First off: Internet, as I have mentioned before, gave birth to freedom of information. We can read anything we want online, build up our individualist lenses on how we view the world. The less ignorant, teach themselves to ask questions where the information they are exposing themselves too has been sourced from. Creating your own individualistic agenda is a great thing; you can identify what you like and find what you are passionate about whether it is blogging about sports, researching movies, connecting with people with similar interests.
When having your own individual agenda, people tend to gravitate towards social networks. Micro-Blogging, such as Twitter-“What are you doing?” is a compressed expression of intimacy. This way of socializing is a connected presence: Social relations or continuous exchanges that pass through networked objects blur the lines between “presence” and “absence.” This is also a hard concept to grasp, and giving examples of our daily lives and socialization with media can give insight. This “presence/absence,” can be when you post a message on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You are not physically present on the Facebook wall, talking to your friends, but you are physically typing what you would like to say, so your friend can either respond now or later. The absence is felt when you are not connected with the network, but your presence is there when you are “online.”
In blogging, substantive information is a commodity that is used to build and maintain relationships;
“...this exchange of data than deep substantive or meaningful communication based on mutual understanding” (New Media, Networking, and Phatic Culture, Vincent Miller, pg. 390)
Information itself is now being converged onto one platform. Our lives are being represented across these forms of exposure, with selling ourselves to a network for our images, and information inputted onto our computers. We are participating in each other’s lives without knowing. News feeds have become hegemonic, (Heg-e-monic: Dominant influence) controlling what we see, read and process.
“...the stream of social information gives people a fake sense of intimacy with others that they do not really know that well. If this is true, it could be emotionally devastating.” (Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck, Danah Boyd, pg 17)
