Authenticity is Key

Image1: Businessman select mask in work a day

Humans for centuries have imposed narrative structure to the real world to give it meaning (White, 1997, 170). But as humans we have ventured into the digital age, we have come to see advancements in technology; which have influenced the narrative structure.  Applying this week’s lecture and readings I have come to see how my virtual network, Reddit, has used network narrative as a form of communication.

Memes are one of the most common narratives found online, they go viral with ease and spread rapidly through networks. People don’t need to be within the same place to contribute to the narrative. Similarly, to the way memes are a narrative Reddit uses a wide range of outlets to create narratives; gifs, videos, text posts, and music are predominately the tools that create narrative. Through the use of these narrative tools Redditors can freely express who they are and shape their own self-identity.

Although throughout our weekly readings and lecture discussions the idea of if our narratives on virtual networks are authentic in creating a true representation of our self-identity. R.Kay Green over on Huffington Post talks about how we perceive our ideal selves and express this through the use of “likes,fans,comments,posts, etc.”(Green,2013) .

Within Reddit many people abuse the anonymity that it has created within itself. Unlike many other social networks Reddit does not make users “fill in blanks or check boxes as mandated by the site’s program” (McNeill, 2012) but allows them to create their own self-identity through the use of a flair system. The flair is used to give a brief description about one’s self in context to the Subreddit the user is in. This masks the user’s identity and doesn’t truly show their real-identity but an incarnate representation of their true identity.

References

Green, K. R. (2013, August 7). The social media effect: Are you really who you portray online?Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/r-kay-green/the-social-media-effect-a_b_3721029.html

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Our space: networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 6: Networked narratives. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved fromhttp://learnjcu.edu.au

McNeill, L. (2012). There is no ‘I’ in Network: Social networking sites and posthuman auto-biography. Biography, 35 (1), 65-82. doi:10.1353/bio.2012.0009

4, D. Businessman select mask in work a day.Vector. Retrieved September 2, 2016, fromhttp://www.shutterstock.com/pic-250556059/stock-vector-businessman-select-mask-in-work-a-day-vector.html