I was assigned the article, New Relationships, New Selves? by Nancy Baym. The key term that stood out from the reading for me was disembodied identities. Disembodied identities involve separating selves from bodies that exist in actions and/or words. This opens up new possibilities to explore and represent ourselves differently to others.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2008-01-17-social-network-nobarriers_N.htm

I have selected an article, Social, Work Lives Collide on Networking Websites by Janet Kornblum from USA Today as my media to demonstrate how disembodied identities work in the context of social circles and how that changes in an online space. Our social circles are essentially many Venn diagrams that barely touch each other. We all have social circles. We have one for family members, one for friends, one for co-workers, and so forth. Within those circles, we do have some that collide with each other. Your friends can be broken down to middle school friends, college friends, and childhood friends. Some of your college friends might also be your childhood friends. Nevertheless, you are more likely to hang out with your social circles separately and avoid mixing them together. Why are we uncomfortable with the idea of colliding our social circles?

In the article, Wadooah Wali updates her status on Facebook to “married” with a picture of her partner who happens to be a woman as well. Everyone is congratulating her until she sees a professional contact who comments on the post with “Nice pictures.” Clearly, we see a division between two social circles here— Wali’s personal contacts and professional contacts. Wali admits that she barely knows the contact and has never made her sexual orientation known to her professional acquaintances. Her decision to keep her personal life separate from her professional life is a part of her disembodied identities. However, she finds it awkward that her social circles has collided and is uncomfortable about revealing her disembodied identities to her professional contact. It has become much more difficult for Wali to control how she presents herself to others in an online space.

With social media being more public than you realize, you might accidentally reveal your disembodied identities to people who were not intended to know that part of you. A Facebook “friend” can either be your parents, best friend, or an occasional acquaintance. You also have limited control over what your friend post on your timeline or feed. It is up to you to decide whether that is a concern or not. Wali is rather optimistic and figures that her professional contact is making an effort to understand another part of her. However, for many people, they might prefer keeping their disembodied identities disembodied.