Social Networking: Online vs Offline Identities

1168 Words3 Pages

Tom Marvolo Riddle from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series had stored parts of his soul into different inanimate objects called horcruxes, which caused him to lose control of himself and become the infamous, Lord Voldemort. This gave him the ability to live even though his physical body was gone and his soul continued to thrive in his set of carefully selected objects, patiently waiting for the right time to strike.
While the world of Harry Power is only a work of fiction, social networking sites have given some ordinary persons the ability to create their own set of horcruxes, not through inanimate objects but through various social networking accounts. Through these modern horcruxes, people can divide the different personalities they possess into their social networking accounts to reach a wider set of audiences and live in the world of the Internet.
Social networking sites have become popular over the years, like twitter, which allows users to present themselves through their tweets using photos, hyperlinks, or hashtags. Boyd (2010) argued that social media platforms like Twitter encourages members to use their actual identities but it does not mean people are presenting themselves online the way they do in real life.
A real-life persona is an identity that a person uses to present himself in the real world according to Goldbeck et al. (2011) while an online persona is an identity that a user establishes to represent himself on the Internet. Personas have been known to affect the way a person acts in the Internet and real world.
This paper aims to explore the different reasons behind people having different personas in Twitter and real-life through a look at how the social networking site provides a unique opportunity for self...

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... http://www.aijc.com.ph/survey_ internet_access.pdf
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Santos, J. (2013). On Sharing and Losing Control of an Online Persona. Retrieved March 12, 2014 from Media Commons website: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/question/what-are-major-sociallegalprofessional-stakes-sharing-online/response/sharing-and-losing-co
Tracy, S. (2011). How many personas do you maintain online (and why). Retrieved March 2, 2014 from Freelance Folder website: http://freelancefolder.com/how-many-personas-do-you-maintain-online-and-why/
Whitney, L. (2010). Twitter, facebook use up 82 Percent. Retrieved March 8, 2014 from Cnet news Online: http://news. cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10457480-93.html?tag=mncol;posts

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