Shifting Images:

Cyberspace, Personal Home Pages and Interpersonal Mediated-Communication

 

My presentation offers a glimpse into my thesis project, which through a media ecological lens, addresses CMC - Personal Home Pages on the World Wide Web.  Specifically, I look at hypertextual identity representation and interpersonal communication on the Web through theoretical and qualitative explorations.  In the process I present a comparative discussion of hypertext and text-based identity and communication.  I also examine the interplay between television and interpersonal communication to explore the role of personal home pages in facilitating interpersonal communication and fostering relationships on the World Wide Web. It is this portion of my research that I am presenting today, in the abridged format.

Personal web pages are virtual documents that exist within the public space of the WWW.  These sites have the potential to engage a virtual audience and provide individuals with a permanent presence on the Web.  People create personal sites through the utilization of words, graphics, sometimes sound and links to other sites on the Web. 

There are many reasons why people have personal home pages.  Some use them to promote businesses, share hobbies and links to websites they find interesting.  Then others choose to construct home pages that contain varying aspects of their lives, such as family photographs, pictures of themselves, brief autobiographies, work issues, sexual desires, life struggles and much more. 

With this diversity of information and such high levels of self-disclosure, personal home page have the tendency to overlap social spheres that were at one time quite distinct.  Just as Meyrowitz posits about television, the personal home page “ . . . rearrange[s] the social stages on which we play our roles” (No Sense of Place 4).  As a result of this reorganization, there are no longer any clear distinctions in what Goffman terms backstage (private) and onstage (public) information.   

     For instance, Susan Anderson shares a photograph of herself on her personal home page and writes:

”JoJean, Amanda, and myself now share a greater risk for breast cancer. This fact is one of the hardest things I have had to face since my diagnosis. I find it hard dealing with the thought that something I have may also cause problems for these people I love.”

Clearly, sharing an experience of breast cancer and how it effects someone’s family is information that would be deemed appropriate for a different type of communicative environment – perhaps would be share face-to-face with a doctor, a good friend or in a group therapy session.  Moreover, it could certainly be defined as private. Another personal site includes daily conversations between loved ones, political views, in addition to discussions of rape and drug abuse. Instead of being designated to the specific social situation, this information is accessible through the personal home page, in what appears to be one location.   Whether this information is fictitious or not, it presents a blurring of social settings and a purposeful display of backstage information. The backstage information, as it is planned and structured to depict online identity, merges with an onstage persona – the personal home page in the public space of the Web. 

This merging of information, pertaining to distinct social situations, also reflects a new social situation.  As explained by Meyrowitz, television has made “ . . . significant inroads into . . . situations once defined by physical location” (No Sense of Place 116). Accordingly, individuals who create home pages do not need to be physically present to engage others interpersonal communication.  A person in China can interact with my home page and come to know me through my political views, academic goals, discussions of family members and links to other sites. My home identity functions as an ‘online other.’  Thus, creators make an appearance and interpersonally communicate through the information they supply, while simultaneously in another location.  And they are available 24 hours day 7 days a week.

Blurred social situations, high levels of self-disclosure and communication that transcends space and time offers distinct similarities with the level and type of information that occurs on television and with television performers.  Through television we can peer into bedrooms, attend a board meeting or spiritual revival and get mad a Captain Janeway for her overwhelming self-righteousness, while maintaining that never-ending love affair with Captain Kirk. 

We are afforded the ability to get up close and personal with personalities.  Camera angles, close ups and performers speaking directly into the camera simulate the experience of one on one communication.  Because of this, Meyrowitz posits that television has the capacity, which is also observed in home pages, to bring people together in the guise of face-to-face interaction.   Communication scholars have determined this illusion fosters of para-social relationships.

Horton and Wohl offer that a para-social relationship, “is “ . . . nondialectical, controlled by the performer, and not susceptible of mutual development” (33).  Hence, people, both performer and spectator, interact without any sense of responsibility or obligation.  Spectators can choose any relationship that has already been established within the medium.  And have the ability of ending the relationship any time they wish (33).  There is, however, no ability to construct new interactions or change the tone of the relationship (Horton and Wohl 33). 

Of course, a personal home page is not a television personality in the same respect; however, Strate acknowledges that “ . . . cyberspace . . . may also be understood as a stage or performance space in which . . . we may take the role of the performer . . .” (405).  Laurel also views cyberspace as theater – a virtual theater (Wired Magazine).  Thus, a home page, as a virtual identity, could in fact be viewed as performing.  The creator puts time and energy into providing just the right depiction of self.  Therefore, Strate posits that “ . . . the ideal of two-way exchange may be curbed in favor of the relatively one-sided relationship between actor and audience,” which, of course, signals a para-social relationship (405). 

In thinking about the distinct attributes of the Web, there are a few factors to consider in designating the relationship between the creator of a home page and the visitor as para-social.  These include interactivity, the amount of work involved in coming to know the home page creator, and intrapersonal performances. 

      Intrapersonal communication is viewed as a process of communicating with yourself for self-analysis.  Mead points out, however, that to work on ourselves we must become an object to ourselves, which means stepping out to see how we want to represent ourselves (142).  The home page provides a means for that ‘stepping out.’  In the process, people are depicting, on a virtual world stage, their intrapersonal communication.  As a result, this can be considered an intrapersonal performance in which creators may essentially be utilizing the virtual stage for self-reflection.  This is especially plausible, if they do not provide any means to facilitate explicit interpersonal interaction, such as a guestbook or email address.  In this respect, any relationship initiated with the creator by visitors to the site is nondialectical and not susceptible of mutual development.

       What is interesting, however, is that sometimes the creator offers a guestbook and not an e-mail address.  The guestbook provides an opportunity for interaction.  Based on my analysis of home pages, some visitors sign the guestbook and leave the address to the own home page for the creator.  Because of this, one can assume that the creator visits the visitor’s home page.  This could in fact, be equated to someone going over a new friend’s home, where as parties talk and come to know each other.  Since interaction on the WWW is usually asynchronous this dialectical exchange does not occur; however, in visiting the page there is the initiation of some type of information exchange, coming to know another’s identity as revealed through the home page. 

      This type of behind-the-scenes interaction could signal a silent discursive relationship – a relationship that is defined by visits to home pages and signatures on guestbooks.   It is nondialectical in the sense of spontaneous conversation, but parties are communicating.  This is slightly different than the para-social relationships defined by Horton and Wohl. 

      Sometimes creators do provide an e-mail address and desire to receive mail from their visitors.  In this instance, correspondence exchanges between the creator and the visitor.  This signals that the relationship, in contrast with that of television, can be mutually fostered” (Horton and Wohl 33).  But as communication is mediated through a personal home page, there is no guarantee that creators will respond to emails or to comments in their guestbooks.  Moreover, visitors will probably never meet or come to know each other face-to-face. 

Fernback contends that “[e]ven though you may get to know someone rather well over the Net, you have never met the person . . . [s]o with that, comes a sense of removal, or lack of complete and serious commitment (107).  Consequently, it can be claimed that any relationship that evolves through email communication is still para-social relationship.  There is no obligation or responsibility, as either party can withdraw from the relationship at anytime. 

Fernback also states that the Internet “ . . . inherently prevents the interpersonal identification and judgment processes by which we normally evaluate each other in face-to-face interaction” (107).  This, again, signals a difference between coming to know a home page creator and a television personality. 

In contrast to television, the home page does not simulate face-to-face interaction in the same way as television.  We see and know more of television personalities because of the visual information television provides – we see and hear the performer because the camera (angles) captures their personality in full, even if it is a constructed persona purely designed to capture an audience.  There is inherently more information provided through television for the spectator to judge the personality and determine if (s)he are worthy of our affection, one aspect contributing to the development of a para-social relationship. 

The home page, however, does not always offer a picture of the creator.  If it does it is a representation without the moving imagery replete with camera angles that allow us the lifelike simulation of interpersonal communication offered through television. Consequently, the para-social relationship initiated with a creator of a home page is based on a disembodied image, devoid of the physical representation by which we assess each other face-to-face. 

     In conclusion, it must be noted that all para-social relationships are inherently structured upon fantasy.  As home pages are representations, there is a suspension of disbelief required to initiate a relationship with the creator.  With the ability of home pages to facilitate interpersonal communication across geographic and temporal boundaries, in addition to sharing personal and public information that can offer us well-rounded depictions, we come to know these home identities.  And in a fantastical moment that can last a lifetime, we believe home page creators could be or are our friends.  Laurel sums it up rather poignantly as she offers “[t]he dawning of real online interactivity . . . is not the keyboard, but instead our imagination . . .  ” (Wired Magazine).