The article is broken down into mainly 2 key points. These points are 'disclosing in face-to-face conversation' and 'virtual exposure and disclosure'. Both points are pretty self explanatory. Self disclosure in face-to-face conversation basically depends entirely on the person. For example, the first time I met my new neighbor she told me she was recently divorced, she might move back to Switzerland, she had a lesbian affair and was going on a lesbian retreat in Yosemite all in about 3 sentences. Entirely opposite of that, I know some people you almost have to beat over the head to get any information out of them. There are also occasions and situations where it is/isn't appropriate to disclose personal information. You wouldn't tell a new employer about your hang over the night before just like you wouldn't sit in silence if a close friend asked you how you were doing. It's all just a matter of balancing.
Virtual exposure and disclosure is similar, just via a virtual medium. A social networking site like Facebook calls for a lot of self disclosure with status prompts like "What's on your mind?" and information blocks prompting users to "Write something about yourself". While people often put information up without a second thought, disclosing information could send you in the wrong direction. Thankfully Facebook has an option to group friends together and allow specific friends to read or not read your postings, see or not see your pictures. For me this is pretty much a lifesaver. I have quite a bit of family on my Facebook so I make sure only certain things are available for them to see. I also have an option to allow or not allow them to read my status updates since I often write about Erik and I living together. Being a good, Catholic, church go-er doesn't really mix well with 'living in sin' so there are a good chunk of things I block them from. Haha.
I thought the author made good points on how a research who works in the field of communications should not block forms of communications just because she doesn’t what the people she researches to know her on a more personal level. However she describes how she doesn’t want the have pictures of her in her Che shirt because some of the Cuban people may take offence. If she is still in the process of gathering information from them, they might shut down because they don’t want to help her, since they don’t agree with her political views. I liked how you pointed out the benefit of being able to hide certain information from certain people. I don’t understand why the author did not do that. Instead she said she because not as active on Facebook. I wish we lived in a world where we could just be ourselves without the fear of being judged…. Unfortunately we don’t!
ReplyDeleteHey Veggie Delite! I think your post was great and the examples you gave really tied well into the concepts of the article that were presented by the author on face-to-face conversation and virtual exposure and disclosure. I liked your example of how you have met some people that tell you a lot of personal information within a few minutes and there are some people in our lives that you have to beat them over the head to get them to share any information at all. I also agree that it is important to have a balance of the amount of information we choose to disclose and expose. As for our virtual exposure and disclosure, I know that I am also thankful for the option of privacy settings for certain friends of ours, like you, I also have some family members on my account that I choose to disclose certain information from, but without disclosing all of my information. The article basically describes how we construct our identities in our face-to-face conversations and virtual conversations through the amount of information we choose to expose and disclose, which like you stated in your post, is all just a matter of balancing the information. Again, you did a nice job on your post and I liked the your examples!
ReplyDelete~Babs