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• 1 media/images.jpeg 2017-11-14T07:10:16-08:00 Social Media: A Multi-user Virtual Environment 28 plain 556256 2017-12-15T08:05:41-08:00

   

  When discussing social media it is important to differentiate what media platforms can be dubbed as “social media.” For this distinction it is best to include all multi-user virtual environments ranging from an online game community like the popular Second Life, to the more widely accepted social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. The users of these platforms are a real life individual, or, in some cases, a group of individuals. They exist in the public sphere made up of the game or network space, as they interact with other real life users, but also are simultaneously existing in a private sphere as well, do to the fact that their real world identity is shrouded behind the virtual. For example, a user may create an avatar or profile using a name, gender, physical characteristics, or even species that does not apply to their real world identity. This then creates an anonymity or unknown quality about the actual real life individual, keeping the social media grounded in the private as well as public. When discussing this threshold of virtual versus actual identities it is important to note that one cannot assume or assign a “true” identity as some users believe that the virtual identity is a realization or extension of their actual or true identity. For example, in Micha Cardenas piece, "Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study," Cardenas discusses a user who identifies as a fox since seven years of age and that the virtual world of Second Life offers her reprieve in allowing her to be in this form, “ For Alynna, Second Life is the only place where she can be her ‘true self’...” (Cardenas). This is also applicable on the more largely used platforms like Facebook or Twitter, as one can use any image, whether it is their own, a friend or family member’s, or one pulled from the web of a complete stranger, as their profile picture and other images of “themself.” While interacting in the public sphere without having to actually be a physical part of the public sphere, anyone can make themselves appear differently online than they do in the physical world. Cardenas corroborates this in the statement, “In multi-user virtual environments one has the ability to test out a new body, a new kind of hair, or a new gender in a social realm where one has the visual image of that new body” (Cardenas).  Meaning, social media allows for a desired self-image to be reflected to a large audience of people, giving a sense of how that may be in the real world. However, this virtual identity is not the user’s current physical identity, making the user resemble a sort of cyborg as one does not fully exist in the public or the private sphere, or the physical world or virtual world.