The world of online social networking provides an interesting and complicated arena to view performances. I want to examine this idea of the multiple and semi-fictive portrayed self on Facebook, a popular social networking website, and how this widespread, familiar, and accepted practice of self-expression is both a private and public performance.
In Guy Merchant’s text, “Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication,” he raises interesting ideas and questions about social identities that are performed and exhibited online. Merchant acknowledges that through the study of adult e-communication, “much online interaction is interwoven with identity performance.” (Merchant 235). Merchant goes on to state that because there is an absence of physical presence when communicating with others online, we work much harder to produce our identity in this “communicative medium.”
Yvonne Volkart also suggests that we work in such ways to produce an identity. Volkart takes this notion further by noting that these identities are often semi-fictive and can be “multiple.” She goes on to describe various new media artists and their works that comment on these fictitious, multiple, technologically-dwelling personas that live in cyber-space.
While reading these two texts, I also kept thinking about Marvin Carlson’s text, “What is Performance.” He suggests that, “all human activity could potentially be considered as “performance,” or at least all activity carried out with a consciousness of itself.” (Carlson 70). Carlson goes on to explain that in the awareness, or consciousness, of carrying out certain actions, a quality of performance is given to the action. The functions available on Facebook can be interpreted as extremely performative acts. When one publishes their “status” on Facebook, one is consciously aware of publishing their emotional existence on the site for others to see and potentially identify with. Sometimes these statuses seem over exaggerated, thus raising the question as to whether or not the person posting the status is trying to communicate or trying to perform. The question is raised: Is this status true or is this status partially fiction?
With the function of making several photo albums of various life events, e.g. weddings, parties, family gatherings, etc., one portrays themselves as having several identities. For example, one of my friends has various photo albums in her Facebook profile that define her as having various identities: She is a bride/wife in a wedding photo, a classmate among her friends in a photo taken at her graduate school, and a photographer who exhibits her images in one album titled “ ‘999.”
The public and private performances displayed on Facebook are fluid among themselves. Friends can post on each other’s “walls,” making the communication between two people very public. This act is extremely performative, in that when one communicates on a friend’s wall, one is inherently making a spectacle of the communication for many to witness. The private performances come from the actual user. By posting various photos, general interests and favorite quotes, one does perform, to an extent, by carefully choosing what to say and how to portray themselves to others.
I am interested in the performativity surrounding these social networking sites. When I was thinking about what kind of photo I wanted to post in this blog, I remembered that I have two dramatically different photos in my Myspace album (Myspace is another prime example of a performative-social networking site). The black and white photograph was taken by a friend of mine many years ago, and I always thought I looked mysterious in it, what with its film noir feeling. In the Polaroid picture, I am still posing for the camera, but my expression is more humorous, which is more conducive to my real personality. Posting these two very different photos were extremely performative acts and I was, in hindsight, trying to project my various identities to others by having these and other photos available for the public to view. The performativity of oneself in social networking sites is a topic I wish to develop and comment on through my next photography project. I have been “studying” the various facial expressions people have in their photos posted on Facebook and Myspace, especially young women, and create my own version of these facial expressions. The experiment is sure to be a performative one.
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