Media and collective identity

Media and collective identity

1.) "Who are you?"

Talks about how each individual person thinks about the person they are, the person they want to be, and the person they want to be seen as. 

"I think, therefore I am"

Talks about how people's general thoughts and ambitions change over time, mostly when you reach from a certain age as a juvenile to an adult. 

"From citizen to consumer"

Talks about fitting in and conforming to social expectations.

"The rise of the individual"

Talks about the notion of individualism and how people would want to be viewed by their uniqueness and 'difference'.

"Branding and lifestyle"

People choose products and branding to to match their own self-image.

"Who will be?"

Avatars on the Internet reflect the person someone is, and says something about their personality.

2.) Apple - I own an iPhone and identify myself as a mainstream consumer in the phone market

Microsoft - I own a PC that serves as an essential in the current modern world

Adobe/Sony - I own several programs by them that I use to express and create things

YouTube - my most searched website that I browse almost regularly, and there is a reason it is the 2nd most visited website

Tumblr - use to look up cool things

3.) 'Style over substance' by it's definition means "to think looks are more important than content." As a result, I think that the modern media is in fact this, given that certain groups like to to conform to certain views just because the speaker or subject is something that they favour, despite the objective things being said that challenges or supports an argument or topic.

4.) The increasing dominance of the mass media and what Baudrillard calls ‘media saturation’ results in high cultural value being placed on external factors such as physical beauty and fashion sense over internal traits such as intelligence or compassion.

5.) I don't think my presence in social media is purely reflective of the person that I genuinely am. I would like to think expression on social media is more on the exaggerated and "alter-ego like" personality that a user would have, or a hidden and distinct personality someone would also have.

6.) Data mining in some extents on a moral level is of course an invasion of privacy, however users should acknowledge the fact that once your information is on the Internet anyone or any organization is able to use that for any legal purpose. As once said by a theorist, "Trying to take information out of the Internet is like trying to take piss out of a pool."