which by definition are illegal (Coleman 2014, p. 6). This was a significant step away from trolling and towards the arena of activism. This proves that online identity is not be tied to one’s activities permanently and the identity itself and their activities may change over the course of time. Context collapse as mentioned earlier, is the tendency online for people to interact and construct identity in front of their entire social network. It (context collapse) has become more pronounced with services like Facebook connect. The service tends to carry a singular identity across a variety of very different sites that enable very different practices and merges them together. The kind of ‘authenticity’ that Mark Zuckerberg supposedly values.
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The profile includes information about their demographics, tastes, self-description and often photographs that provide a visual image. The presentation of information upfront is a vast contrast, compared to a offline interaction with an individual. In summary, one allows the flow of information to traverse the entire network simultaneously. While, the other offers a more personal point to point transmission of information. Furthermore, once a user finds a profile of a friend or anyone else, they can ‘add’ them. Meanwhile the system sends a message to the other user requesting friendship. If the recipient approves the request, the relationship will be visible on both users’ list of friends. Hence, a user can randomly surf the social network site and hop from one profile to another through the chain of friendship. The public nature of these sites requires all participants to perform their relationship to others. Henceforth, the term “friend” is effectively overridden by the participants, to make room for a variety of different subliminal definitions of friendship. Their choice being made is deeply influenced by the technological affordances of a given system and their perception of the “hidden audiences” (Boyd 2006, p. 4). In conclusion, the mechanisms of social networking sites work in a predicament which may carry unforeseen consequences (detrimental and beneficial). Like the following mentioned by Houghton and Joinson (2010), they documented that a number of privacy violations Facebook users experienced, like private information being shared publicly. Such incidents led to some Facebook users to virtually make no disclosures through the site, even through private channels. In another mention, it was known that students who used Facebook’s privacy features reported more identity and contact-based disclosures, compare to those who didn’t (Stutzman, Capra & Thompson, 2011).
The profile includes information about their demographics, tastes, self-description and often photographs that provide a visual image. The presentation of information upfront is a vast contrast, compared to a offline interaction with an individual. In summary, one allows the flow of information to traverse the entire network simultaneously. While, the other offers a more personal point to point transmission of information. Furthermore, once a user finds a profile of a friend or anyone else, they can ‘add’ them. Meanwhile the system sends a message to the other user requesting friendship. If the recipient approves the request, the relationship will be visible on both users’ list of friends. Hence, a user can randomly surf the social network site and hop from one profile to another through the chain of friendship. The public nature of these sites requires all participants to perform their relationship to others. Henceforth, the term “friend” is effectively overridden by the participants, to make room for a variety of different subliminal definitions of friendship. Their choice being made is deeply influenced by the technological affordances of a given system and their perception of the “hidden audiences” (Boyd 2006, p. 4). In conclusion, the mechanisms of social networking sites work in a predicament which may carry unforeseen consequences (detrimental and beneficial). Like the following mentioned by Houghton and Joinson (2010), they documented that a number of privacy violations Facebook users experienced, like private information being shared publicly. Such incidents led to some Facebook users to virtually make no disclosures through the site, even through private channels. In another mention, it was known that students who used Facebook’s privacy features reported more identity and contact-based disclosures, compare to those who didn’t (Stutzman, Capra & Thompson, 2011).