Mark
Cote and Jennifer Pybus in the
article “Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks” state
that the (re)production of the ‘digital archives of the self’ is a deeply
recursive process. For users, it is about the production and circulation of
subjectivities; for Facebook, it is a political economic imperative. We are in
a realm where our communicative and affective capacity attains a global reach
while our material bodies remain static, this condition is call (non)locality.
The attempt to capture ‘lived experiences” are trying to capture a
specific 'way of life', is what is
central to social networks. The user-generated digital archive of the self, circulates
publicly in the newsfeed, and fuels others to do the same. The ‘digital
archive of the self’ is first a communicative and affective practice; it is at
the core of cultural practices which drives the (re)production of the individual
profile.
Social and communicative practices underlying social
networks like Facebook are central to immaterial labour 2.0; the process of
creating your identity online is a means of ‘labour’.
Are your
social media accounts a accurate representation of who you are and your
everyday life? Do you feel that you ‘labour’ in your profiles to create this
representation, if so what motivates you to do so?
Personally, I would like to believe that my social media accounts are an accurate representations of who I am in my everyday life. As I continue to think about this my thoughts change as I think of the way that myself (and most likely many others) only tend to show the best aspects of themselves. I think it could be mutually agreed among many users that we often chose to not publicize negative or embarrassing aspects of our lives online in fear of what society will think. I personally know this to be true because of the way I've laboured to sort through and delete many posts on my social media that I felt didn't truly represent myself. An example being the embarrassing middle school photos from when everyone first began signing up for social media. I chose to spend time sorting through my posts because I now find it embarrassing what my fourteen year old self would post online. As well, in regards to labouring to create profiles, I know of many people who spend time deciding what to post. This ranging from specific photos or posts to create an online persona, or to ensure a better representation of themselves.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at new forms of social media there appears to be a new found competition among users to gain the most likes, shares and online hits. Specifically looking at Instagram, users spend hours taking time to identify and take the right picture, and once the picture is perfect roughly fifty layers of digitization or Photoshop are plastered over the top of it. Many users photos are flawless representations of themselves, in the best outfit possible, on vacation, at an event these are all displays where users are in a competition where users strive to out do the other users, create something better and more original gaining the most amount of likes possible.
ReplyDeleteI do not feel that my social media accounts are an accurate representation of my life. There are several things that I choose not to share on social media because I want to avoid upsetting other people and I want to make sure that future employers will not be offended by my actions online. I think many people think the same way, however, I have learned of several scenarios in which employees have been terminated for sharing personal information online that is offensive. This brings up a large debate in understanding whether it is alright that our actions online have effects on our worklives. Many people feel that social media use is part of our private lives, however, at this time and age, nothing we do online is private and I feel that people need to be more aware of the consequences of their online actions.
ReplyDelete