Identity And Expression In Monica Lewinsky's 'The Price Of Shame'

Social media connects us to so much but leaves us disconnected from reality. My generation and I have played into this social media world where we worry more about how many likes, views, and interactions we get on a daily basis to make us feel connected. The author Nick Bilton, writes “Disruptions: More Connected, Yet More Alone” which was published in 2013 in the New York Times. The author argues that we as a society tend to overuse social media in a way which can be perceived as downright dystopian. Bilton starts building his main points with personal facts and credibility, factually based data and reasoning, and conveying how ethics and emotion play in our social media crazed society.

How does the social media affect our lives? What are the consequences of social media’s existence? These are merely a portion of the critical question that emerge from perusing Jonathan Franzen 's speech, 'Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts ' from year 2011.

(Orenstein, 253). Social media is causing us to not show who we really are inside and pretend to be someone we’re not. We tend to be careful of what we post because of what others might think. Although it is said that social media is form

Many forms of media have emerged over the decades. Some die while others stay and thrive. Over the past few, a sensational digitalized type of media has loomed into the modern world; it is called the new media. This phenomenon has drastically changed the public-from feeling more informed and ‘united’ with their peers to perceptions of fear and even ignorance inductions. Media commentator Sherry Turkle gives an example of the damages new media can cause through her book excerpt “Connectivity and its Discontents” and author Dallas Spires, who also gives an exemplar of this case through her essay “Will Text Messaging Destroy the English Language?”.

In trying to analyze Monica Lewinsky’s “The Price of Shame”, I had to go first to the definition and causes of shame. I started with the dictionary definition of shame. “Shame is the painful emotion caused by a consciousness of guilt or shortcoming or impropriety.” Hmmmm, so being attacked online is not shame? Guess not.

"The 21st century is needless to say, the era of digitalization, as social media controls every aspect of human life. Technology has rendered paper and pencil useless as it has shifted the face of the earth to network and communicate faster than ever. Countless apps, websites, and softwares exist to satiate the human desire for convenience and efficiency, all while serving to entertain our complex mindsets. Social media and its platform offer numerous ways for users to speak their minds through comments and ways to express themselves through pictures. The 1st Amendment in the Constitution “prohibits the peoples’ representatives in Congress from abridging these rights” (“The Bill of Rights”).

Chris Hedge’s article, “Our Country Is Lost Believing in What It Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It,” highlights the negative influence electronic media has on society. The author provides a realistic insight into the negative effects of electronic media. Hedges states, “It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are” (Hedges, 4).

Brooks’ position is seemingly critical of the modern day moral virtues; however, he does admit that there has been improvement in the treatment of women, or more accurately, the idea that “girls were expected to be quiet” (p 248), is one which is diminishing as “self-actualization and self-esteem” have functioned as a means for women to “articulate and cultivate self-assertion, strength, and identity” (ibid). In opposition to this, Brooks identifies three effects “on the moral ecology that have inflated the Big Me Adam I side of our natures and diminished the humbler Adam II” (p 25). These three effects are communication, in that it has become “faster and busier,” social media for it has become concentrated on “more self-referential information,” and lastly, social media’s encouragement of a “broadcasting personality” (ibid). Brooks continues to speak about social media by repeatedly labelling this age as a “more individualistic society,” one which has a steady decline in “intimacy, social trust, and empathy.” In the end, Brooks states that “it is okay to be flawed” (p 268), which can be confirmed by the previous chapters and the exceptional individuals who certainly had

Digitizing Race Lisa Nakamura’s Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures Of the internet, is more than any book. Lisa talks about everything that relates to race that is happing in her time in the year of 2008. In her book, she described many views about how us visual cultures by using the internet. She talks about the concepts of digital identity and theories that is related to the study of media.

When Carr talks about how the internet is taking over his mental state he states, “And what the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (32). The internet is no longer be used as just a tool, it is taking a mental toll on him. The internet now consumes his mind, and is creating a new state of mind in which he cannot focus for long periods of time anymore. Gladwell touches on how the internet is taking over how activists convey their feelings and argues, “It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have an impact” (51). Being an activist in today’s time, with the advances of technology, makes a social activists way of expression through the internet easier, but at the same time the activists loses it power of impact.

Conflicts like this can directly equivilate to today’s society in the 21st century. Technology can be seen as the main contribution to the decline of communication in this age. People are too focused on Social Media and the Internet alone. We get caught up in the hype and development of new technology, not knowing that our social skills are slowly decreasing with each passing generation. Greenfield acknowledges this moral dilemma by stating ‘the development of in-personal social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills’ (par

The Cloak of Anonymity While scrolling through Instagram, I found that on many celebrities' profiles, there were many In his essay, "The Epidemic of Facelessness," Stephen Marche argues that the introduction of new communication methods, such as social media, have allowed for inhumane behavior. Because of facelessness, the people responsible for this online outrage usually are not held accountable for their actions. Marche creates an informative tone and uses allusions to educate the audience on the this serious topic of "online monstrosity" (1). March begins by talking about how member of the British Parliament, Stella Creasy, was threatened by a man who "tweeted and retweeted violent messages to [her]" (1).

Nathan Jurgenson’s sarcastic and affiliated remarks in his essay “The IRL Fetish,” published in an online magazine, The New Inquiry, help bring about the point that people often look at the world in black and white, online and offline, instead of on a gray scale. He is a sociologist who openly makes fun of others who comment on how the world should unplug completely from online structures; he names them hypocrites. His coined remark of “digital dualism” summarizes what these critics mean, of how the offline and online cannot coexist, but he concurs that people can live in the middle of these realms, for the offline cannot exist without the latter. This is an agreeable assessment on the use of technology, seeing as how the term was coined by

Web 2.0 is a popular word in the last decade. It includes blogs, photos and files sharing systems and networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These media have already changed our way of communications. And they have great impacts on other aspects of our lives. They also present great power in political campaigns.

Conversational media are web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios. Social media cannot be understood without first defining Web 2.0: a term that describes a new way in which end users use the World Wide Web, a place where content is continuously altered by all operators in a sharing and collaborative way (Kaplan and Haenlein). The authors also describe social media as “a group of Internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and allow the creation and exchange of user generated content.” Social media has progressed from essentially giving a stage to people to stay in contact with their family and companions. Presently it is a spot where consumers can take in more about their most loved companies and the products or services they offer.