An article to appear in the Sunday NY Times Magazine this Sunday (07/01/10) has the title of "I Tweet, Therefore I Am" which is a meditation on how people use Twitter and how that usage, as well as the use of other social media, changes the user. For the article, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&th&emc=th A couple of quotes from the article identify key points: |The expansion of our digital universe — Second Life, Facebook, |MySpace, Twitter — has shifted not only how we spend our time |but also how we construct identity. For her coming book, |“Alone Together,” Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T., interviewed |more than 400 children and parents about their use of social media |and cellphones. Among young people especially she found that |the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather |than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and |refined in response to public opinion. “On Twitter or Facebook |you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” |she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for |others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to |your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re |supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. |Your psychology becomes a performance.” Referring to “The |Lonely Crowd,” the landmark description of the transformation |of the American character from inner- to outer-directed, Turkle added, “Twitter is outer-directedness cubed.” And one possible outcome of such performance-driven self-expression: |The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, |is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, |and alienates us from our own humanity. Consider the fate |of empathy: in an analysis of 72 studies performed on nearly |14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, researchers |at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan |found a drop in that trait, with the sharpest decline occurring |since 2000. Social media may not have instigated that trend, |but by encouraging self-promotion over self-awareness, they |may well be accelerating it. So, who's using Twitter? On a more serious note, how does the development of such "performance driven communication" affect students expectations of their teachers? Are good teachers "good performers" regardless of the quality/validity of the information they convey (NOTE: hasn't it always been thus?)? Are professors who use current popular culture references in their classes (e.g., referring to Snooki and the Situation - for those unfamiliar wit Joisey shenanigans, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_%28TV_series%29 ) develop more "class cred", as being more "able" because they can work popular culture into their lectures or "performances"? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=3881 or send a blank email to leave-3881-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
