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Week 12: Assignment 2 - Internet Me vs. Real Me... Who am I?

Team Name: Unidentified

Team Members:

Annabel Yoon: Research (Blog).

Bo-Mee Song: Research and Interviewer.

Maria Rizvi: Chief Writer and editing, (Blog).

Pearl Desa: Art, writing and editing (Blog).

Therese D'Souza: Filming and final editing(Blog).




The Internet, being multi-faceted and ever-changing, provides an unstable environment to our identity growth, thereby confusing us about who we really are. Our video dealt with this thesis by focusing on the confusion of identity and perception caused by the web. Our research was based on the looking glass self theory which states that a self-image is developed on the basis of the message we get from others, as we understand them. This theory states that “we imagine how we appear to others, we imagine their judgment of that appearance and we then develop some self-feeling, such as pride or mortification, as a result of our imagining others’ judgment”. Our main aim was to see how the web interfered with the development of individual identity. People act differently on the web as opposed to reality and their image is dependent on that behavior. Different sides of a person come out on the web as opposed to reality. Therefore the development of identity in this digital age is highly dependent on the web in various ways especially for the new generation who do the majority of their social networking on the web. The web is becoming a signifier of identity and self perception. The web is used as a technological tool to express the different sides of our personality and at times maybe even confuse them.


Reference:

1) Looking glass self theory
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner’s. Pp. 179-185.

2) Yoon, S. (2001). Culture, Computer Literacy, and the Media in Creating Public Attitudes toward CMC in Japan and Korea in Community informatics: shaping computer-mediated social relations (Eds.) Keeble, L. and Loader D. B. New York : Routledge, 2002

Week 6: Project 2 Proposal

1. Concept

Our area of investigation is going to be identity, and how technology has affected it negatively. Our video will include statistics, reviews, and interviews on this topic.


2. Working Hypothesis

The inevitable development of the network society, has demanded in its core, constant innovation and development of communicative methods. Communication had a different meaning before globalization. Communication meant a phone call from a home line or a letter which reached a person 4-8 weeks depending on their location. Since communicative methods were different, it is safe to assume that relationships carried with them a different meaning as well. This has caused isolation of personal identities. Communication has changed individuality. The way we see and represent ourselves has changed vastly. Since there are more methods of expressing yourself, making friends and networks, learning, and engaging in activities with strangers; there is a misconception that communication has reached its peak. Yes communication has reached its peak, but with the loss of personal identity. According to Freud, we all have many different “persona(s)” hidden within us which only come out when a situation requires it. Persona, according to Wikipedia means “A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor”. The World Wide Web has given people more opportunities to communicate, but in return develop more personas within themselves. Hence, the network society has brought a loss of identity and isolation of individuals. This global culture is anonymous to personal feelings and the true identities of individuals. In our podcast we would like to target those people who feel that the wireless borders of the internet have caused them to lose the true essence of face to face, emotional, empathetic, emoticon-less communication, which are requirements of human nature and comfort. The computer has removed the true ways of communication, which have taken place for centuries. We would like to say in this podcast, through various points of views of people who have truly lost/hidden their true identity due to the developments of communicative technologies. We would like to ask people of different ages on how they feel the internet has brought about a loss of personal identity and true human communication.


3. Research Approach

We will be conducting field research as well as scholarly journals and articles which include recent statistics. We will be referring to journal articles, and citing them. Using statistics and research done previously by scholars and psychologists/sociologists we can back up our claim: loss of identity is perpendicular to enhancement of communication.


4. Treatment

For our video we plan to use a lot of real life, unscripted footage like interviews with people from different walks of life. The interviews will be broken down into segments that overlap each other and will be an informal questioning about how people act on the web and how they portray themselves on the internet. The concentration will be on how they willingly change themselves when they go on the internet. And if we find willing participants we might even get people to show us their personal pages and their online ‘personas’ on social networking sites like Facebook. In order to add some diversity to our video we plan to have a few animated sequences or at least a few original cartoon images like thought clouds or speech bubbles at certain points. For instance a possible opening sequence that we’ve thought about includes having a picture of a person divided with one side remaining ‘real’ while the other side is made into a cartoon with different speech and thought bubbles, that show the various identities the person has on the internet and in their daily lives. As for the sound, since our video is going to be interview based, any background music we add will be kept to a minimum so that the voices can be heard clearly. And to make sure that people understand the words spoken we even plan to add sub-titles for better accessibility. If we do have animated sequences, we will definitely add the required sound effects but we don’t intend to use much in that category as we don’t want to pull away from the interviews.

Week 5: My Team

Team Name: Unidentified


Team Members and their roles:
Annabel Yoon - Research
Bo-Mee Song - Research and interviewer
Maria Rizvi: Writing and editing
Pearl Desa - Research, writing and editing
Therese D'Souza: Filming and final editing



Initial Concept:
The loss of identity and the development of multiple persona's in the essence of individuality. The global culture has brought about many different sides of a person, but has hidden what truly lies within them. We would like to research the way in which people have been able to manipulate their true identity into multiple clashing personalities that lay within the cover of one person. The internet has become a playing field of identities through various communication networks and platforms.

Week 4: What makes a good video podcast? A Review of My Fav.

Link to the podcast: http://ca.video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1118288801


The podcast “Iraqi Health Issues, Diverse and Dire” is about babies being born deformed in Iraq and it tells us about it by providing an interview of a sick baby’s mother named Sabeha Asal.

This video starts and ends with texts from newspapers informing the audiences about the horrible conditions for families with newborns in Iraq. According to the Deutsche Welle news in the video, chemical factories bombed and radioactive ammunition fired after two wars in Iraq. Because of this, many Iraqi women started to have deformed babies. It is such as serious problem since almost all the best doctors and nurses have left the country and the medicines and equipments are almost non-existent. There is a sad interview of an Iraqi mother and her baby who has a big hole in his back as a result of the radiation.

I think it was a successful podcast since it has a strong topic and a unique story. I heard about the wars in Iraq but this story brought me into a new place with an interesting and horrible situation in the country. I saw the depressed mother and the infection, which the baby was born with, as an after result of the war. It made the podcast more interesting, strong and emotional, which meant this podcast showed the story in visual rather than being told.
Throughout the entire showing, the podcast was focused on the topic and its story was really neat and had nice flow. I personally liked the interview of the Iraqi mother because she was honest and showed her emotion. Obviously there was a language barrier, but the subtitle was large and bold, easy to read. However, the text from newspapers was ineffective in that it was too long and I had to rewind to read all of it.

Overall, it was a nice introduction piece that introduced me to the depressing situation in Iraq. It was informative and concise and yet not too long or too short. I thought it was a very successful way to get the main message across to the audience via an interview with the mother and her deformed infant who suffered from this tragic event.