YouTubiography: Identities on Social Networks

N. Cameron. (2015). YouTube Vlogging Nut. [Online image]. Retrieved from http://nuttersons.co.uk/images/careers/youtube/youtube-vlogging-nut.png

Millions of people use online networks as a way to either publish their own, or follow others’ life narratives. YouTube specifically is a central place for autobiographical content, being the home of the world’s video bloggers (vloggers). YouTube makes us feel connected to a worldwide community situated in cyberspace, where we can share our stories and broadcast our lives.

While YouTube as an autobiographic platform demonstrates our human demand for social connection, it also reveals our compelling behaviour of self-performance. Haraway argues that this type of self-performance constructs an ‘anti-human’, cyborg-like identity (Haraway, 1992, p.2). Suddenly, the autobiographical blogger on YouTube becomes a product of online culture.

So how are identities falsely constructed on YouTube? If you ask Schultze, his TedTalk, she argues that we feel compelled to alter the content we broadcast to appeal to our audience. Similarly, McNeil demonstrates how particular features of social networks encourage self-conceptualizations and ideas of the type of person we want to come across as (McNeil, 2012, p.69). For example, YouTube will encourage users to include photographs and images on their channels and recommend popular music, news and politics channels as well as fashion and style channels, suggesting that such things matter in constructions of identity. Haraway (1991) suggests that we use these features as ways to enforce meanings about ourselves and identities.

But just as easy as it is to argue that social networks construct cyborg identities, one can easily point out the humanistic aspect in online networking. Every carefully planned video blog on YouTube has its raw, uncut counterpart; the auntie uploading her wedding video for her relatives overseas, the deaf man finally getting to hear for the first time, the aspiring student opening up their acceptance letter. Our identity online is diverse; it is autobiographical, we are humanistic sometimes and cyborgs at other times. As McNeil (2012) points out, both are useful ways of accounting our experiences.

References:

Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002 Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place – Lecture 6: Networked Narratives. [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/modulepage/view?course_id=_76323_1&cmp_tab_id=_43922746_1&mode=view

McNeil, L. (2012). There is No “I” in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography, 35(1), 65-82

Schultze, U. [Tedx Talks]. (2015, April 23). How Social Media Shapes Identity | Ulrike Schultze | TEDxSMU. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpyZor-Byk