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.
