Turkle believes that the internet allows users to become authors, not only of the text they are producing but also of themselves. They are able to construct new selves through the social interaction that they part-take in online.
I think that the forum aspect of handbag is great because it allows people to forget about things which would divide them from others in society. They can go online and speak to any of the members they want, where as In society you cannot go up to a random person you do not really know and start speaking to them about something without being branded as ‘weird!’.
I also think its great in terms of what Wilbur refers to ‘the emancipatory discourse of cyberspace’ – the sense that being online can be a liberation from the offline world and the roles and identities it requires of us. I think this can be seen in the handbag forums, where people can talk about the insecurities in their lives - http://www.handbag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=464888 , where as in Society they might be seen as weak etc to share these insecurities with people. “We can tak risks or express aspects of our self that we find impossible to live out in day-to-day meatspace”. (Lister, p. 167)
One of the successes of the handbag forum is that it allows social baggage to be forgotten, people aren’t judged anymore on their class, race, gender or nationality, as people might not even know any of these details about each other on this forum. For example on handbag, students mix with the likes of lawyers!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This is a better post because you are explicitly linking your experience to arguments and identified sources from the unit.
Post a Comment