Media Presentation MC502

1. The Contemporary Effects of Media Which Influence Our Identities of Tomorrow. Sania Mir

2. The threatened dissolution ofbounderies and oppositions (the postmodern) is presumed to represent is not something peculiar to a particular technology or to postmodern discourse but is rather one of the fundamental conditions of modernity itself. - Batchen (1996). (As cited in Mirzoeff 1999).

3. Second Life Second Life was created in the year of 2003. It is a free online virtual world which allows you to socially interact with people and live in essence a ‘second life’. Second life can be utilised as a meeting place where people meet as avatars within a world. Second Life allows you to personalize a home to fit your desire and aspirations. It also lets you buy land and build or buy objects to customize it and make it a part of your Second Life home. The point of such purchasing is so the individual can spend much more easily compared to the real world. There is a ‘Teen Second Life’ available for members aged between 13-17. Can it be proposed that such a world is preventing us from revealing our true physical identity? Second Life does not require us to physically see the person who we are interacting with. This could encourage us to be unsociable and leave us unsatisfied with our appearance. Teenagers on ‘Teen Second Life’ who are just beginning to find their inner self could develop a complex about their identity and find it hard to interact with people in person. Second Life, 2010

4. Contemporary effect of games. Kryzwinska stated a game consists of context, intertext and game play. A game comprises of set textual features and devices that provide its environmental, stylistic, generic, intertextual, structural and semiotic characteristics. These combine to make a coherent game ‘world’. A defined aesthetic and ludic experience can be gained when all these components come together. Krzywinska, 2008 Therefore it could be argued that investing time on creating an avatar within a game can lead to wanting to spend more time playing that a game. Many people exert a lot of effort into making a unique avatar as you tend to develop a sense of assimilation. Yee asked game players to indicate how much they felt their ‘avatars were an extension of them’. The results showed no significant gender or age differences but further investigation produced findings confirming females were more likely to behave and interact similarly in a game and with others in real life compared to male players (Yee, 2004). This indicates that females take their avatar identity more into account than males.

5. BBC News 2010 The Pakistani identity could certainly be influenced by Facebook due to a recent racial issue that has enraged the Pakistani community. Members of Pakistan were unable to access Facebook as it was blocked on the 20th May 2010 by the Pakistani Government. This was triggered by a Facebook group hosting un-Islamic content relating to the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH). Could this contemporary issue portray Pakistan and Pakistani people as backward? Or Will it portray the Pakistani community as modern users of the internet who know how to act on their strong beliefs?

6. Do celebrities in the Media influence our identity? It has somewhat become a fashion to be on social networking sites and to add celebrities to our networking profile. Post web 2.0, Magazines and television were our only portal to their personal lives but now we can read up about them online and update ourselves with their issues (Mirzoeff 1999). Lady Gaga is known to dress obscurely in her music videos and in reality. Her outfit worn to the 2010 Brit Awards was extremely peculiar. It made me ponder why do we have social norms which we live to? Why do we feel we are restricted to express our identities in reality? Giddens Theory of Structuration states that’s there is a specific social structure and an established method of doing things. These norms can change when they are ignored, replaced or reproduced differently. Daily actions reinforce expectations which ‘social forces’ and ‘social structures’ (Giddens and Pierson, 1998 as cited from Gauntlett 2008). Mail Online, 2010 Wikia Entertainment, 2010

7. The Contemporary Effects of Media Which Influence Our Identities of Tomorrow. The presentation has discussed different forms of media which can influence our identity of tomorrow. I feel the future of media effects are important as they show us situations and relationships from other peoples point of view. Soaps and Sitcoms illustrate how to behave and react in a social situation. Would we possibly know how to react if we didn’t have media influence in our lives? Media is a key influence in our lives. Television and Magazines demonstrate how men and women are ‘desirably’ supposed to look like. Facebook can be utilised to gain peoples views on a topic just by simply setting up a group and inviting your friends. Attractive actors and actresses play ‘assertive and single-minded roles’ which we relate to and aim to imitate. Virtual worlds like Second Life and games allow us to express our identities by creating avatars and behaving in any persona we wish to. Gauntlett 2008

8. References BBC NEWS 2010 Pakistanis divided over internet restrictions. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8693842.stm. (Accessed on: 20th May 2010). Gauntlett (2008) Media, Gender and Identity, An Introduction. Dawsonera [Online] Available at: http://www.dawsonera.com/depp/reader/protected/external/AbstractView/S9780203930014 (Accessed on: 18th May 2010). Krzywinska, T (2008) 'Being a Determined Agent in (the) World of Warcraft: Text/Play/Identity', in Atkins, B & Krzywinska, T (eds.) Videogame, Player, Text. Manchester: MUP. Linden Lab (2010) Second Life. Available at: http://secondlife.com/?v=1.1. (Accessed on: 20th May 2010). Mirzeoff, N. (2008) An introduction to Visual Culture. Routledge: London.

9. References Continued… Rawi & Johnson (2010) Mail Online. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1251497/Brit-Awards-2010-Lady-Gaga-leads-red-carpet-parade-towering-pompadour-wig.html (Accessed on: 22 February 2010). Wikia Entertainment (2010) The Rachel Hairstyle. Available at: http://friends.wikia.com/wiki/The_Rachel_hairstyle. (Accessed on: 18th May 2010). Yee, N. (2004 Through The Looking-Glass . Available at: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/print/000755.php (Accessed: 22 February 2010)