New Media Self Promotion & the Web Celebrity

This week we examined Social Networking Site (SNS) profiles as modern-day self portraits. Users have the ability to portray or even promote themselves in anyway they want. Users send signals in these portraits to reveal information about their personalities, interests, and other personal information.

These online portraits that users create can be constructed as a means of self-promotion to either fabricate or gain fame. With this ability to self-promote, aspiring celebrities and even actual celebrities flock to SNS's to garner attention and awareness about the cause closest to their heart: their fame and notoriety. Celebrities like "D-Lister" Kathy Griffin use their Facebook Fan Pages as a way to promote their latest business ventures, appearances and thoughts. Griffin's page encourages fans to purchase her recently released memoir, to purchase tickets to her comedy shows, to tune into her Bravo reality TV show and to attend book signings across the nation. The SNS medium has allowed Griffin's status as a celebrity to rise, as well as the value of her bank account.

This ability to gain fame through new media has spawned a new class of celebrity: the Web Celebrity. Celebrities have been made out of regular folks like Mario Lavandeira also known as blogger Perez Hilton, author turned blogger Arianna Huffington, and Jessica Rose better known as Youtube star Lonelygirl15. These three individuals have taken advantage of New Media to gain international notoriety. Hilton's blog on celebrity culture garners millions of a hit day, as does Huffington's blog which incorporates aspects of news, blogs and videos. Advertisers pay big bucks for the opportunity to reach Hilton's and Huffington's readers. Jessica Rose has translated her fame to land lucrative commercial and movie deals. New Media has given an eclectic group of individuals the opportunity to attain fame and fortune by giving them a platform to showcase their unique insights and talents.

Unnecessary Moral Panic

Moral panic is the frenzy and terror that arises after an issue is stirred up by whistleblowers with little else to do than wreck havoc on a perfectly content group of people. These whistleblowers feel it is their obligation to create pandemonium over a usually minimally threatening terror. Case in point: the H1N1 Flu. Although there are many theories about who blew the H1N1 Flu threat out of proportion, some group with a hidden agenda decided to not only attach a horrible stigma to swine- pigs have never gotten a worse rap than the first weeks of the "Swine Flu" outbreak- but to also create an imminent threat of unknown consequences of catching the Flu. Moral panic ensued, and schools, businesses, and almost every organization in the United States panicked and scrambled to try and prevent an outbreak by providing Purrell dispensers at every opportunity they could.

Moral panic extends beyond disease and famine, it can also affect Social Networking Sites (SNS) and lately Facebook has been struck with it regularly. Moral panic first struck social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace with the scare over sexual predators and underage SNS users. New media helped spread the furry associated with the threat of sexual predators luring your adolescents into meeting up with them and before you knew it, parents and children's advocacy groups were up in arms with the situation.

Television programs like NBC'S To Catch a Predator did not help the panic by showcasing sexual predators in the act of engaging in explicit conversations with volunteers posing as teens from the group Perverted Justice. The show helped local authorities put hundreds of criminals behind bars but at what cost to the public's sanity? Are the concerns and scenarios raised so outlandish that the chance of them actually affecting your children is slim to none? Are children really looking to chat and meet up with 40-year-old men? The question is, when do whistleblowers and advocacy groups cross the line from being informative and productive groups who spread the word of possible dangers to being nuisances and initiators of unnecessary and excessive moral panic?

Facebook After Death

Today's discussion concerning Facebook's policy on deceased users left me with a lot of questions so I decided to check out Facebook and see their actual stance on the issue. After searching for quite a bit of time, I finally found Facebook's most up to date policy on deceased member's accounts. Facebook deals with the issue in the "Help Center" under the title "Memorializing Accounts." They first explain what memorializing an account means:

When a user passes away, we memorialize their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account removes certain sensitive information (e.g., status updates and contact information) and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Memorializing an account also prevents all login access to it.

Facebook's approach to the controversial and touchy material of death is very well versed and respectful of the user's rights. It is an appropriate alternative to deleting the account altogether and allows for the deceased's user's family and friends to memorialize their loved one, while still respecting some boundaries with the removal of select information. It will be interesting to see how this new concept of "online grieving" plays out. Handling the passing of users will most certainly be a disputed topic for social networking sites in the future.

Although this is a somewhat morbid observation this topic is becoming especially relevant as the average age of users rises, creating a greater likelihood for the passing of users. It is inevitable that this issue will become more contested as the numbers of older users are growing at a rapid pace. According to data from iStrategyLab the number of Facebook users 55 and older grew 513.7% from January 2009 to July 2009. With this older demographic invading Facebook, no one can deny the relevance and importance of policy on the passing of users.

Online Attitude

In the online world of bloggers and social networking site users a new issue is arising over internet identity, I'd like to coin a new term to envelop this issue "online attitude." Online attitude refers to the differing personas between a person online and offline, specifically the increased confidence internet users feel when expressing their views online. This new dilemma of online attitude looks at how differently internet users act online versus, and why.

The principle difference between online and offline actions and personas is because of the medium itself. The internet allows users through forums like blogs and social networking sites to express themselves in a place where they face no direct rebuttals or backlash, allowing them to more freely express their views. This freedom of expression can sometimes extend itself too far and cause users to go too far in their expressions and sometimes act more irrationally then honestly. The nature of the internet's environment allows for a desensitized and depersonalized expression of one's self.

Bloggers like Perez Hilton have faced many problems with the blogging medium's freedom of expression. Hilton is infamous for his unforgiving and critical opinions of celebrities. As his blog gained more and more notoriety his online attitude became more aggressive and unforgiving. Hilton is open about the harsh criticism he receives from the celebrities he bashes, usually brief scoldings for his insensitive musings on celebrity's images, weight, and appearance and work. In July 2009, Hilton was confronted by Will.i.am for his extremely harsh commentary on Will, and other members of the Black Eyed Peas leading to a physical altercation between Will's manager Liborio "Polo" Molina and Hilton where Polo gives Hilton a black eye. Although online attitude has some benefits in revealing honesty through a certain comfort attained with the online medium, it also has many drawbacks when the attitude reveals irrational and inconsiderate behavior.

SNS Reflection

The recent class focus on Social Networking Sites like Myspace has revealed a number of my own memories about my prior use of social networking sites like Myspace. I can relate many of the themes of the articles and discussions to my own experiences. It has been interesting to analyze my own use of SNS in terms of these articles.

In the beginning of high school, Myspace was the most popular SNS at my school so I obliged with the trend and created a profile. Within hours of creating my profile I was fascinated with this new world of social networking sites. I can remember the importance of profile building and the social and technical codes associated with it. Many of my friends spent hours building their profiles and searching for html codes to manipulate the appearance of their profiles. I remember the arduous process of deciding which photo to make your default and other tasks that now seem trivial, but were once important components to your identity performance, or how you chose to present yourself to the Myspace world.

After six hours of school, two hours of swim practice and hours of homework I would finally be able to check Myspace and be able to explore the profiles of my friends and classmates. This experience of using Myspace as a release and as a change of pace from the "structured lives of teens outside and inside the home" most definitely was in line with my use of Myspace as a SNS.

Writing this post prompted me to see if I could still access my Myspace profile which I hadn't accessed since high school. After contemplating over which email address and password I used at the time, I was finally able to access an aspect of my life that was once seemed so important. This experience proved to be very reflexive about the way I was once portrayed myself online. I am now much more conscious about what I post online. Maturity and more visibility to adults may be the catalysts for my more mature portrayal on Facebook. It was quite the trip down memory lane examining my prior SNS use. The experience has actually revealed a lot about how I much I have changed in the past two or three years. In some ways it was like looking at an old yearbook, seeing my closest friends at the time, and my primary interests. I encourage everyone to check out their old SNS profiles to see how much they have changed and how differently they may interact on social networking sites now. In the future we may see SNS profiles functioning more in this way, as place-markers and reminders of old times and former personas.