um, and so there's an identity of I am a designer. And I'm a certain kind of designer, namely one that's accessible, socially accessible to my friends, right? So, I'm a friendly designer as opposed to a snooty designer. Well, being a friendly designer in Second Life creates some, really amazing tensions, um, because every time you're online, your friends see you and guess what? They want to chat with you. In the meantime, you're supposed to be productive and producing goods, right? And so, you, you're stuck with a real tension. So how do you resolve this? Well, you grab onto the play discourse. And from the play discourse, you pull down the Nico. Okay. So now I'm going to add to my accessible designer, an identity of a Nico, that essentially says, I am a cat, and therefore, I can be friendly to you today and tomorrow, I can turn my back and ignore you. And essentially, I'm still okay, right? I'm not at risk of ruining this relationship because that's what play is about, right? So, um, so this is what we're seeing, this this tremendous play, pulling on different discourses and creating identities that are multiple, that are complex, that are interrelated, and essentially, again, not prescribed by the technology, not deterministic. So there's a certain amount of determinism, but there's also a lot of freedom. And so, um, basically what I hope you take away from this talk, especially those of you who are very active in social media, is to think about these discourses and to think about, you know, what kinds of identities you are performing and the technology is enabling and restricting you from performing, right? In your use of social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or anything else. Thank you.
