Homework- Summary on hompages and the construction of identities on the web.

Personal home pages are constructed to reflect the makers’ identity, it gives the opportunity to present ones self to the ‘virtual world’. Home pages are not really created/ used to give information but are used to construct a certain identity. The virtual environment offers the user a context which can be used to experiment and shape a personal identity.

Home pages can be used to ‘promote’ a person in a way they want to be known as, however comparisons of home pages with face-to-face interaction can be different and often misleading. Some users do not show information that may make consumers not want to know more about them, they would rather feel accepted in the online world. As home pages just show texts, images and graphics and in person, body language, facial expressions and gestures are shown, this can portray a different sort of person than which is online. Users make sure they keep some information ‘a secret’ to consumers as the internet/ World Wide Web has mass consumers as well as mass producers. I think that the way in which you can tell a persons personality just by looking at their home page is by looking at the language they use.

The way in which individual users differentiate themselves online involves bricolage (a term referring to the construction or creation of work from a range of things which happen to be available) in this case it is the use of graphics, sounds, text etc. Confusing layout and mulitimedia is a way in which people can make themselves different to others in a way to make a ‘personal statement’. An online commentator stated that “Most people do not get the chance to write a book or get published anywhere. The net gives everyone a chance to say something before they die.” This is one of the main positive points for producers online as they are able to express their thoughts and feelings to other users at their own leisure.

Another positive aspect of having a home page is that it is easier to ‘reveal yourself’ or parts of your personality to people. An example of this is shown in the report by Daniel Chandler. It shows that James, a gay British internet user, said it was easier for him to ‘come out’ on his homepage compared to real life and when people asked he was able to say ‘Oh didn’t you know?’. This is a good example of showing how the construction and information on a web page/ home page makes it easier to show ones identity as they do not need to face any consequences or embarrassment face to face.

With advantages of having homepages and identities on the web, come some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that some fear that young people will be dependent on using the virtual world to retreat from everyday life, as these are the digital natives (people growing up knowing about the web). This means that young people’s identities are being shown on the web without knowing the receiver. This proves that ‘virtual homes provide no shelter for anyone’, and therefore we should make sure that some of our important information on our constructed homepage is kept to ourselves.