In today’s word, social media is very popular and widely spread. Social media has become an important tool for people to socialize. As a platform to build social relations, it affects people’s self-consciousness and identity. On the one hand, we use social media for different reasons; On the other hand, the use of social media is also a process of gradually constructing our own identity. In the use of social media represented by Facebook and Twitter, we build our identities on different levels in different ways. The methods and technologies of digital identity exploration and online media have permeated our daily lives and how they shape and influence who we are, online and offline (Cover R 2015). Every user of social media is trying to build an online identity. The online identity is about to create an identity online. It can be used on business, school, different community of just for the friend and family. There also have many different social media websites, and these websites all have different functions.
And in these years the online identity is getting more and more important because it provides platforms for people to express their feelings and show different sides of their personalities. It helps people to understand you more holistically and it helps to shape people’s interpersonal perception. People often associate your virtual identities with real-life identities. Also, the employers will use online platforms to verify and validate the identity of individuals.
The construction of a digital identity begins with setting up a profile: on social networking sites, people can expand their identity by choosing pictures and avatars, just as they can choose contacts, friends or follow on Twitter. Tell me who you’re interested in and who you’re a fan of, and I’ll tell you who you are. A person’s reputation comes from his performance on the Internet, and the tone and taste of his comments and comments often determine how others perceive us. Take Twitter as an example. It can be both personal and professional. It can be an effective tool for you to engage in issues and conversations that you care about. You can choose the photo to make people recognize you or write a bio to introduce yourself and talk about the interests of your job or put your website below the bio. Make the others know you. Take my twitter profile to be the example.
This is my twitter profile. I used my really name to be the username and there is some simple introduction in the bio. The profile also includes my location and my date of birth. Also, I put my about.me page in the profile. So, the people who read this profile can link to my about.me page. The about.me page is about myself and it is linked to my twitter, WordPress and Instagram account.
The person you followed and the tweet you post is all part of your online identity. Take this tweet to be example. The #ALM101DC shows the unit I study and which college I am in. Also you can share opinions or the interest things in your life on the social media.
This tweet is about the photo I took. After I tweet this photo. The others can know that I like taking pictures. So that means every tweet you post online is gonna become to part of your online identity.
Many people remember that in the early days of the Internet, it was mainly used to communicate anonymously with strangers. In cyberspace, on the one hand, people can meet people from different regions, different classes and even different countries. On the other hand, people can take on a completely different role from their real identities and shape, disguise and change their identities at will. In this way, the Internet brings a new experience of communication and establishes a utopian space far away from the real world. It is for this reason that anonymity is popular among early Internet users, many of whom linger on the anonymity of the Internet and are keen to make friends with strangers they would never meet in the real world.
With the increasing integration of the Internet into People’s Daily life, especially with the emergence of social media, such utopian online communication gradually loses its freshness. There is a growing sense that in the anonymity of the Internet, people come and go too quickly to form strong and lasting connections. Therefore, after the novelty of anonymous communication, real-name communication has become more and more the mainstream of network applications. Many people take the initiative to remove the disguise and protection of anonymity, expose their real identity in cyberspace, and communicate with those who have real connections.
Reference
Cover, R 2015, ‘Digital identities : creating and communicating the online self’, Amsterdam Netherlands: Academic Press.
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