fragmented memories/impressions of a place - Iraq (2010)

oversized military vehicles down ridiculously narrow little dirt roadss
great displays of machines charge thru desert village of peasants.
spatial corridors of concrete and sand
big bleak bare stage of some giant joke
personal omen emblems
metal music blaring intolerable volumes through headsets
funny strange events
civilian hipsters in tight clothing all over the place. mumbling disagreeable complaints
gang wailing and gathering in groups
harmless cons
strange.why don't they just go somewhere and fade
gloomy hoods
an ominous end to fear below in canals, in pot holes / craters
 in sullen faces
feel of bursting and explosion coming on
anger in the air
it is writ in the shadows
in the hollow eyes of people
sitting in their brown sunk sea
 in the gloomy dust between alleys
in repugnant piles of garbage and rust
the gray drain of day seeping down between muddy walls and into our eyes
In a gale of sand to taji
shroud over the base of great sandy fogs
bleak hooded men going to work in dusty streets
uninterested wary eyes flat with blank shame watching every part of the village
darkly brooding. Shady.
sandy small town on a thursday afternoon, menacingly empty.
flat stretches of long sands
thongs of sandals, dark eyes, little rough brown faces
subterranean clothes

Imagined Audiences & True Audiences

            A predominant reason that a person decides to use social media is to reflect aspects of their life and identity that aren’t always evident in face-to-face interactions. Identities of users of social media are understood to have various sides which they adapt depending on who their intended audience is. A comprehensible audience is important in determining what is suitable for being revealed.  However, the audience for the average user on a social media outlets is characteristically limitless and unpredictable by default. This contextual collapse is an inherent dynamic of networked social media and makes it difficult for people to control self-presentation for imagined audiences that they may have. A slight misconception between one’s imagined audience and true audience could even prove to be damaging to a person or a company’s reputation.

             Bernie Hogan’s exhibitional approach to understanding how people present themselves on networked social media examines the ways in which people control content to define aspects of their identity. In particular, his concept of contextual collapse describes the way in which separate audiences and connections can coalesce into a singular entity on social networks like Facebook. The meaning of context within a social network is the user’s original intention and the real or imagined audience that they have in mind for what they wish to communicate. The collapse of the context refers to the digital media environment’s absence of distinctive social limits that are provided with face-to-face communication. Contextual collapse is an innate dynamic of the internet that is difficult to control and its consequences can transform what it means be friend on a social networking service.

            It is a phenomenon that can blur the distinction between whether and audience is private or public. An audience on a given social network can consist of anyone from colleagues, family, clients, classmates, ex’s, old friends, bosses, or co-workers. Each distinctive group calls for separate presentational expectations from the user. This makes it difficult to control self-presentation, even with content that the user generates themselves. It can bring a contextual collapse between the personal and professional aspects of what a person wants to communicate about themselves. On a website such as Facebook, the user is presenting themselves to every and any person all at one time without a specific context to work with.

            Another factor that influences interaction and user identity on social networks is the content persistence inherent within a digital environment. Hogan refers to the phenomenon of persistence, in which content produced by the user will be continually available and searchable on the internet. Even if undesirable material is removed at a later time, the content may have been acquired by connections on his network. The original user’s uploaded content can then be shared, recirculated and even altered or taken outside of its originally intended context in someway.

            Hogan maintains that one provisional way to control this problem is through what he calls accommodating the lowest common denominator on a given social network. This approach consists of filter shared content to a particular level that is suitable for every connection on the user’s social network and perhaps even broader audiences. This can help to ensure that all members are part of a similar social context. However, this can also be very limiting on the way people shape their identities and self-presentation through the messages that they convey their actual audience.