Template:Creating, Exploring

Digital media affords individuals with new ways of expressing, exploring, and asserting their identity. For natives, who are immersed and fluent in these technologies, while finding themselves in a key stage of identity development, these new identity-forming activities present exciting possibilities. However, it is important to take a hard look at these activities, and how they are changing the ways people express and understand both themselves and others within the larger social context. There exist important issues for discussion in looking at how Digital Natives make use of emerging digital media tools available to them as they form identities both on and off line.

Technological Architectures: Changing the way people connect

The spaces in which individuals connect on the Internet, as well as through other technologies such as mobile phones and networked gaming consuls, each have their own particular architectures. They are built with specific allowances and capabilities, in attempt to dictate the forms and types of interactions that take place within those spaces. Like any space, these configurations can be re-interpreted and re-inscribed by creative users (who almost always find ways to bend - or break - the rules), but nevertheless, a particular mode of communication and connection evolves for each new technology that catches our attention, and enables connection.

How does the technical structure of digital social spaces affect the communication that occurs inside them? Do these new or different modes of communication then spill over into the analogue, or "real" world? Do they fundamentally change the way Digital Natives view themselves and their relationships? Or are these new spaces and technologies simply yet another way to connect, in addition to all those that have come before?

Making the Implicit Explicit

(see David Weinberger's With Friendster's like that... )

By articulating and defining both one's identity (via the creation of a profile) and one's social network (by accumulating "Friends") using social networking sites, individuals make explicit complex and involved identities and relationships that are inherently implicit. As David Weinberger writes in the above mentioned post, "I don't like it when a site assumes that what's implicit can be made explicit without loss."

How does this explicit conceptualization of both one's identity and one's social being in relationship to a network affect teens, in this important life stage of identity development?

Furthermore, what effect does the explicitness of social networking have when it is used to play-out age-old teen relationship drama? "De-friending" or "de-linking" someone is a very explicit and visible expression of traditional teenage feud (See Danah Boyd's "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace" (2006), Bortree, D.S. (2005). Presentation of self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls’ weblogs. Education, Communication & Information, 5(1), 25-39 Paywall). Does explicitness change the nature or weight of such relationship developments? Crucially, Digital Natives find themselves at home in social networking spaces, accepting such explicitness and visibility as the norm. As such, have they simply accepted the rules of the new space in which relationship drama takes place, thereby not allowing issues of explicitness or visibility to force on added weight to commonplace relationship issues? Or do these technologies exacerbate and alter the often volatile teen relationships?

Translating Human Relationships into Computer Code

As Danah Boyd points out, making use of social networking tools translates complex human relationships into the programming code - either "1" or "0" - either friend or not. As deeper friendship weighting and relationship nuances are excluded from the social networking sites where Digital Natives are spending their time, do their conceptions and understanding of "friends" change? Or is this simply an additional, though perhaps somewhat simplified, way to express identity, relationship standing, and social status?

Records of Identity

In the age of digital media, identity assertions are no longer purely transient, exploratory exercises. For the most part, digital expressions of identity are here to stay, as at least somewhat permanent markers that remain visible for both creators, and others, to see. Even the deleted blog, or photo posted on the social network, may be saved in cache, or downloaded on some hard drive out there.

Beyond the lasting accessibility of identity experiments, the technology itself presents identity-related information in new ways. Music and film preferences have become common markers of identity (at least explicitly, perhaps this was always the case implicitly). No longer does one's music choice for the day remain only in the memory: the temporary "on-the-go" playlist you make on your iPod gets saved in iTunes. Similarly, with the ease and convenience of a Netflix account comes the particular recording, organization, and comparison to the group of one's cinematic preferences.

Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger (see "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing (2007) argues that we have moved from a society whose default was "forgetting" to a society whose default, thanks to technological advances, is "remembering" forever; this shift, according to Mayer-Schoenberger, has impacted our ability to participate freely, for everything is recorded for posterity. He suggests a technical solution that would allow users to set expiration dates for their digital content, thus returning the control back to the hands of the original creator. He states, "What I am suggesting is a legislative mandate that technology conform to our real-world practices, rather than shape society in a completely novel way." (p. 23)

The Case of Netflix

Henry Jenkins writes about this in What's Coming Next? Self-Definition and Accomplishment through the Construction of the Netflix Queue. By searching through the Netflix database for movies, and then creating, and continuously updating a queue, "Netflix allows me to continuously create and recreate my identity through my movie choices," writes Jenkins. Interestingly, he has movies that have been on his queue for many months, and while he may never choose to let them find their place to the top of the queue (and to be watched), "the Netflix queue stands as an aspirational benchmark." Of perhaps, if not who he is, who he wants to be (at least as defined by movie choices).

Netflix offers personalized recommendations.

Beyond the self-defining queue, Netflix has a rating system of different movies to present individuals with recommendations, based on all user ratings. However, acknowledging that movie tastes differ widely, Netflix recommends movies not only according to the average rating, but also by giving users the "average rating by viewers like you" - thereby defining "you", and to some extent, segmenting "you". As Jenkins notes, "Based on what Netflix suggests for me, I can somehow gauge what the system (and maybe the general public at large) thinks about me and my movie choices."

Furthering this definition against the group is the "friends" function. Users can become "friends" on Netflix, thereby allowing others to see their entire movie rental history. This is a convenient way to learn about new movies from others' taste on may respect, but also, if one accepts the notion of film taste to be at least in part an indicator of idenity, to learn much about one's "friends". By sharing one's Netflix queue, movie choices may now be made with the consideration of what they "say about you".

Jenkin's post brings to light some interesting ideas about how this movie-rental technology expresses, and perhaps even affects, users' identities:

Data collection and computer algorithms takes translates taste in art & culture - a once vague, self-gauged notion ("I consider myself a Film Noir connoisseur") - into a strict and detailed description of what movies we like, and in mathematical comparison to others' preferences and views. The computer, unlike the mind, will not forget about Friday-night trash movie indulgences. And it reminds users of this every time it recommends something due to a high rating by "viewers like you."

Many digital technologies allow individuals to define their identities in relation to others, while on their own. Instead of identity assertion coming out of a negotiated interaction with another, the Internet (while allowing for plenty of interaction) also allows users to observe, spy, and measure themselves to others, while on their own, to an extent never before possible. In the past, identity negotiation (in relation to film preferences)may have come up in conversation with others, and as such be embedded with the analog dynamics such interactions hold. As technologies are used to define identity in contrast to others data, sans context, how does social identity creation change once these negotiated and reactionary aspects disappear?

With respect to Digital Natives, especially the teens who are still in the process of developing personal identities, two issues arise: First, as Natives grow up with this technology, unable to compare it to past, less documented and less public ways of video-renting, how does their lack of reflexivity about the issues raised here, the normalization of such processes as the Netflix queue, change the way they see and interpret such identity-formation exercises? Second, being teens who are developing identities and in hyper self-conscious phases of life, does one's shared Netflix queue, or Netflix's assertion of "viewers like you" take on added weight for Digital Natives?

Sharing Secrets on the World Wide Web: Negotiating digital media forums for both interpersonal and mass-communication

Digital Natives are at home on the Internet. Whether ‘hanging out’ on MySpace (see Danah Boyd's "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace" (2006)), organizing and discussing events on Facebook, commenting on each others’ photos on Facebook, watching acquaintances football games, video diaries, or dance routines on YouTube, or spilling their heart out on countless blog services, Natives are expressing, sharing, talking – and shaping, presenting and developing personal identities – in all types of spaces online. How aware are Digital Natives that these spaces they often view as 'safe' are actually very public spaces? How aware are they of the potential consequences?

Why are Natives so comfortable sharing their lives in the most public of forums? Are they asserting the argument that in contemporary society “nothing is private, everything is recorded, so why not share myself?” Is this simply a representation of the evolution of personal privacy standards? (See Say Everything, New York Magazine) Are they, in the age of reality TV and YouTube stardom, seeking fame? Or perhaps they are simply not particularly conscious that the online spaces they feel so safe in are in reality accessible to anyone with a browser?

Recent events and research point to the answer that most likely all these dynamics are at play, to different levels for different Natives. For the most part, Digital Natives are conscious that they are engaging with each other, while on a wholly public forum. As such, how do they negotiate this dual audience?

The Case of Teen Girls' Blogs

In "Presentation of Self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs" (in Education, Communication, & Information, (5:1) 2005, Paywall) Denise S. Bortree looks at a friend-group of teenage girl’s blogs. She discusses how they use their blogs to communicate with each other, to present themselves to friends from school that may read their blog, and how they address the public nature of this communication. Important to note, while most girls' blogs Bortree examined were public, her interviews revealed that some girls do choose to keep their blogs private.

Bortree found that teen girls use blogs as a creative tools for maintaining relationships. By creating a space they view as 'safe' (away from parents, teachers, etc - which was proved wrong to the girls themselves in some instances!) teen girls feel free to engage in self-expression, read about each others' lives, and share experiences. Bortree concluded that blogging is also likely used to build and maintain an image that will afford them access to friendship groups.

Bortree focused on how teen girls, writing blogs with the involved identity formation practices, negotiate the medium as one used for both inter-personal communication (between friends and classmates) and mass communication (as available on the world wide web). While the girls Bortree looked at were aware of their global audience, and sometimes referenced it by directing strangers away from more detailed personal recounts of relationships, their blogs mostly served as interpersonal communication. Content included what happened during their day, who they had hung out with, what they had done over the weekend, what they plans were, etc, as well as quizzes and IM conversations.

The teens Bortree studied feel they have carved out a 'safe' community for self-expression with out adult interference. Based on content, Bortree infers that teens seem to not always be aware that parents, teachers, and others outside the world of teenagers can read their blogs. (Some girls include full name, birthday, location, drug use, and virginity discussions in their blogs.) Bortree identifies the challenge girl teen bloggers face of "maintaining a presented self to both audiences" - including enough intimate details to solidify and re-enforce friend groups, while presenting a pleasant and not-too-revealing self to the wider audience.

Blogging: Forming identity, developing relationships, and finding the courage to share

Teens use communication channels on the internet to broaden their circle of friends to include both real and virtual friends. In creating blogs, they share in writing thoughts about themselves, as well as comments about others, and the world around them. Beyond strictly blogging, the page design and links they include are also indirect expressions of the self (Papacharissi 2002). This points to a digital opportunity - beyond the technical/ design skills being learned, teens are learning to express abstract ideas (in this case the self) through visual appearance, design, and affiliations.

While it seems that most teens share blogs with their real-world friends, many teens do use the global potential of the internet to expand their social network. In Bortree’s research, one girl told of how she reads "blogs of teenagers who live in other parts of the world that she wished to visit." This points to some truth behind the Internet utopian ideal of “global connectedness” - not only are Digital Natives more fluent, connected, and share differing ideas of privacy, piracy, etc, than Digital Immigrants, but they are also from the outset globally connected with others through their digital escapades.

Mckenna et al (2002) found that sharing the 'true' self on-line can create close relationships.

In "Presentation of Self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs" (2005) Denise S. Bortree found that blogging was used by teen girls as safe space for inter-personal communication. She highlights four aspects of inter-personal communication found in blogs:

1) Sharing intimate thoughts, frustrations, disappointments, sometimes despair

2) Revealing personal struggles and family interactions

3) Expressing intimacy and building affection between the group of blogger girls

4) Linking to other blogs to express a sense of closeness to others and belonging to the group

In fact, Bortree found that girls were more willing to share some things in a blog than through any other communication channel, even in person. One girl said that her friends would 'probably not discuss our problems as much' if they didn't blog. Consider another girl’s statement:

"A lot of times, people write things in their blogs because they don't have the esteem or courage to talk about it, but by writing it in their blog, they are hoping someone will understand and be able to comfort them with the 'problem.'"

This seems to be pervasively prevalent: one girl described how she read others' blogs to learn about people's thoughts without having to talk about it - for example, the quiet kids in her class. However, sharing things you wouldn't normally say online can also cause problems. One girl found a mean comment about herself on someone else's blog by Googling herself - this caused problems between the two girls at schools. Another girl lost a close friend once she blogged about political issues her disagreed with.

Some important questions that arise out of this:

• Are teens are so prone to sharing deeply personal information on-line because they are in search of close relationships, whether with analogue acquaintances or strangers?

• If so, is this search for close relationships online a reflection of problematic or superficial high school relationships? Or is this simply the same reaching out using a new, and public, forum?

• What are the dangers (especially emotional) that go along with exposing oneself so deeply on-line? What are the benefits?

Asserting Identity with the Mobile Media

The Digital Native is constantly connected. To be constantly connected is to have continual access to your friends, to your chosen information, to your creative outlet…it also means that ‘digital information explosion’ (the ever-faster growing amount of published information available) and 'Digital Information Overload' (defined on wikipedia as ‘the state of having too much information to make a decision or remained informed about a topic,’] is always in your face. The information explosion surrounds, shoving the native simultaneously in different directions, making it hard to stand ground as ‘yourself’ – especially when at times it’s impossible to even hear yourself think.

Looking at Mp3 Players

(Including excerpts from Miriam Simun’s unpublished dissertation)

Shuhei Hosokowa argues that mobile auditory devices serve as ‘urban strategy,’ for users to gain control over their chaotic and disjointed urban environment. By tuning into the Mp3 player, users invoke their own personalized soundtrack for navigating and managing their environments. They not only choose what to become deaf to (advertisements on the radio, the old man on the corner asking for a nickel, or teachers walking down the hall), but super-impose their own music – and the emotion or memory that invokes – onto their experiences. As an 'urban strategy,' the Mp3 enables users to re-configure and re-interpret the world around them. By plugging into the Mp3 player, users take control of their own attention, and assert to themselves – and (by not submitting to foreign messages) to others – who they are.

By choosing music to listen to, users re-configure the self. Tia DeNora, a sociologist of music, explains of aesthetic reflexivity, a strategy individuals employ to understand, perform, and reconcile the self amidst the fragmented modern world:

"Following Simmel, recent social theory concerned with ‘modernity’ has conceived of the rise of aestheticisation as a strategy for preserving identity and social boundaries under the anonymous and often crowded conditions of existence. The modern ‘self’ is portrayed, within this perspective, as subject to heightened demands for flexibility and variation. Actors move, often at rapid pace, through the numerous and often crowded conditions that characterise daily existence…The self is called upon to be increasingly agile, to be able to manage perspectival and circumstantial incongruity, as happens, for example, when individuals move rapidly through numerous and often discrete worlds where personnel and values may clash," (DeNora 2000: 51-2).

This argument, that the chaotic and overwhelming features of the city requires agility in managing the ‘perpectival and circumstantial incongruity,’ may very well be extended to the digital environment natives find themselves in. Even in the remotest country-side home, a laptop can bring the native, albeit in a different way, directly into this clash of worlds, of ideas, and of values. In the city, the Mp3 serves as a management tool. It enables users to turn the incongruity of the chaotic commute into a single harmonious experience, but it also helps users manage and ‘re-enforce’ themselves among chaotic conditions. For the non-urban digital native, their Mp3 players may not serve the same functions, but the adamant personalization of media, and of experience, may very well be a response to assert the self amidst an overwhelming digital media landscape.

Natives’ tendency towards creativity on the internet (see Digital Creativity) can be viewed as an assertion of identity. Amidst a digital landscape that offers up a constant explosion of information – and influence - natives not only assert their own music choices, but also their personal thoughts and experiences, as well as their own political beliefs. Perhaps in a similar way to the urban dweller turning on her music to stand ‘her own’ amongst a chaotic city commute, natives carry this theme of personalization into their wider lives – by creating and ‘showing their own’ in order to – among many other reasons – assert themselves amongst a sea of information and influence.

Web 2.0 was not born out of thin air – personalization has been the coming trend of this millennium. For those that object that the Mp3 player is nothing but a ‘suped-up’ walkman – crucially, as users describe, the chief power of the Mp3 is not that it doesn’t skip, or even that it fits in your pocket – what makes this gadget a revolutionary one – and why in many places you’re hard pressed to find someone walking down the street without one – is that users can play anything they want, any time they want, and in any order they decide. No longer constrained to the 16 track CD set out by artists, A&D gurus, and recording companies, users choose their own line-ups of songs, podcasts, and even personal creations.

Don Slater and Daniel Miller write about how Trinidadians ‘mould’ spaces on the internet to culturally specific shapes and purposes (The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach, 2000). Similarly, Mp3 users very much ‘mould’ their commute into ‘personally specific shapes and purposes.’ Users use music to configure the personal spaces they create for particular and private purposes. DeNora writes of the way ‘music is an active ingredient in the organization of self, the shifting of mood, energy level, conduct style, mode of attention and engagement with the world,’ (2000: 61). By engaging in Mp3 listening, individuals sustain a consistent emotion amidst the rapidly changing stimuli of the city. This enables them to organize their behavior and re-configure the self while on the move.

Users carefully and purposely create and choose specific soundtracks to facilitate a particular mood, to prepare for a certain event, or simply to have their very own super-hero soundtrack banging away in their ears as they navigate through their world. Natives take control of what they hear, and in doing so, they tell not only themselves, but also all the excluded influences: ‘Here I am. I am what I decide. I am me.’

Consider how some natives (and few immigrants) describe the power they invoke by turning on their Mp3 players:

Chao, one of the study participants, has a number of ‘moulded spaces’ that he calls upon at will. He explains that ‘You need to have music to fit all of your moods.’ In invoking music to control his mood, he facilitates whatever activity he chooses. As such, Chao’s Mp3 functions as a prescriber of action:

It focuses my thoughts more, and I have more control over them, and I can use it cathartically, so if I want to think about a relationship, I can choose music that will remind me of that and it will bring out emotion, or if I want to think about something I can focus on it. Also, if I’m going out, I put something on with a bit of base, and it can motivate me. I think it makes you feel more confident…you can psyche yourself up for things, so if I was going to a job interview, I would choose music that would get me in the right mindset.

The Mp3 provides Chao a wide selection of music from which to configure his person. He is able to organise himself to ‘get out’ emotions, concentrate for a job interview or motivate himself for a night out, all in the midst of his commute. The Mp3 allows Chao, in any place and time, to summon the version of his self he chooses.

Gemma uses music to re-configure her journey as a time for reflection. She plays music to recall specific memories while commuting:

You deal with getting on the bus, which is impossible, then the tube, then I have to change lines, it’s hot, it’s crowded…Let’s say I’m listening to my Japanese music, that means I’m thinking about my trip to Japan for an hour, which is almost a privilege when you’ve got all these things thrust at you.

Gemma is re-configuring the disjointed environment of her commute into a single fluid space filled with memories of Japan. Furthermore, Gemma is creating the ‘head space’ Hosokawa writes of. By disassociating from her environment and the demands it makes upon her, she exerts autonomy and mobilises the self by indulging in a personal aspect of her life while navigating London.

Criticisms of this type of music listening contend that it is simply a form of distraction and pacification. Some claim that listeners are simply super-imposing irrelevant soundtracks onto their surroundings to distract them from critically engaging with important issues they face (“I won’t think too much about the homeless man I pass if I’m bopping to AK1200”). While some uses of music may be deemed illusory, individuals are actors in appropriating various personal meanings, and subsequent uses, of music. In fact, individuals actively use these meanings to re-configure their understandings, actions and place in the world (DeNora 2000).

As Chao describes, the Mp3 player enables him with not only the power to personalize and thereby better cope with any environment he finds himself in, but he also re-asserts himself amidst a demanding environment, thereby generally improving his experiences:

[With my Mp3 payer,] I feel happier. It helps me deal with things; I choose what I want to interact with. It works very well in London. London I have difficulties living in, because it’s so big, it’s so stressful, and it’s so different and diverse, and there’s stuff going on all the time. I feel happier, more confident, and I’m more in control…London’s got a fast pace of life, which I like, but it’s difficult to deal with, so there’s more stimuli than there are in other places, there are more different kinds of people…you don’t see so many familiar faces….you can zone out…you can decide, right, ok I’ve had enough, I’m zoning out, and also the speed of it, I want to slow it down. I want to be on the tube, and just slow down, so I put Morcheeba on…I just take control a bit.

For many users, the Mp3 serves as a tool of personal re-enforcement. DeNora writes of the way users identify with a certain music, and then by listening to this music they both express and perform the self. The Mp3 allows people to re-enforce the self in the very environment where it is most dominated – the crowded and chaotic urban commute. As Boris describes:

I just really, really love the music that I like, I don’t have all these different types of music, it’s mostly just techno, the really hard stuff…so it just always re-enforces my, [pause] re-enforces me.’

Later in the interview, he mentions the importance of this ability in London:

[I am] switching on to the music, obviously, but switching on to life, being a bit more there…I think the reason why you need the cocoon, and this is why I listen to it in London more than I listen to it anywhere else, is because in London its very easy to lose yourself, to just bleed into the background…when you’ve got your music on you’re more you, and more able to keep yourself a bit separate from the madness around you.

Here Boris describes how he purposely moulds a personal space within a chaotic environment which can at times dominate him. Within this space ‘his’ music serves as a re-enforcement, an enabler to carry the self, now mobile, through the city.

The above users describe how entering into a private sound world amidst their London commutes enables them to mould personal spaces in which they use music to organize and re-enforce the self. They call upon music’s many forces to prescribe action and configure various types of leisure within these spaces. In this way users separate from their surroundings while performing the self amidst them – resulting in, as Hosokawa describes, an autonomous and mobile self.

By entering into these ‘personal sound worlds,’ users are already challenging the status quo – by introducing the private sphere (categorized by personal will, comfort, and desire) into the public sphere (categorized by authority, obligation, and necessity). This phenomenon - of personalizing, and making the private public – is one that truly distinguishes the digital native from the immigrant. Digital Natives have learned in a world where much of both media and experience can be personalized - and this is becoming ever more possible. Their interest in engaging in fixed platforms is weaning in favor of interactive, user-modifiable and user-created platforms. They refuse to be passive consumers – of messages in any form – and assert the right to control their media experiences, to navigate the level and destinations of their attention, and to live in a world, if not created, at least modified according to personal taste.

Problems

• Do digital technologies facilitate escapist behaviour?

Consider, in the case of the Mp3 player, the comment of Keisha, a twenty-year-old college student:

I use [my Mp3 player] everyday. I have the remote for it, so I lie in bed, and press play, and it comes on in the morning. And then when I walk to school, I use it to walk to school, and then, walking home, and I also have it on as background when I’m cleaning or something… I fall asleep listening to it through my speakers…I don’t like silence…I like to have something going on constantly, I think I might just sit there and think, and if I think too much, ahh, I don’t like it, I just like to get on with things.

Q: So it keeps you from thinking?

A: Not keeps me from thinking, but keeps me from thinking about things that I don’t want to think about…It distracts me.

Keisha’s listening routine points to just how constantly connected many Digital Natives are throughout their daily lives. Her invoking of a continual soundtrack to avoid unpleasant thoughts point to the possibilities of this digital media to serve as an escape. By filling in all time and sound with music, natives may ignore problems they face by squeezing out any challenging or unpleasant thoughts. However, the media decry after the explosion of the iPod market of ‘tuned-out’ kids, no longer paying attention to the world they live in, is an exaggeration of both the way Mp3 players are being used, and the power of the object to be responsible for young people’s inattention. Such panics are also reminiscent of past generation-gap related concerns. The above exploratory study showed that in fact, users are very aware of the different ways and levels to which they immerse themselves in the music playing in their Mp3 players. Users purposely navigate their level of attention to surroundings, and their level of ‘presence’ in different environments.

Nevertheless, it remains important to note the abilities that the Mp3 player, as well as other digital media, gives to its users to escape their f2f (face2face) lives and concerns. This is not to say that it is the digital media that is encouraging this escapist behaviour, but that the emergence of a generation with a capability to be so constantly connected provides a new, and perhaps better facilitating medium through which escapist behaviour can be pursued.

• Who owns and controls the interactive platforms that Digital Natives are personalizing, modifying, and creating identities in? Also see Digital Creativity