Week Four: Once Upon A Social Network

Image Received From: http://answers-from-stormcage.tumblr.com/.

During this week’s lecture the topic of narrative was discussed, particularly that involving the construction of self and identity. One could say that an identity is in fact a narrative. Paul Brucks, a neuropsychologist, once said, “All the personhood of a person is…a story you tell yourself. Identity is the story of what happened to that body over time” (Van Luyn, 2013).

Social networks construct an identity through profiles, the personalised page of the user which holds their name, photo and some basic information. On tumblr, the blog based social network I have chosen, a person’s profile only shows the information the user wants to and therefore the user can create their own identity. For example, on my blog (http://dragonfly-luck.tumblr.com/) I give only my first name, my age, where I’m from and a photo.

An example where a user has created their own identity is one person has taken the role of a character from Doctor Who (http://answers-from-stormcage.tumblr.com/). When another user asks a Doctor Who related question, they answer in character. This allows them to create their own identity and be whoever they want, although it is not their own identity that they have created.

But how is this connected to narrative? Well, Laurie McNeill states that “posthuman collectivity” in which the “‘I’ [is] transformed into the ‘we’ of autonomous agents operating together to make a self” (McNeill, 2012). In tumblr, users ask people questions, who in turn answer and ask other people questions, connecting users from around the world who all share an interest. This becomes a network of people whose identities and narratives intertwine with each others’.

Reference List:

McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography, 35 (1), 9.

Van Luyn, A. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 4: Networked Narratives. [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/.