Online Representation and Branding of the ‘Self’

Structure of the presentation

1. The emergence of individualism
2. Virtual communities
3. Internet as a place of expression
4. Self-branding (on social networks, the job market and as a spectacle)
5. Identity in Surveillance
6. Case Study – Big Brother
7. Michel Foucault
8. Final Questions

Individualism

Pre-individualism, before the age of computerization

• Repetitive labour, usually 1 or 2 jobs in a lifetime
• Rigid gender roles
• No varying environments
• A world in the grip of Fordism (mass consumption)

Individualism

• Users and consumers adapt easily to new environments
• New gender roles
• New career directions
• Emergence of a desire to express one’s individuality

This transformation in adaptability seems healthier
(Like an immune system, only healthy if adaptable)

Virtual Communities

In Britain, more than 90% of 18-24 year old survey respondents use social networking sites. 39.6% of respondents over 55 engage in some form of online social networking. (Ciao Surveys, 2008)

“It’s a chance for all of us who aren’t actors to play [with] masks.”
‘WELL’ discussion group about online personae

True Identity: Ones identity emerges from whom one knows, one’s associations and connections.

Sherry Turkle observes; It is potentially most liberating to become acquainted with our dark side. (The Pirate Bay comments)
With many selves, this multiplicity is not viable if it means shifting among personalities that cannot communicate. This multiplicity creates fragmented selves.

Kenneth J. Gergen (American psychologist) argues that these online representations create a ‘saturated self’ or a breakdown of identity. Many details are added and left out. Multiple online identities can NOT be called multiple personalities, because all these different parts, split-offs, of the self are disconnected fragments, not full personalities.

Online Representation: Justifiable?

Internet as a place of expression

Can virtuality be seen as a prison? For some people, the internet can be used a place for healing and romance, like dating websites. It could be helpful in reaching certain goals.

The cyborg (where human and machine are one) has become a post-modern myth. Some create some sense of believe in it, for example where gamers are totally immersed in the game. People can get lost in virtual worlds. (WoW)

Also in the case of ‘Surrogates’, we see a diminished nature of the ‘real’ in a culture of simulation. In online communities, the possibility of creating multiple identities goes against any real and unitary self. Users are still bound to desires, pain, and mortality of their physical selves.

Self-Branding

On social networks: we can see a blurring of the distinction between private self and instrumental associative object.

On the job market: creating a detachable, saleable image or narrative.  The branded self is like a commodity for sale in the labour market. It needs to have its own promotional skin, within the confines of the dominant corporate imaginary.  Self-promotion is not new, like personal advertisements in newspapers.

‘everybody’s got something, and that something needs virtual representation’. (Halpern, 2006)

For many professionals count that they must remain in control of their message at all times, even in private. The brand is not ‘you’, it’s the public projection of your personality and abilities.

‘When you’re promoting brand YOU, everything you do – and everything you choose not to do – communicates the value and character of your brand’ (Tom Peters, 1997, The brand called you)

As a spectacle, it shows a means to achieve a branded persona

• Some TV shows instruct how to manage the demands of fame and effectively perform one’s own celebrity brand, like America’s Top Model or X-Factor.
• Attention gets sold to advertisers, through for example party picture websites. The lines between the company, the advertisers and the individuals are blurred, as they are all linked together in one promotional package (the website).
• Successful branding  is being used in a imaginative popularity contest, to accumulate the highest amount of friends. See these as commodity-signs to be collected and consumed in the social marketplace.

Identity in Surveillance

Popular entertainment, such as reality TV, has helped to propagate the idea that online self-disclosure democratizes fame, and equates surveillance with self-expression. Mark Andrejevic states,

“This equation is crucial to the rationalization of consumer labor anticipated by the architects of an online economy that relies on upon surveillance, not only as a means for anticipating and customizing consumer demand, but for adding value to products and creating new ones.” (Andrejevic, 2002, p.253).

Andrejevic notes that electronic commerce allows for mass customization, where individuals can overcome the homogeneity of mass culture. However, he claims that this allows producers to meet consumers’ needs, “consumer control boils down to the ability to have preferences monitored in detail” (Andrejevic, 2002, p.256). For web sites that rely on user-generated content (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Blogger, various mash-ups), users provide content, which adds value to the site, and is repackaged by companies collecting user information before being sold back to them. Those opposed to some of the new ad systems are already working on ways to route around social networking advertising schemes. However, these efforts will have limited effect on the profitability of consumer labor, or the acclimatization of surveillance in western culture.

Case Study – Big Brother

Big Brother

Part of the Big Brother franchise was first developed in The Netherlands and is currently the second longest running series in the franchise.

The show appeals to so many people because it breaks down the wall dividing the private and public worlds. Our culture separates the two, bringing private life into the public sector.

Audience in relationship with Big Brother
-The show hands an intriguing idea to viewers
-People essentially discover “themselves” through watching the show
-Could the audience be seen just as “normal” like the people on the show?
-Are their everyday habits like the characters’ they watch on TV?

Big Brother has been able to reach televisions around the world due to its emphasis on the real.

Big brother and surveillance TV programs are training for power and System to nurture citizens as they wish as they reproduce their power, even to let people reproduce capitalism in their life.

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault states that in the modern era we are all under surveillance, even if we are unaware.

Michel Foucault

Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by meticulously tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison’s dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the “disciplines”, a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of his book Discipline and Punish (1975, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison) can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.

Final questions

• Could acts of misrepresentation be successful in our contemporary promotional culture?
• Do you agree that the internet and its online identities can be used as a medium between the user and their real life targets? (For example in dating, learning or healing.)
• How does surveillance society effect the way we see our own identities?
• Is it true that we claim that we are living in a democratic / modern era even if we are under surveillance by the System (Habermas) and it’s power?

Advertisement