--digital divide/issues of access
It was very interesting to read the article on Arab girls and their ways of using Facebook. The way that they restrict their expression and the access to their site made me consider how important your image online is, and how public it can be. The book even explains this when the author says “Whereas individuals in the West often underestimate the public aspect of Facebook, girls in the Middle East are extremely aware of this reality.” (2.0, p. 34) The article goes on to talk about how the girls edit their pictures because they are afraid of someone taking their photos and manipulating them or using them for even more public sites. This was particularly interesting as well as disturbing because I began thinking about who had my pictures and where they were posting them. In fact, a friend of mine had a picture on his Facebook profile of him body painted to look like the Kool-Aid man, and now when you search the Kool-Aid man in Google, his photo is one of the first ones to show up because someone turned his picture into a joking “motivational” poster.
Also, the privacy that the Middle Eastern girls use is very strict. I have my profile set up to be private and only my friends and friends of friends can see my site. However, reading how closely the girls monitor their friends and sites made me start to think about how I could manage my own site better. I have over 600 friends and thinking that 600 people plus their 600+ friends can all see my profile is a scary idea and this article is making me rethink my settings and ways of managing my Facebook profile. In fact, one of the girls interviewed in the book managed her own site as well as her friends. Maram would monitor what pictures or posts her friends put on their Facebook pages about her and asks them to “untag” her to ensure that people she does not want to see her page or photos or information she does not want shared will not be public. (2.0, p.36)
--gender fluidity online
The new age of technology, specifically when referring to the use of IMing, has allowed for more gender fluidity. “[Online,] no one knows whether persons are male, female or a combination of both, unless they choose to signal gender to them through discourse.” (Stern, p.5) This is very important for adolescents today because they are able to express their true identity through the internet, a way that was not available to adolescents of past generations. I believe that today’s society is more open to gender fluidity and the gender roles are beginning to blur. IMing could have a large part in that. My generation seems to be much more open minded to the LGBT community and more understanding and accepting, and my generation also grew up with the beginning stages of IM. The idea that you could create your own identity, whether it be female, male or both, allowed for us at our developing age to express identities as we saw ourselves. This gives me hope that future generations will continue to blur the gender lines
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