Visual Rhetorics Project

1. For Me, or Not For Me:
Shaping a Digital Identity

2. The Urge to Engage
• There are a number of
reasons why people use
Twitter, Facebook, and
blogging at such a high rate.
Asking around, the
following came up
repeatedly :
– Convenience
– Self-expression
– Sake of memories
– Engagement of current
events, etc.

3. Stimulating Self-Promotion
• Is jeopardizing/sacrificing
anonymity worth the
satisfaction of garnering
increased attention
online? For years now,
more and more people
have begun to say yes.
• Those asked said they felt
happy to both post some
form of information about
themselves and read
about their friends/the
people they follow.

4. Putting The “Other” Before the Self
• Not everyone wants to talk
about her/himself all day.
• Most people are interested in
speaking about topics that are
important to them. With the
plethora of bloggers and online
voices that exist, hobbies, like
music or film, are quickly rising
to the level of politics or social
issues, in terms of attention
received.

5. Keeping Up With the Times
• The benefits of advanced
communication technologies are
obvious. However…
• Are the current online sites too
big to collapse? Newspapers are
in their grave, and, realistically
speaking, Twitter and Facebook
will one day face extinction.
• Those asked seemed
unconcerned by the prospect of
FB and Twitter losing steam.

6. Stacking Up
• Those who preferred • Those who preferred
blogs/Twitters in which people blogs/Twitters in which people
focused on their own day-to-day focused on special topics (and
lives admitted to: cast attention away from
– Checking them several times a day themselves) admitted to:
– Becoming more interested in – Checking them at several times a
maintaining their own Twitter/blog week
– Having their interest in given – Becoming more interested in finding
individuals fade in and out similar blogs/Twitters
– Maintaining a steady interest in their
respective topics

7. And Now For the Consequences
• We typically consider having a
large following on Twitter to be a
clear sign of success and appeal.
What’s not usually considered is
the herd mentality. Are people
genuinely interested, or do they
only believe someone is worth
following because another does?
• The question of genuine merit vs.
perceived merit

8. Quantity over Quality -
Of all those asked, everyone on
Facebook admitted to accepting a
friend request from someone they
barely knew.
Of the same group, all those who use
Twitter admitted to enjoying seeing
their follower count rise, even though
they had no interest in following
several of those people.

9. The question of addiction –
the anxiety of not keeping
up-to-date, or the anxiety of
not being given enough
attention.
Compulsion is typically tied
into the size of your
audience; the more eyes
glued to the screen, the
more difficult it becomes to
resist.

10. Lack of Foresight
• Irony – Though people are
aware that the changing times
will bring new developments,
they forget the past isn’t
actually being swept clean.
• Online Survival of the Fittest –
People are beginning to realize
the inherent challenge in
being both genuine and
respectable.