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identity And soCiAl netWorks
lessly circulated and anyone can leave electronic
footprints, 'erode the boundaries between 'pub-
licity' and 'privacy'(Weintraub & Kumar, 1997).
Lange (2007), explains that social network sites
are websites that allow users to create a public or
semi-public profile within the system and one that
explicitly displays their relationship to other users
in a way that is visible to anyone who can access
their profile. Consequently, Boyd (2007) considers
SNS's as the latest generation of 'mediated publics'
where people can gather publicly through medi-
ated technology. She points out that features (such
as persistence - i.e. the permanence of a profile
and its circulation in cyberspace - searchability,
replicability, and invisible audiences) constitute
the key elements of this environment. Users' be-
havior may be mediated by these features without
necessarily integrating the underlying immediate
and future consequences or risks embedded in
these technologies or their actions.
The ability to tag photos to profiles and the
presence of photo recognition software means
that there is a loss of visual anonymity which
can be complemented by new forms of gaze
(Montgomery, 2007). Equally, the semantic nature
of the web can simplify or reduce 'web-based
communications to the descriptive and may un-
consciously ascribe social values by describing
these relationships as 'friends' or 'acquaintances.'
According to a study done by Sheffield Hallam
University, while the number of friends people can
have on such sites is massive, the actual number
of close friends is approximately the same in
the face-to-face real world (Randerson, 2007).
Mori et al. (2005: 82) point out that semantic
web-based ontologies deliberately simplify such
relationships. Danah Boyd (2004:1280), in her
enthnographic study of the Friendster site, found
'people are indicated as friends even though the
user does not particularly know or trust the per-
son.' In this sense, the semantic web flattens the
complexity of relationships and falsely assumes
that publicly visible or articulated social networks
and relationships can be conflated with private
The identities established in social network-
ing sites function to enable offline and online
networks. Often, the identity that is constructed
online reflects the complex entwining of computer-
mediated communications on the one hand and
offline social networks on the other. Jon Kleinberg
(2006: 5) contends that 'distributed computing
systems have incessantly been entwined with
social networks that fuse user populations' in
the online and offline environments. The growth
of activities such as blogging, social network
services, and other forms of social media on the
Internet has made large-scale networks more
evident and visible to the general public. As
Adam Joinson (2008: 1027) points out, websites,
such as Facebook, were originally built around
existing geographical networks of student com-
munities. This meant that offline communities
were reflected in the online environment; such
communities function in a number of ways: for
example, as a means of sustaining relationships
by providing social and emotional support; as an
information repository; and, as offering the poten-
tial to expand one's offline and online networks.
In view of this, on-line settings beyond being rich
data on the construction of identity by users have
also become rich sources of data for large-scale
studies of social networks (See Backstorm et al.
2007; Caverlee et al. 2008; Mislove 2007; Mori
2005; Goussevskaia 2007; Joinson 2007).
Wellman (cf. Lange, 2007: 2) defines social
networks as 'relations among people who deem
other network members to be important or rel-
evant to them in some way, with media often used
to maintain such networks.' Another essential
component of such sites is that user profile in-
formation involves some element of 'publicness'
(Preibusch et al,. 2007) and it is the consumption
of private details which sustains the culture of
gaze and the curiosity of the invisible audience.
Communication technologies, such as the Internet
with its global platform where data can be end-
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