1.2 Narrating the Self

Everything we publish on the Web says something about who we are. Whether it be the photograph we choose to represent us on a social networking site, the biography we include as a part of our blog, or the nature of our conversations with others through communities, message boards and comments, as we contribute to the Web we are establishing for ourselves an online identity.  – Web206: Web Publishing

This module is about the identities we have online, be it personal, public, professional, anonymous and how we choose to represent these identities. We were asked to write a bio and choose an avatar for our Online Content Creation Assignment. The following questions were brought up in the discussion board:

• To what degree – if at all – do you see yourself playing different ‘roles’ on the Internet?
• How much do you find user avatars contribute to your perception of the people behind them?
• How is your perception of people affected by avatars within different contexts (i.e. discussion forums, games, instant messaging, social networks etc.)?
• How do you think the lack of recognisable avatars within the Blackboard environment affects your relationship with others in this course?

To what degree – if at all – do you see yourself playing different ‘roles’ on the Internet?

I have 3 roles on the internet, Personal (for friends & family) Professional (work & UNI) and Gamer (anonymity) There is a cross over between my personal and professional roles but this is only minor and I do restrict what personal details are viewed by my professional identity as for my gamer identity only a select few know the person behind this identity. I think the more you get to know someone the more you are willing to share details with them, whether the person be someone you met online (games, discussion boards) or through work or just in a social setting so eventually the lines between all our identities/roles blur.

How much do you find user avatars contribute to your perception of the people behind them? 

I feel that they give me an initial perception of the person for example if their avatar image is of Bart from the Simpsons, then I have an idea that they like the Simpsons, but I wouldn’t just judge a person based on their avatar image.

How is your perception of people affected by avatars within different contexts (i.e. discussion forums, games, instant messaging, social networks etc.)? 

Avatars play different roles for people, for instance in the virtual worlds where people get to create their avatar’s, generally they create them to represent something they cant not be in the real world, in IM’s, SNS and discussion boards people use avatars to represent their message, for example this is me in real life (generally SNS & IM’s) or this is something I like and I can have anonymity by using this image (generally discussion boards)

How do you think the lack of recognisable avatars within the Blackboard environment affects your relationship with others in this course?

I have always loved to put a face to a name/text/voice etc so for me the lack of avatars makes it a little harder to recognise people based just on their names as for the relationships, I think that they are built on common interests and not on avatar images.

Bio & Avatar

The bio and avatar image can be seen on my assignment page. I have chose an image of myself as my avatar image, this image and all the images on my site are under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. I have chosen this image as it is a representation of me and incorporates a few of my passions (red lips, skulls & vintage) I have chosen to make the image black and white with the red lips highlighted to coordinate with the colour scheme of the site. By using an image of myself I hope that the readers will believe that these reviews are coming from an individual and not a group of writers.