Personal Homepages & the construction of identity on the web summary By Daniel Chandler.Media theories such as Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) have created ideas that suggest new media seems to involve a shifting or blurring of the boundaries of public and private, ‘automatically’ publishing information on a global scale.
Daniel Chandler’s research frequently indicates that the web is often’ misleadingly’ in terms of being a global source of information. The authors of these increasingly fast growing web homepages are allowed to shape, express, convey and omit their writing displaying their personal reflexion of themselves, known as ‘virtual selves’ and what some might call ‘self-advertisement’. (Quote from Paul, A British homepage author). Similarly Thomas Erickson(1996) notes that personal homepages and the world wide web are not being used to ‘publish information’ but they are being used to construct identity of one’s self.
Critics would argue that personal home pages & the construction of identities on the web are ‘misleading’ yet again. This medium appears to be open to mass producers as well as mass consumers and Synchronous modes of communication such as the telephone and face-to-face involve ‘real time’ unlike asynchronous communications just like personal homepages, where face-to-face interactions such as facial expression, vocal cues, body language, posture, gestures and non-verbal mannerisms together with style of dress and hairstyle is not recognized nor judged. Steven Rubio (1996) complains ‘When you visit my homepage, you don’t get to meet me, but only my presentation of myself.’ Although this quote is truthful, with the World Wide Web never before being available to so many people, allowing authors to construct selective personal identity may possibly be unsafe for audiences of the web especially within youth culture, audiences should be wary of personal identities to prevent a moral panic of homepages appearing ‘dangerous’ due to the authenticity of relationships.
Daniel Chandler’s research additionally illustrates positive aspects of personal homepages constructing identity. Personal homepages allows freedom to not only authors but also audiences where both can relate to one another, this transforms individuals to the inner selves where they can escape their average day and exist to who they desire. This also allows authors to publish feelings helping to validate themselves, with unspoken questions such as “Who am I?”. Personal homepages attentively marginalize groups in quite specific characteristics, by means with the world becoming more and more variable, compliant and dynamic everyday day with being Gay, bisexual, a second generation British Asian, a disabled women the World Wide Web is becoming a dependant technology. Rob in London, “ A very easy way for me to come out, I could say ‘check out my web site’ and knew they’d come across the gay part. More importantly, they could find out in my own positive terms and think about it before reacting.” For David, other gay Britain, his “confession page”. Personal home pages can explore ‘deeper’ motives such as audiences finding new friendship and dating opportunities and audiences finding a ‘personal and intellectual connection not just physical connection’ where physical connection is more likely in face-to-face interactions.
Regardless of the trend of personal home pages in sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo & many more there is still a difference between construction of real life interaction and web identity. People like Turkle, (1996) explain you have to live the experience of real life. Personal homepages create a sense of identity, whether it being a sense of belonging or simply just to be heard by someone to express themselves. The internet has a mass audience which consecutively makes the information by authors very public, which often manipulates their public identities on the web.
