Individualism Online
Submitted by Christina Kalinowski on October 22nd, 2008 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2008, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog
Abstract
Individualism is highly valued in American culture, and its growing importance to American identity has captured researchers’ attention. Not only has our cultural preoccupation with ourselves been receiving much attention, but increasingly so in conjunction with discussions of the internet. The internet, by its very nature, not only facilitates the expression of individualism, it has increasingly been shaped by individuals for this purpose. The internet has been idealized by many as a utopian medium, one in which the self can be expressed and everyone’s voice can be heard. While the internet may provide individuals with more opportunities to express individualism, tensions exist. The expression of individualism is a solitary activity, and many sites for said expression are populated by other users; thus, there is a tension between the desire to express oneself and socially constructed norms regarding respect for others.
“Individualism lies at the very core of American culture… We believe in the dignity, indeed the sacredness, of the individual. Anything that would violate our right to think for ourselves, judge for ourselves, make our own decisions, live our lives as we see fit, is not only morally wrong, it is sacrilegious (Bellah, et al. 2008:142).
As the above quote so eloquently articulates, individualism is not only an integral cultural component, it is also a salient identity characteristic valued by most Americans. While the cultural importance of individualism can be traced back to the roots of American history, at no previous point in history than the present has so much attention been focused on individualism and its influences upon ourselves, our social interactions, and our society. As the importance of individualism has grown, so has the many and diverse meanings that have been attributed to it; for my purposes, individualism is broadly conceptualized as expressions of self that are unique and serve to differentiate ourselves from others. Many scholars have written of the paradoxical condition we currently find ourselves living in as a result of increasing rationalization (Weber 1978), among other transformations; the consequences of these alienating transformations further incite the need to express oneself as a unique individual. This is well exemplified through an examination of how people use technology, the internet in particular, to fulfill this need.
Not only has our cultural preoccupation with ourselves been receiving much attention, but increasingly so in conjunction with discussions of the internet. The internet, by its very nature, not only facilitates the expression of individualism, it has increasingly been shaped by individuals for this purpose. The internet consists of comprehensive networks that link its users and provide opportunities for interaction and expression through a variety of sites that are created and sustained by these users. Thus, the internet medium provides opportunities for self expression and audiences to perform these acts for. Furthermore, expressions of individualism are not only performed for others, they are performed for the self; the internet provides self-reflexive opportunities for individuals to construct and maintain one’s uniqueness.
While the reasons people cite for using the internet are many, it has increasingly become clear that the desire to express oneself as an autonomous and unique individual is an underlying motivation to participate in online interaction and communication. The following discussion will incorporate a variety of readings to demonstrate the many ways the internet facilitates individual expressions of self and the ways in which people use sites on the internet for that purpose.
“The shift to a personalized, wireless world affords truly personal communities that supply support, sociability, information, and a sense of belonging separately to each individual (Wellman 2001).”
Before launching into a discussion highlighting the numerous sites and venues through which people are able to express their individualism, it is helpful to first outline the framework through which this occurs online. There has been a proposed shift in community organization and participation over the past several decades that is salient to this discussion. Sociologist Robert Putnam has noted a significant decline in community-based participation over the past 25 years. Participation in these organizations (i.e. labor unions) not only benefit the individual and the other members within that specific community, but can and do extend to benefit the wider community (i.e. by lobbying for better wages) (Putnam 1995). Picking up where Putnam left off, sociologist Barry Wellman notes that we have shifted from conceptualizations of more traditional organizational-based communities to personal communities, meaning we organize our communities around ourselves, as opposed to group goals (Wellman 2001). Thus, community has transitioned from solidary groups to individualized networks (Wellman 2001 and Matei 2005). These personal communities emphasize individual autonomy and agency as each person controls and directly benefits from being the center of his or her own community (Wellman 2001). The internet has provided a context conducive to the construction and maintenance of personal communities and, hence, opportunities for individual expression.
David Weinberger’s discussion of “massness” and individual reactions to it can be here used to further our understanding of the internet as a place favorable to individual expression. People are aware that, in larger society, they are considered members of a faceless mass (Weinberger 2002). Understandably, this creates tension as we struggle to maintain our individualism among the massness. The Web, while it consists of a mass of individuals, provides a context that offers more opportunities than found offline to assert our individual uniqueness (Weinberger 2002). Online we can create personal home pages, participate in discussion forums, and rate and review products and services. While a mass of individuals asserting their individualism can have the unintentional effect of creating massness, Weinberger ultimately concludes that “the Web consists of a mass that refuses to lose its individual faces (115).”
Weinberger draws on Amazon.com product reviews to exemplify this. He notes that, initially, individuals write reviews, which makes a person’s opinion known to others. But as the number of reviews grows, what makes each opinion unique dissipates into massness. Amazon.com has since implemented a simple yes or no rating scale that others can use to rate an individual reviewer’s helpfulness. Users with highly rated reviews then stand out as, once again, unique (indeed this can be seen upon visiting Amazon.com and reading the ‘Spotlight Reviews,’ of Weinberger’s book!). We assert our individuality, and others aid us in our quest. As social creatures, we recognize that “our understanding and our behavior are shaped by the fact that there are other people (Weinberger 2001:118).” Because we feel impelled to assert our individualism amid the massness, we understand why others feel the need to as well. The Web thus facilitates interactions that allow us to participate amid our shared interests while still maintaining our individuality.
Weinberger and Searls continue this conversation in “Markets are Conversations.” Searls and Weinberger note that markets have undergone an historical shift, from a noun, a physical place (market) where customers could hold conversations with the sellers and fellow customers about products, to a verb (marketing) that ends the conversation, casting customers as passive recipients of advertising messages (Searls and Weinberger 2001). As a direct result, we have subsequently been massively lumped into faceless collectivities based upon superficial characteristics such as age, class, and race, which strips us of our individuality (Weinberger 2001 and Searls and Weinberger 2001). Through online interaction we have a chance to regain our individuality by engaging in conversations with others and voicing our opinions about the products and services that are marketed to us (Searls and Weinberger 2001). We don’t appreciate the assumption that we can simply be lumped into a faceless aggregate, and we appreciate even less marketers’ assumptions that we will buy their products based upon these targeted and superficial characteristics. We each possess personal preferences and opinions about products; online, our unique experiences with certain products allow us to craft ourselves as knowledgeable, and to share this information with others.
“You Own Your Words” (WELL motto)
Now that I have briefly outlined the nature of the internet and how it facilitates the expression of individualism, I will now turn to a more applied discussion of the ways in which people express themselves using specific spaces on the internet. I will begin with a general discussion of social networking sites, then proceed to an examination of the WELL, and conclude with the phenomena of blogging. While each of these sites differ in their own respective ways, I am here focusing on their similarities by using them to illustrate how people use them to communicate their individuality to others.
Social networking sites provide a variety of ways for users to express themselves. Typical social networking sites provide users with a home page or profile where one can “type oneself into being (Sunden 2003 as cited in Boyd and Ellison 2007).” People are provided with spaces in which they have the opportunity to communicate who they are and what their interests are to others. Furthermore, many social networking sites provide seemingly limitless ways in which individuals can personalize their pages, thus making them more unique (Wellman 2001 and Boyd and Ellison 2007). Myspace allows members to import backgrounds and add and arrange text, video, and pictures on one’s profile. Similarly, Facebook allows outside developers to create “Applications” such as chart travel histories and “flair” (see Office Space) that members can add to further personalize their profile. The ability to map the geographical locations one has visited and to express oneself through pins (icons) further allows one to distinguish one’s individuality.
While social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook are typically organized around people, usually people that a member has befriended or is acquainted with in real life, these sites also provide the opportunity for members to meet new people, and to interact with others based on shared interests (Boyd and Ellison 2007). Who a member is friends with can tell us a lot about who a person is. As Donath and Boyd (2004) state these “public displays of connections serve as important identity signals that help people navigate the networked social world, in that an extended network may serve to validate identity information presented in profiles (as cited in Boyd and Ellison 2001).” Whether we join social networking sites to maintain contact with friends and family or to meet others (or both), public displays of our networks simultaneously allow us to signal who we are to others while providing information that supports our expressions of individuality.
Here is it useful to turn to a discussion of the WELL. The WELL is an asynchronous, non-anonymous bulletin board that consists of a wide array of topic forums that members can read and contribute to (Rheingold 1993). The WELL has popularly been conceptualized as a virtual community, even though this classification has been contested (Rheingold 1993, 2001, and Hafner 1997). Howard Rheingold’s influential book “The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier” was an examination of the WELL, framed as an unrealistically utopian virtual community (Rheingold 1993, 2001). As an avid member of the WELL, Rheingold’s analysis was clearly biased. However, upon revisiting his work years later, Rheingold realized the erroneous rose-colored judgments he made, and revised some of his original statements (Rheingold 2001). Rheingold ultimately came to the realization that not everyone shared his amicable feelings toward the WELL and considered themselves a part of a community; for some, the WELL primarily functioned as a place conducive for self expression (Matei 2005, Hafner 1997, and Rheingold 2001).
John Seabrook, writing about his tentative excursions into the WELL in his book “Deeper,” came to the conclusion that the WELL was not so much a community but rather a place for members to draw attention to themselves (Seabrook 1997 and Matei 2005). Members of the WELL themselves mirror this sentiment. Sorin Matei, in examining members’ responses to the query “is the WELL a community?” found that many framed their answers in terms of autonomy, individualism, and self-interest (2005). This can be likened to Wellman’s concept of networked individualism in that, for many members, participation on the WELL served as a personal community through which members directly benefited from being the center of their own community (Wellman 2001).
The very motto of the WELL, “you own your words,” constructs the WELL as an open space in which members are free to express their individuality. Once members post to forums their contributions to discussions are saved so that they and others may visit and re-visit them, effectively preserving member’s carefully constructed expressions of self. Well, that is, until some of the higher-ups created a tool capable of mass deletions, referred to as ‘scribbling’ (Hafner 1997). Members of the WELL received quite the surprise one day when one of the higher-ups decided to delete two entire conferences and years of conversation were eradicated (Hafner 1997). Members expressed shock, dismay, and outrage; they were upset. And why shouldn’t they have been? Many members had spent years expressing themselves on the WELL only to have many of their individual contributions erased. The very act of scribbling was a direct attack on members’ freedom of expression.
Initially, the expression of individualism seems most evident in the act of blogging. Blogs can be likened to journal entries in that they are usually produced by an individual author for the purpose of personal expression (Ringmar 2007). While the contents of blogs may vary across those who create and maintain them, the point is that blogs provide a personal space for individuals to have their voices heard (Kornblum 2003). Blogs are designed for an audience (“We’ve Got Blog” 2003). Blogs allow individual voices to be heard among the public sphere; they have allowed us to enter the conversation once again (Kornblum 2003, Searls and Weinberger 2001, and “We’ve Got Blog” 2003).
But blogs function as more than just individual segues back into the conversation; they are interactive extensions of who we are (“We’ve Got Blog” 2003 ). Eric Ringmar (2007) echoes this when he says that “a blog is ourselves in cyberspace (14).” Common responses given when bloggers are queried as to their reasons for blogging include the need to express oneself creatively, to document personal experiences, to voice opinions, to persuade, and to leave a record of having been there (Ringmar 2007 and Hewitt 2002), all of which are highly individual-centered reasons for participation in blogging activities. Blogs are, more than anything, a means by which we describe and explain our lives to ourselves; as such, blogging is a self-reflexive activity (Ringmar 2007).
Current and widely valued conceptions of individualism require an individual to self-reflexively engage oneself, and blogs provide an advantageous context for doing so (Ringmar 2007). Blogs are spaces that enable us to write ourselves into existence. Seabrook (2002) made the observation that “written words seem to have a more symbolic relationship to your thoughts and emotions… you are a kind of mental nudist (177).” People often reveal personal life details online that they never would offline. Thus it is no surprise that researchers have found that we tend to feel more confident and comfortable expressing and self-reflexively exploring ourselves online (McKenna and Bargh 2000). Such explorations, which can meet with resistance offline by one’s peers, can be effortlessly examined in front of our online audience (McKenna and Bargh 2000). We need to express ourselves and be recognized by others before we can be someone; identity creation requires and audience and, online, there is always someone watching (Ringmar 2007). Thus, blogs, and the internet medium itself, assist in the exploration of self and expression of individualism.
““The WELL seems to be all about self-expression, not communication. Expression is a solitary activity – like shouting in the forest, perhaps I should say electrovoid. I have a picture in my mind’s eye of the WELL – actually, of about fifty little wells – each one sunk deep into rock; each one perfectly insulated from every other one; and at the bottom of each, a person with a keyboard, furiously and fruitlessly hammering away (comment from a WELL member, cited in Matei 2005).
While individualism is clearly a primary motivation for people to use the internet, as I have attempted to illustrate, sites for self-expression are not without tension. Even though the internet is a medium that facilitates greater freedom of individual self-expression and self-reflexivity, there are still conflicts inherent in using online venues to convey individualism. With respect to the WELL, many users, like the one cited above, were keenly aware of the persistent tension that existed between individual and communitarian ideals (Matei 2005). The WELL was “founded as a self-conscious virtual community and proclaimed itself as such (Rheingold 1987 as cited in Matei 2005),” while simultaneously proclaiming to uphold the freedom of expression (Matei 2005). However, it should be noted that this ideal of freedom of expression does not mean that one can say whatever one wants and pass it off as “expressing my individualism;” the WELL, initially founded without filters on the premise that everyone had a right to be heard, eventually developed community guidelines that members were expected to adhere to. This culminated when Mark Ethan Smith, a radical and controversial personality who began lashing out and personally attacking WELL members, was the first person to be booted from the WELL (Hafner 1997). It only takes one to ruin it for everyone. As a result of this and other similar incidents, the new understanding of the WELL was more like you are free to express yourself, so long as your contributions don’t disrupt the community, because if they do, the higher ups have the authority to delete you. Members had come to the realization that since self-expression is a solitary activity, and that since their discourse was being articulated in a community setting, they had to strike a compromise between the desire to be heard and being respectful of others. Participation in the WELL thus required members to deal with the tension between these two conflicting ideals.
These and other tensions are present in other online spaces as well. Blogs, which are primarily conceptualized by their owners as spaces where they are free to say what they want and have their voices heard, are not liberated from these constraints. Blogs are not just isolated, free-floating entities; blogs must co-exist with other blogs. And there are norms that bloggers are expected to follow. For instance, it is expected that bloggers’ credit each other if information has been taken from one blog and posted on another (“We’ve Got Blog” 2003). And the same rules apply concerning what you can and cannot say, just like on the WELL; not only could what you say (or forget to say!) get you in trouble with your online peers, but it could also have real world consequences. Eric Ringmar found this out the hard way when he was pressured to resign from his tenured professorial position at the London School of Economics due to things he posted about the university and staff in his blog (Ringmar 2007).
It has become apparent that the internet has increasingly been portrayed and perceived as a utopian space, where individuals can be free to express themselves and have their voices heard. However, as many of who have flocked to the internet have discovered, the internet is not the exactly the place they envisioned it to be. While the internet has been designed to facilitate the expression of individualism by its users, there are limits to how far we can go. Online is not so different from offline, as many purport it to be. Our online interactions can have real life consequences. While one may feel freer to express oneself and be more confident in doing so on the internet, our rights to free expression are just as limited online as they are off. Expressions of individualism come with a price tag; such expressions are individual activities and serve to isolate and distance ourselves from others. We need to be aware of how we choose to express ourselves, lest we forget that even though each of us are truly unique, we are social creatures and share the world with others who are like us. As such, we need to keep in mind that social norms regarding respect for others do not cease to exist just because we log on.
People are increasingly taking note of the contradictory expectations inherent in using the internet, and these tentative observations should be more fully explored. The idea that the offline world is significantly different from the online world undoubtedly has an influence upon individual behaviors. As social creatures, we have made the internet a social medium which makes the study of online behaviors worthwhile. Having said that, research needs to be focused offline as well as on in order for us to more adequately comprehend the perceptions people hold regarding online environments and they ways in which they use them to navigate the tension between individualism and socially constructed norms regarding respect for others.
Works Cited
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