Hi everyone,
Alice Marwick discusses how to succeed in a postmodern American consumer capitalist world. In other words Marwick refers to how the social media age in combination with the Web 2.0 has encouraged entrepreneurship skills, self promotion and self editing. Throughout the history of Web 2.0, forms of social media like blogs and vlogs have allowed for individuals to obtain fame and fortune persay, by their personal success in online engagement.
With this in mind, Mommy Blogs and Mommy Vlogs include personal experiences about family and home life. These blogs and vlogs demonstrate how information-based capitalist social formations can allow for those who are usually known to the private sphere, like family life, to be widened into the public sphere as well. Mommy blogs and vlogs include cultural imaginaries of social being and belonging. These blogs have given online outlets for women specifically to explore the similarities, challenges and accomplishments of Motherhood. The popular Mommy Blogs demonstrate how the blogger may feel as though she is being transformed or being enabled to transcend into a higher part of themselves. Digital communities of women can come together to further explore their lives, while the popular and famous bloggers or vloggers can have financial gain of their reputation within their online engagement.
During the lecture that had just passed, we discussed what romanticism meant in relation to topics in our course. Would you say that this grouping of blogs and vlogs further romanticize interactive computing? If romanticism includes a quest for experience, how do blogs and vlogs represent this? And if so, do the notion of blogs and vlogs differ?
I agree that the combination of the social media age and Web 2.0 has encouraged entrepreneurial skills, self-promotion and self-editing. Our online profiles/personas are just as important, if not more important initially in regards to other’s perceptions of us. Blogs and vlogs are more or less online journals of written or visual content. They allow people to voice their opinions and generate discussions within a community of people with a similar interest. I would say that blogs and vlogs do further romanticize interactive computing. In the case of the Mommy Blogs and Mommy Vlogs, these platforms allow mothers to communally discuss their personal experiences in a public domain (mixing private and public realms). This is probably appealing to new mothers who do not have the time to go out and socialize with other mothers; they can turn to online platforms for advice and support. This is an experience for people to interact with other people online. Online communication vs. real life communication is different but with vlogs, adding the visual component gives a sense of realism that cannot be easily found on a blog. Both blogs and vlogs serve different purposes and they both fuel the romanticizing of interactive computing.
ReplyDeleteI found your digital communities segment interesting. I don't know if it romanticizes interactive computing, but it does give us vision to other spheres.
ReplyDeleteFor example, while reading your post I was thinking of all the blogs and chat rooms that exist around different communities. For example, If you want to aupair or travel, there are countless blogs or chat rooms which users can ask questions, learn about stuff, and be part of circles they might not have access to in real life.
Therefore, this experience may in fact help in the process of romanticizing interactive computing, but I do not think it is solely attributed to this.