500 word Reflection (Social Portraits)

For my 500 word blog I have chosen the article “Gender Differences in “Social Portraits” Reflected in MySpace Profiles” the article questions whether there is a link between males and females on a self identity level. Females seem to be more susceptible to posting everything about themselves in their interest area on their MySpace rather than males. Males are less likely to post whether they have a significant other. The first article I read by Hans Geser is contradictory to what Erring Goffman believes. He finds MySpace, an adaption the technological world, to be “a rich source of conventionalized communicative symbol” “a social construction of reality”. (Goffman, 239) The purpose of them studying MySpace linkage is another way for us to take a look into the roles of masculinity and femininity. Does MySpace play a part in developing these roles? Their study was less directed towards asking people about themselves, but rather lurking through their MySpace to find the answers.

We can post just about anything we want on a MySpace, pictures, music, blogs, comments, and personal information. In the spring of 2007, a studied analysis was done on MySpace and some of its users. A network was formed by studying a hundred people, and the information they found on their MySpace’s. All those who were chosen had some connection to the researcher. Either the people were on the friends list within the network, or they were a friend of a friend so all the profiles were open and able to be seen by everyone within that network. For the study, the researcher had monitored each profile and searched for specific items. The researcher looked for personal quote, age, gender, relationship status, education, whether the main picture for their profile had their significant other with them.
Within the results, the researcher concluded that MySpace acts only as a mediator. Males were less likely to mention relationship status and other personal facts. Men kept a sense of their individuality, while women took a more interpersonal approach. In society we are already aware of this. For example when women get married they take the males last name. Their identity is more formed around the new relationship but still keeping a sense of individuality while males avoid it all together. Personally I don’t think this study is effective. We as humans are still capable of lying, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If we look at someone’s MySpace, we would only see what that person would want us to see. MySpace is a façade for what may or may not be true. The only way to really know someone is physical communication, which was explained in Hans Gesers article “Is the Cell Phone Undermining the Social Order?: Understanding Mobile Technology from a Sociological perspective”.



References

1) Goffman E. (1979) gender advertisements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2) CyberPsychology & Behavior, Volume 11, Number 2, 2008