Take Home Exercise Sample

Take-home exercise 1
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1 “Identity in social media sites is often expressed through customization. People who create blogs, homepages, and online profiles can use a variety of digital tokens such as pictures, avatars, icons, nicknames, fonts, music, and video to represent themselves.”
The quote, authored by Alice Marwick, is found in the “A Companion to New Media Dynamics text (Marwick, 2013).” The quote means that identities people assume in various social media sites are not a construct of how people view themselves in real life but are influenced by their interactions and interests in social media. When using it, people tend to present themselves depending on the people they interact with and the situation at hand. Thus, digital tokens that include pictures, avatars, pet names, and music plays a similar role in defining one’s identity in such platforms (Marwick, 2013, pp. 358).
The quote is integral in the article as it seeks to affirm the position held by different theories of identity as outlined by Alice. In her discussions, different theories uphold that a person’s identity is not a constant aspect. For instance, sociologist Erving Goffman argues that people present themselves depending on where they are and who they interact with. Thus, different interactions in social media invoke the need for a separate identity by its users. Additionally, postmodern theorist such as Antony Giddens considers identity as a project that people can work on based on clothes they wear and activities they undertake such as exercising (Marwick, 2013, pp. 356). Thus, since the quote aligns with these notions where people customize their online personas using icons, nicknames, and other tokens to display who they are and their interests, it supports the main argument, thus significance to the article.
I agree with Alice’s argument that identity in social media often presents through customization. Social media are platforms where people have fun and interact with others at a social level while displaying who they are. Unlike in the real world, individuals get to build their persona around what they love, their interests, and the people with whom they want to engage. Hence, their online identities keep changing to fit these perspectives through customization.
2 “People practicing microcelebrity must uneasily navigate between revealing personal information to seem truthful and real to their fans, revealing something that could harm them personally and professionally.
The quote in Alice Marwick’s section on Online Identity is in the “A Companion to New Media Dynamics” text (Marwick, 2013). The quote means that people who become microcelebrities have to set boundaries between the identities they assume over the different social media platforms and that in the real world to avoid both crashing and harming their real life. Alice asserts that online identity focuses on a person’s self-presentation. As an influencer, for instance, with a YouTube channel, one adopts the identity of whatever they are influencing to gain more viewership and followers. However, the identity they adopt is fl...