Facebook:
History and culture
Facebook from its inception as a social media platform
has evolved beyond that singular purpose and is now a fluid multipurpose
platform from which self-writing capabilities have arisen.
The
history of Facebook began in February of 2004 and began as a simple messaging
platform aimed at friend to friend communication. However, as time passed it
began to encompass “more than 800 college networks” and from there began to see
incremental changes such as the inclusion of posts that serve to inform other
of their activities, these changes would continue to manifest until the
Facebook we know today emerged. The platform today is a behemoth and has
expanded the available features in turn. No longer just a message board it is
now a tool for companies to advertise, governments to collect data en masse, and people to express they’re
likes and dislikes as well as opinions and themselves. This possibility of
personal expression is allowed through a Facebook “page” introduced as early as
2004 and expanding uses continually as far up as 2011 with the introduction of
“timelines” which in literary terms provide a clear value. In addition to
timelines groups of likeminded individuals or with shared interests can join a
“group” and use this space to create narratives or even by limiting the
audience use that space as a public journal akin to a stage.
So how is this platform with its features used in terms
of self-writing and has it had an effect on self-writing culture? Absolutely
Facebook is inherently different from a journal or diary in the sense that for
a vast majority of users it is used as a platform to network as opposed to
keeping a log of information. By this unless an individual takes advantage of
the security and privacy features the post is more often than not going to be
public. It is safe to say that a closed diary tucked away in the darkness of a
room is more secure than a very platform that has “social” in the tagline. So
because of this even if one is to keep a, log of their life as some do it is
still going to be subject to outward public opinions and the holdings of the
super ego. Due to this difference in security and the very nature of the medium
Facebook cannot emulate the diary in terms of security and content and
therefore comparisons of the two are limited.
As discussed the matter of privacy and what one may or
may not post is relevant in its effect on self-writing. Whether this effect is conscious
of unconscious it is still relevant. “Regular people have also started
seriously to weigh the benefits of Facebook against the potentially high cost
of loss of privacy.” This quote and the journal it is attached to is telling
how far Facebook has come from its roots as a simple “board based” platform in
which all comments were stacked in one space and accessed together instead of
fragmented posts. It is because of this information and the understanding that
once it’s on the internet its “there forever” lead to an effect on the validity
or at least honesty of the content posted on Facebook. This feeling of
potentially being watched and recorded changes all forms of self-writing. From
stories that may be edited to be less accurate or detailed for fear of potential
archiving to the very rhetoric in which the “posts” are constructed the
underlying potential of Facebook's policies have an effect on those who are
aware of said policies.
Work cited:
Mat Honan, Gizmodo, 2/01/12 5:16pm, UTRGV Library, http://gizmodo.com/5881431/view-facebooks-entire-history-as-a-timeline,
Accessed February 1st 2006
Rethlefsen, Melissa L, search.proquest.com,
Library Journal; New York, (Jul 01, 2010), http://search.proquest.com.ezhost.utrgv.edu:2048/docview/818699761?pq-origsite=summon, Accessed
February 1st 2006
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2nd sentence revision: Because Facebook has the capability to archive users' posts, people wouldn't want to write something that may have a permanent averse effect on their lives.
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