Website Trends 2015: Social Media and the Self
April 7th, 2015
Social media influences opinions and interactions forming a digital portrait of your character, yet only revealing a fragment of your personality via the internet where privacy is less protected than desired. Over time, computer systems store your personal data via automatic learning algorithms that record your search patterns and interests accessed on your personal digital devices, which carries the risk of consumers data being compromised. Despite such flaws, social networking creates brand awareness if implemented in a strategically shrewd fashion offering users incentives or knowledge by sharing data. Additionally a business combined with a personal angle, engages followers and communicates your ethos more clearly.
What is presented of the individual, is not the full picture and is often the idealised version of a myriad of emotions and partial personality facets. Nonetheless, it contributes to an online growing community and designers and developers are aware of catering for such needs, to include this aspect in their work. Although data surveillance accompanies the visualised self that may not be coherent with the real person, the virtual space usage for the 3D profile construction of their identity can affect the mindset of others. This elicits emotional responses from users to connect more deeply on a socio-psychological level within business, unless it is a selfie in which case the principles of aesthetics take precedence.
Picture: Vasinee Jordan
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