Who are you?

Who are you?

Jaime Ogston

                                                Figure 1 - The All Seeing Eye (2017)

If you think that social media is some benign concept created purely for the social satisfaction of its users, then you are not alone. Thousands join Instagram every day around the world with little thought into the true objective of its creators.

Instagram, a photo sharing platform, provides the opportunity for users to upload the highlights of their lives and share them with their community of followers. Your page, your story, narrated by you. From a humanistic perspective, there certainly are elements of individuality, authenticity and agency evident (McNeill, 2012, p.67). But dig a little deeper and you may just find a whole other realm that will have you questioning who it is that is really telling your story.

According to the Four Corners episode – Cracking the Code, aired on ABC (Greste & Cohen, 2017), Facebook has a wealth of data on millions of people globally. Through its myriad of algorithms, Facebook is able to track your network of friends, judge your interests and even tell what mood you are in. This data is then used to tailor you page according to your data. Instagram, now owned by Mark Zuckerberg, founder and creator of Facebook, also collects and has access to this bank of personal information. According to Adam Helfgott, who appeared on the Four Corners episode, you don’t even need to be a Facebook or Instagram user for Facebook to be able to create a profile on you. And opting out, well that’s just not an option.

If we then go on to look at the ‘liking’,’sharing’,’tagging’ and ‘commenting’ aspects of the Instagram site, we need to question how this impacts our social media behaviour (McNeill, 2012, p.71). What does being socially acceptable in the virtual world entail? And does this then put the humanistic ideal of authenticity in question? Bringing to light the social media features and software that have the power to ‘silence’ unacceptable narratives and persuade you to present yourself in a certain way (Kuttainen, 2017), then one would have to argue that we are indeed not our authentic selves.

So, if our humanistic ideals are being challenged and we are unknowingly complying then doesn’t that then make us posthumanistic in the virtual world? Our narratives are no longer our own but rather are networked according to cyber the world (McNeill, 2012, p.78). The influences of the network itself with all of persuasive software directing us to be fit a certain mould accompanied by the influences of the virtual community further shaping our behaviours renders us incapable of maintaining individuality, authenticity and agency. We are being stripped of our very own identities and edging closer to resembling a community of cyborgs.

References:

·         McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No “I” in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography, 35(1), 65-82. Retrieved from http://www.muse.jhu.edu.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/article/480243

·         Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 6 notes [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

·         Greste, P. (Writer), & Cohen, J. (Director). (2017). Cracking the Code [Television series episode]. In Neighbour, S (Executive producer), Four Corners. Sydney, NSW: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

·         The All Seeing Eye [Image]. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/149260337@N06/33736294501