500 Word Summary - No.2

As my research is developing I am gaining more of an insight into my subject matter and starting to be able to narrow down what exactly it is that I want to look at. I’ve been reading about the psychological impact that over use of social media can have and how this affects our ability to develop interpersonal relationships. I’ve also done further research on the idea of ‘self’ and discovered the idea of multiple versions of ‘self’ and how we create fictitious identities online in order to put across an image that is more socially appealing online. I have also established the idea of social networking sites as ‘networked publics’ a term coined by Danah Boyd. ‘Networked Publics’ explore the idea of social networking sites as spaces in their own right, and spaces that have taken over real-life social meeting points. I feel that from the research done I can start to develop some structure to my essay, knowing that networked publics and the idea of self combine and have a direct impact on how we develop interpersonal relationships. These will be the three areas I specifically focus in on when writing my essay: Networked Publics and Online Spaces, Presentation of the Self and Self Disclosure, and finally, Development of Interpersonal Relationships.

In terms of case studies, I have done some research into practitioners that convey emotion through their work and also different examples of how social media has ben explored via illustration. I’m particularly interested in Victoria Vincents work, finding that her practice encompasses online culture and the conveying of emotion in an authentic and honest way. This aligns to my own interests, and allows room to examine how a practitioner is responding to the problems with social media on a level that delves more into the personal experience of being online rather than looking at the impact of online culture on society as a whole.

When considering my own practical work, I feel that at the minute the idea of self-presentation is something that intrigues me, as well as self-disclosure. I find it interesting that people can be so open and honest online when hiding behind a mask and yet struggle disclosing information in their real life relationships. From the questionnaire I put out, I’m hoping to get enough responses to create a small zine type publication in order to explore my themes. I have also been doing some general visual responses in order to explore my subject area more, and feel that some of these could become images that are made to be posted online in order to get people thinking about how they behave around social networking sites.

Research into Practitioners

Whilst researching into practitioners I've been trying to avoid the usual editorial type of illustration that this topic is usually covered by. It's not to my taste and I feel that it's a bit over done. Instead, I've tried finding imagery that contains some kind of emotion, humour or is executed in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Christopher Delorenzo

Eduardo Salles

Brian Rea

Natalie Foss

Brecht Vandenbroucke

Victoria Vincent

Victoria Vincent 

After looking into different examples of illustrative practice that examine my topic, I am particularly drawn to the work of Victoria Vincent. Her work has a very personal, authentic quality, and a strong sense of anrrative that runs throughout the majority of her work. As well as Illustration, she also animates her narratives and I have found two so far that align perfectly with the contexts and themes behind my essay. Her animation 'Find True Love' examines communcation and online dating, whilst her other animation 'kittykat96' explores presentation of the self online and the idea of multiple versions of self.

IPC - Richard West, Lynn H.Turner

- self-disclosure allows relationships to develop and contributes to strengthening self-concept
- greater disclosure = greater emotional involvement in a relationship
- relationships are closer when something personal is shared
- interpersonal - relating to relationships or communication between people
- acquaintence, build-up stage, continuation, deterioration, termination
- intimacy - self-disclosure, love and affection, personal validation, trust
- online communication - laziness, ease of use, privay, ability to have multiple conversations, multi-task, substitute for face-to-face
- some studies found that internet interactions were viewed as inferior to face-to-face
- verbal cues - words that are spoken or typed - non-verbal cues - tone of voice, body language
- conversation fluency may be more difficult to maintain online - slower than speaking
- internet allows for deception but anonyminity allows for self-disclosure
- true self is more accessible after an online interaction
- emoticons make up for lack of non verbal cues - clarification of ambiguous statements - mitigate negative messages - flirt -avatars also replace non-verbal cues
- some people who feel shyness in face-to-face interactions are more comfortable in online interaction due to anonyminity - increased intimacy in internet socializing
- high social phobia scores correlate with the use of the internet to regulate social fears - extrovert vs introvert

Carl R. Rogers - A Therapists View On Psychotherapy - On Becoming A Person

"Real communication occurs and this evaluative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding" - pg 331 - Empathy

"It means to see the expressed ideas from the other persons point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about" - pg 332

The Existential Choice

"Do I dare to communicate myself as I am or must my communication be somewhat less than or different from this?" pg 345

"The sharpness of this issue lies in the often vividly forseen possibility of threat or rejection. To communicate ones full awareness of the relevant experience is a risk to interpersonal relationships." pg 345

In his book "On Becoming A Person" Carl Rogers argues that real communication can only be achieve when we listen from an empathetic viewpoint, that we cannot truly communicate until we begin to 'see the expressed ideas from the other persons point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about' (Rogers, 2004, pg 332).
Continue this excert with reference to evidence of social networking making us less empathic and thus less likely to be communicating effectivley and efficiently

Correlating to previous discussion on the 'real' self, Rogers also brings about the idea of the 'existential choice', the choice we all have to communicate ourselves as we are or to filter what we allow others to see of ourselves. The very real fear of threat and rejection that encourages us to communicate from behind screens is a result of not wanting to show our 'real selves' in case the 'real self' is met with an unempathetic, judging point of view as a pose to an understanding, empathic listener.
Links with real/true self exploration, pyschological asymmetry

Questionnaire - Anonymous Confessions

A lot of my research into my chosen area has looked at the idea of anonymity, different versions of self and self-disclosure. I think it could be quite interesting to try take my practical work in this direction. People are more likely to disclose personal infomation online about themselves as they have a different kind of identity to hide behind, this leaves them feeling less at risk of rejection/embarassment when they disclose highly personal infomation about themselves. I ahve devised a simple questionnaire to explore this topic. The two questions will be as follows:

1. Confess something anonymously
2. Would you have made the same confession if the questionnaire wasn't anonymous. Explain your answer.

I will be posting the link to the questionnaire to a variety of social netowrking sites as this is what my dissertation is focused around. I will collate the results once I feel I have enough responses and begin to make work in result of that. At the moment I feel that some kind of publication format would work best, possibly a zine. This will be decided later on once the results have been collected.

Further Revised Research Question

I previously wrote a list of potential questions to explore and investigate for my research project, most were broad and quite vague but I've narrowed my list down to a selection of 4 questions. I think my question is still a while away from being finalised in terms of wording and figuring out how exactly I'm going to phrase things but the four options I've narrowed it down to all have the same underlying theme, they are as follows:

- Why are we comfortable expressing human emotion online but struggle with face-to-face interactions?
- To what extent does social media impact the way we interact with each other?
- What effect does social media have on day-to-day social skills/social interactions
- How does social media impact how we develop interpersonal relationships?

I know these are still vague and not well structured but I feel like they're all similar in a way and with further research I'll be able to further narrow down my options and begin expanding and forming my final proposed research question.

The School of Life - How To Live More Wisely Around Our Phones

How To Live More Wisely Around Our Phones - http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-to-live-more-wisely-around-our-phones/

- there's almost no relationship in which the presence of the phone has not had a profound effect
- addiction
- monasticism - distraction - wall-off instantly alluring and most meaningless distractions offered by the wider world
- digital sabbath - engage directly with others, be relaxed, immersed in nature and present
- look things up inside yourself - give ideas time and attention - 'In the minds of geniuses we discover our own neglected thoughts' Ralph Waldo Emerson
- our phones and our relationships - malleability provides the perfect excuse for disengagement from the trickier aspects of other people
- dating - everyone is radically imperfect, compatibility is an achievement of love, it can't be its precondition - cannot help with the real challenge of love - extending sympathy and understanding to human frailty
- nature and the sublime - we are forgetting (as we update) what nature - quietly and with great and tender majesty - might really have been trying to say to us
- stimulation vs calm - our most urgent need is for calm - we react to stimuli even when we're exhausted - phones are endless carriers of claims to rouse us when what we really need is exactly the opposite
- shopping - purchasing ambitions are focused only at the lower level of our own pyramid of needs (reference image within article)
- beyond instagram - we need to make ourselves pay attention - our ease of which we can create an image works against our desire to properly notice anything - put down the phone and sketch
- appreciation - phones deliver the world directly to us yet often limit the things we actually pay attention to
- poetry - brevity to vacuity, serious ideas must be transmitted in long and challenging texts - this is an educated delusion - you can conjure the deepest, sweetest and saddest truths in a few words - brief media to say big important thing
- news - modern idea of news is falsely and unflattering - it imagines we need to know everything thats happened in the world - really important news is just everything that is crucial for us to take in order to understand our own world and our place in it
- FOMO - its not the notion of missing out thats the problem, its ideas of what we might be missing out on - phones unhelpfully skew this
- the dream of being liked - we might know plenty of people but others never quite know us as we wish to be known - loneliness is simply a price we have to pay for holding onto a sincere ambitious view of what companionship must and could be
- travel - while our phones can record and reveal to others the half-formed thoughts circulating our mind they cannot as yet bring our submerged reactions to the surface
- play - the unexpected intensity of fooling around with a normally staid and measured acquaintance - as we play, we forget to cheque our phones 
- selfies - tempting to think we should take them less seriously - distance ourselves from it and see it in a mocking light - but the wiser move might be to get much more ambitious - self-reflection - not seeking the approval of others but seeking self-knowledge
- communication - technology annihilates physical but not psychological, distance - our words move infinitely faster than a carrier pigeon or a scroll bearing slave but we are as yet no better at explaining ourselves than we were in early history
- death - we use our phones for constant reminders - there are more important appointments to be reminded of - appointments with ourselves, our worries and not the anxieties that they create - brevity sadly is the key to appreciation - it is when we remember death that we understand properly the urgency of the time we have left 

- utopia - still so far from technology that will really help us advance - capitalism has delivered on only our simplest of needs - primitive times - in the future our phones will be kind and not merely subservient - they will know how to edge us away from a stupid decision and how to summon up our better natures