Online Media: Self-Presentation and Social Media Report

This report analyzes the articles by Smith and Watson, and Goodings and Tucker, focusing on the shift in self-presentation due to online media and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Smith and Watson argue that the digital world has transformed self-presentation, contrasting it with traditional methods. Goodings and Tucker discuss the duality of human expression in the virtual world, describing it as "socially mediated bodies" and the "spatialisation of time." The report validates their arguments by highlighting the prevalence of social media and the projection of curated lives. It concludes by posing two key questions: Can the virtual and real worlds be reconciled through technology, and is social media an inevitable part of human life? The report provides a critical assessment of the readings, connecting them to broader fields of debate within digital media and raises questions for further discussion.

Running head: ONLINE MEDIA
ONLINE MEDIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ONLINE MEDIA
Smith and Watson in their article tend to provide the idea in their article ‘Virtually Me :
A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation’ that with the advent of the technological expertise
and the proliferation of the digital world, the idea of “self presentation” has undergone a
paradigmatic shift, especially after the development of the Web 2.0. In the past, the idea of self
presentation was much more traditional and that was limited only to written or printed
documents such as autobiographies or memoirs or they could be confessionary declarations.
However with the advent of the online and media technologies, the concept of self presentation
has become a common affair and the access to the internet is a prerogative of almost all persons
which has made the interweaving of the internet empowered online space with that of the offline
world, the world aloof from the virtual world powered by the internet to be very much close nit.
Given the fact that the online media has enabled the exposition of the personal lives of an
individual to such an extent that the term internet has been sought to be replaced by the term
“outernet.” The validity of the arguments provided by Smith and Watson can be justified by the
proliferation of the social media profiles such as facebook and instagram to which an
overwhelming majority of the global population have subscribed a membership and the sharing
of daily events, pictures and other extremely personal details are very much prevalent, and
everyone can open an account over the social media sites mentioned with internet access and a
smartphone being the only precondition.
Goodings and Tucker in their article Social media and the coproduction of bodies online :
Bergson, Serres and Facebook’s Timeline has with regard to the presentation has mentioned of
the fact that the advent of the internet empowered online space, also known as the virtual world
has made the expression of the personalities of the human beings as dual. One form of
expression of the human expression, in the internet empowered online space has been defined as

2ONLINE MEDIA
the “socially mediated bodies”, and that is fundamentally different from the expression of human
personality which finds expression in the real world or the world which is the world that is aloof
from the virtual world powered by the internet. This particular dualistic expression of the human
personalities has been described as the “spatialisation of time” through the internet enabled
social media features such as facebook. The validity of the arguments provided by Goodings and
Tucker can be justified by the fact that the expressions of a happy life in the social media is not
necessarily an indication that the person is happy in reality and this has been proven to be a fact
that people are desperate to project a beautiful life in social media even if they are not happy in
real life.
Two questions that emerge on the basis of an analysis of the articles are :-
- Can the virtual world and the real world be reconciled with technology ?
- Is the social media inevitable for human life ?

3ONLINE MEDIA
References
Goodings, Lewis, and Ian Tucker. "Social media and the co-production of bodies online:
Bergson, Serres and Facebook’s timeline." Media, Culture & Society 36.1 (2014): 37-51.
Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. "Virtually me: A toolbox about online self-presentation."
Identity technologies: Constructing the self online (2014): 70-95.