I'll begin by getting straight to the point - we always convey ourselves in way that comes across best.
If a friend tags us in a photo that we consider to be "ugly" or "embarrassing," the first thing we do is untag ourselves from the photo, or beg them to take it down.
The posts we make on our social networking sites are always of a humorous nature, or focusing on our achievements. We wouldn't create a post just saying we'd failed our exams or lost our job, unless we were looking for sympathy, of course.
The profile picture we choose is always one that we consider we look our best in, as we know it is the first photo people are going to see when they access our social-networking profile, so we want to make a good first impression.
But is it really worth trying to convey ourselves online in the best way that we can?
No one's online persona is an exact match to their persona in the real world.
Why is this?
It could be due to ambiguity - a lot of what people say online can be interpretted to mean something else.
This is because when we are communicating with someone in text form, eg. by e-mail or social-networking sites, there is no tone of voice or facial expression coming into play.
Elisha Tan states in her article Why Are People Rude Online:
"Your speechless is silence offline but online it can be reflected as ‘…………….’ or simply the lack of reply... Moreover, the absence of speech offline lack can be seen as pondering, not wanting to argue further or ignoring depending on the accompanying body language, but ‘………….’ can be interpreted as a rebuttal, a roll of the eye or an act of eliciting laughter and you’ll not be able to confidently know which one it is"
Another aspect that makes our online persona so different may be due to the fact that we are hiding behind a computer screen.
No one can see us.
No one can hear us.
So why not speak our minds?
The keyboard brings us confidence. We use it to channel our emotions and anger - something we cannot do so freely using the telephone or when interacting face-to-face, as it would be considered inappropriate to the reciever.
The following article discusses the burst of confidence that we find ourselves obtaining when we connect to the Internet:
http://phys.org/news193046619.html
To finish, here is a video that contains some humourous points about the language that we use when communicating by text or online:
References
Online Video
ComedyTimeDir. 2010. Text Talk: Comedy Time [online video]. 18 June. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOXZhlbvcnE [Accessed on 3 April 2012]
Online Article
MILIAN, M. 2010. Real-life personas rarely match real-life behaviour, observers say [online]. Los Angeles: Phys.Org. Available from: http://phys.org/news193046619.html
[Accessed on 4 April 2012]
[Accessed on 4 April 2012]
Online Article
TAN, E. 2010. Why Are People Rude Online [online]. Singapore: Tech In Asia. Available from: http://www.techinasia.com/why-are-people-rude-online/ [Accessed on 4 April 2012]
No comments:
Post a Comment