Social Networking Self Identity

BOOK REVIEW

The book, A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites is an excellent collection of research by leading scholars on social networking, its implications and network analysis. The main topics of the book are the social media and social networking sites like face book, twitter and My space etc. According to Wikipedia, “social media are the computer- mediated tools that allows people to create, share or exchange information, ideas and pictures/ videos in virtual communities and networks.” The focus of the book lies on the self-identity and what happened when self identity is exposed through social networks in a social media. The core theme of this collection structured around identity, community and culture.

Chapter two investigates the value of examining networked publics. The author explores the SNS(social networking sites) based groups and consider them as communities. She describe different ways in which people communicates using SNSs for example through profile sharing, walls, comments, one to one communications etc. and how people huddle together for socializing with friends and to share information, but at the same time there are people who use these SNSs negatively for example just to flirt, or for a political purpose. The author examines various aspects of SNSs. The author used a term networked publics and tell us what are the implications and significances of affordances and dynamics of networked publics while interacting online social networks.

Chapter three by Robert LaRose, junghyunkim and Weipeng is about addictiveness of social networking. This chapter investigates weather the social networking is really addictive, driven and problematic or it is just a media habit. The author present different study models followed by a research analysis using ANOVA and regression. The result of this analysis shows that the SNS services were no more problematic, compulsive, addictive or even habitual than other habitual internet activities, despite the fact that these are popular and wide

In this section author Malcol, R. Parks describe social network sites as virtual communities. Social network sites are marked in relation to qualities to facilitate the formation of virtual communities (Parks). In the next chapter author argues the benefits of SNS for generating social capital (Ellison et al). the author explainshow SNS are contributed towards generation of social capital. Number of studies conducted were reviewed in this chapter to investigate the use of SNS. Two primary questions were explored in this research , first what are the implications of social capital and second how SNS integrated into communication practice. The outcome of the research suggests that SNS is a tool which facilitates the generation of social capital.

Next chapter explore the use of social network sites. Again in this chapter a detailed research is conducted and the outcome suggests that level of association is not randomly distributed among the groups. Research also suggests that gender is also an important factor when considering intensity of SNS usage. It means that women are more intense users of SNS then men. Another factor in using SNS intensively is the engagement factor.

Next chapter again explores the use of SNS in the work place. The