Group items tagged

made me think of our discussion of self-ID online. Douthat writes about self-involvement and absorption..and how social media and Internet culture encourage a sense of self-performance and "look at me!" attitude

In one of the videos we watched last week, Wesch mentioned how students can look at the discussion page for any article on Wikipedia to get a sense of how information is being interactively constructed and contested. This article discusses the issue of self-governance in online communities with a focus on how Wikipedia is edited and the community politics behind it. I think this article makes a really useful contribution to a discussion about authority and knowledge production on the Internet. There is also a related article about the relationship between Wikipedia contributions and identity construction here.

I read (part of) an ethnography of Wikipedia last semester that was really interesting. http://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/ Good Faith Collaboration by Joseph Reagle "Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the century-old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. "

Without accusing certain authors in the field of elitism, I think that Wikipedia works as it should, by serving the needs of people in the way they want it. If someone needs to look up the habits of Pokemon or William Shatner's favorite food, who are we to question their information needs?

The ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee and the IFC Privacy Subcommittee developed the "Resolution to Protect Library User Confidentiality in Self-Service Hold Practices" after receiving requests from librarians and library users to examine the issue of reader privacy and self-service holds (June 28, 2011).

Just came across these fairly recent article on Danna boyd. (yes, that's lower case 'b.') She's been involved with some pretty interesting online studies that focus on teen and young adults. Some of her research has included topics such as, "Online White Flight," "Digital Self-Harm," and Privacy Techniques." I found it particularly interesting that on the topic of Digital Self-Harm, she discovered that vicious anonymous questions on a teen's profile weren't examples of cyberbullying but were posted by the teen herself!

Thanks for bringing her into the conversation, Mary Beth! danah boyd is definitely one of my favorite researchers. I read large portions of her dissertation as part of HIB my first semester in the program here at Rutgers, and a lot of what she's said has stuck with me since. You can read it here: http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf. I also recently attended a webinar from the Berkman Center, where she's a fellow, in which she summarizes nicely a lot of her work under the broader theme of "Embracing the Culture of Connectivity." You can watch it here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/05/academicSM.

some psychological theories that describe and explain online identity formation...describes what parts of our personalities we tend to deliberately share, and how some of our actions aren't as controlled as we'd like them to be

This was very interesting and helpful. I'm looking at online identities for the term project. I never really gave much thought to the idea that your preference for expressing yourself online is tied to your personality.

I recently read about a new Google product called "Me on the Web:" http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/Google_launches_me_on_the_web_to_help_you_manage_online_identity.php. I think one of the most interesting functions, especially in the context of your comment, Suzanne, that actions may not be as easily controlled as we'd like, is you can remove unwanted content from Google search results that relate to you. I am not sure how I feel about that as I feel like you should "own" and be responsible for content you initially put up. Still, being able to remove some search results raises questions not just about individual identity management, but organizational management as well.

Building an online community and culture around words, phrases, and tropes -> looks at twitter hashtags, 

Hey, sorry I didn't see this comment sooner! I'm on a few google groups about memes so I get a lot of articles through them, as well as following twitter accounts of academics studying the lulz. This one, I think I just found it on google scholar while looking for sources for my final project.

Jay Smooth nails the "no homo" meme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nCB8aiXD4)....and explains that as fun as it is to "play the game," just don't do it.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned Jaron Lanier or this book, but a friend just recommended it and I was looking up to see what his views are like. It seems that the book, among other things, talks about having to have a self before we begin to share it. Are we disregarding the complexities of life with social media? Are we demonstrating to people that we're living rather than finding personal meaning in life? But I really need to look into it a bit more and I'm not quite sure what I think yet. He's a preeeetty interesting character, that's for sure, with a different take on things. Anyone read this? What do you think?