by Benjamin Grosser
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The Facebook gender choice dropdown on their new account signup page.
Abstract
This paper explores how the technological design of Facebook homogenizes identity and limits personal representation. I look at how that homogenization transforms individuals into instruments of capital, and enforces digital gates that segregate users along racial boundaries. Using a software studies methodology that considers the design of the underlying software system, I examine how the use of finite lists and links for personal details limits self-description. In what ways the system controls one’s visual presentation of self identity is analyzed in terms of its relation to the new digital economy. I also explore the creative ways that users resist the limitations Facebook imposes, as well as theorize how technological changes to the system could relax its homogenizing and limiting effects.
Introduction
Ever since its inception, people have used the technology of the Internet to represent themselves to the world. Sometimes this representation is a construction based on who they are outside the network, such as with a personal webpage or blog. Other times people use the built-in anonymity of the Internet to explore and engage alternative identities. This identity tourism (Nakamura, 2002) takes place within game spaces (e.g. MUDs, MMORPGs), chat rooms, or forums, as well as within those spaces already mentioned such as webpages and blogs. In each case, the underlying technology that facilitates this network society of digital representations is software. How this software is designed by its creators determines the ways that users can (and cannot) craft their online representation.
The most popular network space for personal representation is Facebook, the world’s largest online social network. The site has more than 500 million active users and has become the most visited website in the United States, beating out Google for the first time in 2010 (Cashmore, 2010). Facebook functions as a prime example of what Henry Jenkins (2006) calls “participatory culture,” a locus of media convergence where consumers of media no longer only consume it, but also act as its producers. Corporations, musicians, religious organizations, and clubs create Facebook Pages, while individuals sign up and fill out their personal profiles. The information that organizations and people choose to share on Facebook shapes their online identity. How those Pages and profiles look and the information they contain is determined by the design of the software system that supports them. How that software functions is the result of decisions made by programmers and leaders within the company behind the website.
This paper explores how the technological design of Facebook homogenizes identity and limits personal representation. I look at how that homogenization transforms individuals into instruments of capital, and enforces digital gates that segregate users along racial boundaries (Watkins, 2009). Using a software studies methodology that considers the design of the underlying software system (Manovich, 2008), I look at how the use of finite lists and links for personal details limits self-description. In what ways the system controls one’s visual presentation of self identity is analyzed in terms of its relation to the new digital economy. I also explore the creative ways that users resist the limitations Facebook imposes, as well as theorize how technological changes to the system could relax its homogenizing and limiting effects.
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