Week 5 Lecture

Social Media and Web 2.0
I found this lecture thought provoking. The idea that people are creating alternate lives for themselves in virtual social media sites makes one ask a lot of questions about why and what it means. It seems to challenge the idea of individual identity that has remained unchanged for so long. As the Turkle quote in the lecture slides says, in these online social sites "we self-fashion and self-create". We have compete control over what others on the web see of us and how we are to be perceived.

I'd never heard the term web 2.0 to describe the modern web services that are all about the users experience and their input such as pictures and text. Media scholar Henry Jenkins refers to this as “Participatory Culture” (2006).

All this poses questions like, "who is contributing to the web?"; "who is viewing my contributions?"; "has this online virtual world become as much of a community for some people as the real world?"; " what brings groups of people together on the net?"; and many more.