Week 5: Facebook and Narratives of
Memory
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Required and Recommended Readings
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Key Questions and Ideas
★Facebook and identity ★Collective memory ★Time and perpetually online memory |
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n Zimmerman, H. (2012). Diverging Strategies of
Remembrance in Traditional and Web-2.0 On-Line
Projects. At The Interface / Probing The
Boundaries, 83151-163.
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n Maia Szalavitz, (March 2013). “How Facebook Improves
Memory,” Time.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/01/how-facebook-
improves-memory/
Hello, I don't seem to be able to find Nathan Jurgenson. (Nov. 2012) post “Glad I Didn’t Have Facebook in Highschool.” Did any one manage to find it?
ReplyDeleteThe ideas that resonated with me the most this week was in the "Major memory for microblogs" reading by Mickes et al. The authors write that blogging, text messaging (and similarily social media posts on Facebook) are closer to natural speech because there is less editing and contemplation before it is published online. I've read in many places that new media is "dumbing down" the population, but perhaps we are reverting back to our long history of oral culture. Our written work now resembles more closely that of which is spoken.
ReplyDeleteMickes et al.'s study shows that "[Facebook] posts may naturally elicit social thinking and lead to strong encoding of the posts, whereas sentences written by professional authors and unknown neutral faces may be less likely to naturally elicit such encoding-enhancing elaboration" (discussion p.4). Humans have a long tradition of oral storytelling and it is through memory that these stories were passed down from generation to generation. Facebook and other social media platforms are our new way of sharing stories. We create collective memories that I think will last beyond the (possible) end of online archives. We encode these stories/posts/memories, which are connected with current events and history are safely stored in our minds and not necessarily only online as Zimmerman questions at the end of his article.
The article that resonated most with me is "Glad I Didn't Have Facebook in High School!" by Nathan Jurgenson. His argument that ultimately society shouldn't be so concerned with their online identities was intriguing to me. I can see where is argument has validity, especially when he states "let's get realistic about the fact that most everyone has photos that do not reflect their current selves, and that's fine" (p.3). The flip side of the coin is when I'm working with my students who are currently looking for internships and full-time positions. HR managers and recruiters are using social media channels to establish who isn't a good fit. They're looking to weed out candidates based on photos that show bad judgement and posts that show inconsistencies in their application. So where there is validity in not curating every aspect of your life online, there is also something to be said for keeping the "mystery alive".
ReplyDeleteThat being said, in my first podcast assignment I expressed that I liked being able to look back at my Facebook account and see how I've grown and evolved over the last 8 years. The idea of embracing growth and change, even in an online identity, is somewhat liberating. The thought that you shouldn't have to worry about every small thing said or posted online, leaves room for making mistakes and therefore room for growth. "Some stigmas erode, and as past social media use becomes more common, perhaps some mistakes, some digital dirt, won't be as discomforting as we feel today" (p.2). So I will end this post with a question: Is technology making us more human?
Great thoughts Mandeep. Jurgenson made a couple comments that really resonated with me. One being, “What if we, instead, proudly proclaim that we did things that we are embarrassed about and that’s okay?”, and the other (as you noted) being “Let’s promote the idea that those embarrassing tweets, or anyone’s embarrassing digital dirt, can be used to validate identity change and growth”. Both these comments really made me think about my identity online and my own personal efforts to maintain a certain level of consistency in how I’m presented within the digital world. In my opinion, Jurgenson’s article questions how society perceives online identities and the notion around having a consistent identity online. The reality is that everyone has a bad photo, awkward moment or is presented online in a way that’s not particularly flattering at times. Facebook offers a timeline between the past and the present, offering an opportunity of self-reflection (how they have grown, endured, and changed over time) and chance to learn from the past. I think society has matured with digital technology over the years and now recognizes the fact that everyone can be presented negatively at times and that someone who is tagged in bad photo in the past doesn’t necessarily reflect who they are today. That being said, people need to be aware of implications that can occur as a result of certain actions and how it could effect their present day life and identity.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Mickes et al (2013) study “Major memory for microblogs,” I still struggle to understand how the study compared posts provided by friends in Facebook to faces of strangers or sentences from books the participants haven’t read. It seems to me like that we are all more likely to remember information provided from a personal contact than from a third party.
ReplyDeletePutting that a side, I find this study fascinating specially when it comes to recollection of posts more than faces. As far as I understand, there is a part of our brain that is dedicated to face recognition, so the fact that we remember more posts (words, gossip) than faces is quite surprising to me. I also found unexpected the degree of the results “memory for Facebook posts was found to be strikingly stronger than their memory for human faces or sentences from books—a magnitude comparable to the difference in memory strength between amnesics and healthy controls” (p. 481). Considering that Mickes et al look at this study under the lens that since ancestral times we have used our memory as an adaptive social tool, then the fact that we are so much better at recognizing facebook posts than faces is quite surprising. What does this say of how we interact now days? We might remember what someone said online but we might not recognize the face of people we see in the bus? How can this help our survival? Lots of interesting things to think about.
The article from Szalavitz (2013) “How Facebook improves memory” also talks about the reasons why facebook post might be more successful at helping older people improve their memory compared to other memory exercises. Both Mickes et al and Szalavitz mention the informal conversational and social tone as making it easier to remember. If it’s easy to say and write it is also easier to remember. The social (even gossipy) content also helps, as people create connections in their brains that help them remember it. Interestingly, for Szalavitz the fact that facebook posts are “distractions” seemed to help older people memorize them. I wonder if that would also apply to the younger population that seem to increasingly suffer from attention deficit (I’m guilty of this myself). Szalavitz also mentions the importance of repetition.
In my opinion, both studies could be applied to other social media as it is the informal tone, the social nature and the light content that helps people recollect what they read. Appropriately, Mickes et al say (2013) “with the growth of blogging, text messaging, and the like, written language has moved closer to natural speech” (p. 489).
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading Jurgenson’s article, the comments from the group and Diana’s posts. It’s interesting to think of our social media activity not only in how it impacts our life right now, but how it might be perceived in the future. What I like about Jurgenson’s article is that it points at how we might “judge” things differently in a few decades, we might be less formal and more confident about sharing how we have matured and changed over time. But we don’t know that, so I agree with Mandeep… be aware of what you post and say publicly, be it social media or just media.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mandeep!
ReplyDeleteI thought that the article “Glad I didn’t have Facebook in High school” raised an interesting fact that our online identities can show our growth throughout the years. However, I think that social media does bring with it a sort of personal responsibility to represent yourself the way you would like others to see you, not necessarily in an immature or embarrassing light. The Internet is probably not the place that you want people to be able to see your high school self – with all your foibles exposed – if you can help it. I agree with the author’s contention that the statement about being glad that Facebook wasn’t around in high school “carries the implicit belief that identity-change is something that should be hidden”. Obviously there is no shame in acknowledging growth and change and I think most people would assume that the person you present on your Facebook page isn’t the full sum of who you are or were in the past as a human being. But I do think everyone should probably be more choosey about what they share with their ‘friends’ (the public) on Facebook or any other social networking site. I don’t think this means you’re running away from who you used to be – you can still be on ‘nodding terms’ with your younger self (or changing self) – but perhaps this relationship doesn’t need to be posted on Facebook in perpetuity, in order to acknowledge your own growth and change over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe other three articles either point to collective memory or time and perpetually online memory. Zimmerman points out in his article that with social media networking sites “the user becomes a prosumer - this ambiguous creature that is a producer and a consumer at the same time” (p. 157), meaning that the user is producing and consuming online memories through Facebook or other similar social networking sites. Memories are “maintained and persevered” in the collective memory. With a social networking site like Facebook, people can share memories by liking or commenting on posts, pictures or videos. These posts, once viewed by another becomes part of a larger collective online memory.
ReplyDeleteThe article on “How Facebook Improves Memory” didn’t really specifically point to how Facebook itself is improving memory – though it did discuss how certain distractions can help memory in older people. However, the article “Major memory for microblogs” made some interesting points with their research about social media sites. They state that people may remember items they see posted on a site like Facebook better than other written word documents because:
- The posts may naturally elicit social thinking and lead to stronger encoding of the posts
- The Facebook posts may be particularly memorable because they are complete in and of themselves
- The relatively unfiltered and spontaneous production of one person’s mind is just the sort of thing that is readily stored in another’s mind
- The more gossipy nature of Facebook posts (as also captured in entertainment news) could contribute to…the memorability of microblogs