Connectivity

 Who's the Boss, You or Your Gadget"  is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/business/06limits.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimes which describes the relationship people have with technology - "smart phones, text messaging, video calling and social media."

Although being connected 24/7 allows us to engage in our friendships/relationships through constant conversation and access news as fast as we can type, but are people losing the ability to be in the moment? Psychologists argue that separating the parts of your life are key in reducing stress and anxiety.  How much are we losing if we are not able to be in the moment because we are too busy updating Facebook or reading where our friends have just checked-in?

I saw a preview for a new reality show on the Lifetime Network entitled One Born Every Minute.  This program is set in a hospital and shows the joys and trials of about-to-be-parents and the staff is the process of giving birth. The clip showed a woman updating her Facebook status about the progress of her labor.  This made me think about my friends and their time in the delivery room. I have seen several mobile updates to Facebook during my friends’ time in the hospital.  The photos are being uploaded by the fathers and/or friends.  Having spent many hours in the hospital for my niece’s birth, I do understand the abundance of downtime.  However, this was a time before mobile uploads and I managed to find things to occupy my time - such as be with my sister and keep my family company. I did not have my nose in my phone.  Maybe I would have behaved the same way as the characters on the show if I had mobile upload abilities to Facebook.

This need to constantly update our Facebook has become an extension of our identity and a medium to promote that identity.  It is fascinating because not everyone I know behaves in this minute by minute update phenomenon.  Some of my friends do not even have smart phones and simply do not have access to the mobile uploading technology.  Do those with smart phones have different identities than those with smart phones? Social media provides a novel outlet for self-promotion which can be an effective tool.  Could this be another outlet for narcissists to participate?  Every post or update is a form of self-promotion.  Rather than insisting that post-ers or update-ers are narcissists, we should look at the individual’s content and frequency.  

The following quote is from a blog called Self-Promotion 2.0 – Promote Yourself without Looking Self-Promotional http://remarkablogger.com/2009/04/06/self-promotion-20-promote-yourself-without-looking-self-promotional/.  I thought it was a nice addition to my blog topic.

"What is self-promotion?

Imagine you’re at a party, and you meet the guy who only wants to talk about himself. You know, that guy. Everything is about him. I bet that’s what you think of when you think about self-promotion: smarmy, selfish tactics that turn people off because they they bring no value.
On blogs, this kind of self-promotion arrives in the form of comment spam.  The kind of comments I hate the most are not the automated ones, but the ones where someone actually put in some time and effort to say something, except they didn’t say anything truly valuable or worthwhile. They just wanted to drop a link. For the time spent, they could have achieved something much more.
On social media, this kind of self-promotion results in one-sided posts that promote only one thing: the person sending the message. These posts (tweets/stumbles/diggs/reddits/whatevers) only contain links to the person’s own sites, contain a large amount of affiliate links, and are often nothing but a sales message. None of this is considered terribly valuable by most people."

How many layers do we have? Are people really like onions?

“Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive relationship among social identities, is a central tenet of feminist thinking and has transformed how gender is conceptualized in research.”

Before describing how people are influenced by entertainment media, identity first needs to be described.  One key aspect to the study of identity is the intersectionality methodology studying “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations” (McCall, 2005).  Under this framework, the theory seeks to examine how socially and culturally constructed categories such as gender, race, class, disability, and other components of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels which can contribute to systematic social inequality.   

I discovered that a website is dedicated to the further research on intersectionality which can be found at http://www.intersectionality.org/.  

If societies and cultures are able to construct various dimensions of identity then what power does entertainment media have on identity construction? People utilize entertainment media to help construct their identities.  For example, I was watching an episode of Chelsea Lately with guest star Wilmer Valderrama, who is of Columbian and Venezuelan descent.  Chelsea asked why he still had a thick accent even though he had lived in the United States since his adolescence.  Valderrama explained that when he moved back to the US he watched countless episodes of I Love Lucy and took his language cues from Desi Arnaz, thus never “losing” his accent.  Would Valderrama’s accent be less prominent if he had watched another show or did not speak his native language with family? 

In this example, television was able to help an individual learn English but inadvertently perpetuated gender and ethnic stereotypes.  Who knows what other latent learning was taking place if at all.         

             

Cited:   McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs, 30,

1771–1800.

Shields, S. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality perspective.  Sex Roles. 59, 301-311.  

Take this survey!

Vanderbuilt University is conducting on online survey  http://kirbyvandypsych.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8HcG4kCcvkRds56 on cognitive style and personality. 
Let's help out some researchers!

How unique are we?

Identity separates us from the rest of the population; we become unique.  We create and develop our own personality, our own interests, and our own hobbies; each element separates us from others.  We build relationships and participate in a variety of groups.  We are able to define ourselves as we become less abstract. 

            Scripted television shows, reality programming, movies, print magazines, social media etc. create part of our environment.  The media, particularly entertainment and social media act as another element impacting how individuals identify themselves. We are able to engage in relationships on Facebook or Twitter.  We are able to create para-social relationships with scripted characters and reality show characters.

            My blog will describe the interplay between entertainment media and identity development.  Specifically, how each gender copes with the messages displayed.