The End

Dear followers this is the last message I am going to post on this blog.  Thank you for reading my posts! This was an interesting and instructive experience with writing for public purposes on the internet for me.

 I really experienced how difficult it can be to think of a suitable subjects over and over again to talk about. They had to be current, informative about communication science and interesting to read for the target audience.  However, I think I was successful in collecting some relevant but also entertaining information from the field of communication.

Good bye! Maybe until my next blogging experience...

The future of managing your ‘multiple identities’ in online communication

One of the general motives for people to use social network sites is self presentation. However, the need of people to create multiple identities causes few practical problems when it concerns online communication.  None of the existing social network sites provides the need for creating multiple identities for different social groups. Some sites like linkedin only intent to serve one social group and others, like Facebook, do not make any difference at all.  What information you give about yourself depends on the target group you have. You do not want to share embarrassing holiday pictures with your professional network and inside information about your professional career can be uninteresting for your friends.  Since a few months rumors about a whole new social network site developed by Google is going to solve this problem go round.   

According to several scientists like Goffman (1959) and Jung (1953), people have  multiple identities and more possible selves to show. Which side of our self we show, how we show it and how many we show depends on the situation we are in.  This assumption, says that identity is not a fixed thing. We can influence it ourselves. With modern technologies in communication  this becomes even more easy than it was when a high level of social presence still was required for self presentation.  

There are a few aspects that influence the need of multiple identities. First of all, there always is a tension in self presentation. We want to create an image as positive as possible. However, this image has to fit the picture that other people have from us and this can differ in different situations and with different social groups. Furthermore, choices in presenting our selves are always based on the desire of positive confirmation from our communication partners. The growth of peoples experiences through mass media, traveling and the internet causes more flexibility and options for identifying with different social groups.

The current situation in online communication with social networks requires switching to different online platforms for different social groups and being very selective in what information you make public. The website marketing facts posted about the new social network application Google would be developing at the moment. The article about this new site that is going to be called “Google Circles” says that, this new application will work with ‘the principle of circles of people’. The user can decide what information to share with its different social groups.

In my opinion the selective self presentation allows us to manage our online identity in the most optimal way because it makes it easier to maintain your real life social structure in the online environment.  Keeping the social structure will make communication through social networks more like in real life and therefore more social because the same level of intimacy can be maintained.

Research: Interpretation of Visual Information

Many research has been done after the interpretation of visual information. However, no conclusions had ever been drawn about the influence of graphic design on this intepretation. Annemarie Quispel, researcher at Tilburg University, is one of the first scientists that chose this focus for her PHD research. The next webvideo shows a report of an interview we conducted with her. 

Article endorsing my view about social media...

At the beginning of March I posted a blog titled ‘Making friends with Social Media’. I disagreed with the Dutch queen about the decrease of social interaction since the introduction of social media. In this blog post, I want to point you at an article that appeared on marketing website Dutch Cowboys, endorsing my view! The article tells about research with introvert people in digital environments. The results showed that, these people feel more free and show more of them selves online.  

Neuromarketing: the future of marketing research?

We, especially women, all have been in a situation like the following; you went to a city centre, not needing anything. When returning you discover you bought bags full of stuff you accidentally came across..

Marketers tried to discover for a long time why we buy and how this can be influenced. It already has been known that consumers only think 2 seconds before making a buying decisions when they are shopping. Nothing stays a coincidence anymore. Lately, I found out that  traditional buyers decision models can be thrown away soon. A whole new level of marketing research is rising! Neuromarketing is a new phenomenon marketers are experimenting with. At the moment, scientist are capable of visualizing with CT-Scans what happens in the brain when we are confronted with advertising or brands.    

In the next video Martin Lindstrom, who calls himself ‘brand futurist’,  talks about neuromarketing.  

The brain is an area we still have to learn a lot about, neuromarketing has not been applied yet because of that. It cannot be explained what typical aspects of an advertisement causes the buying decisions and how this can be influenced. However, so claims Lindstrom in an interview on his website, it can be made visible in CT-scans whether or not somebody is profiling himself with your brand or not.

The best way to test usability of a website: Paper prototyping

Before designing A digital user interface, a website for example, It is difficult to estimate how to make a usable and proper structure, what words or what info-graphics to use.

This video is going to show you how the real professionals do it! Just with paper and pencil!

First, you have to draw every webpage with all dropdown menu`s on separate papers. After this, you need a person from your target group to cooperate. Ask this person to navigate to certain information on your website by pointing on the paper prototype were to click on. Ask the person to think loud and video tape the whole session. When you are done you know exactly what has to be done to improve your design!

Making friends through social media

It is often talked about; social media changed a lot in social interaction between people. Some say society became less social because of the decrease of face-to-face interaction. Even the Dutch queen mentioned her concerns in her chrismas speech to the Dutch people in 2009. My question is, is it really impossible to make friends through social media?

Today I discovered, there are hundreds of youtube videos about how to reach the limit of 5000 friends on Facebook. Different strategies are explained and demonstrated. My conclusion; quantity is no problem. However, I would like to know; what about the quality? How dedicated are friends on Facebook. The next video shows an interview with Andrew Garfield who plays a part in the movie Social Network. He talks about Facebook as a platform for real connection and social interaction.

Also researchers think true relationships can be build through digital media. In 1992 Joseph Walther developed the theory of Social Information Processing. According to that theory communication through digital media is not necessarily impersonal. People are motivated to build social relationships and create their own ways to put social context to a conversation, even without physical presence. A simple example is the smileys we use to illustrate our state of mind in a digital conversation.

I thinks digital communication brings opportunities for building relationships. According to a very old theory form Berger & Calabrese (1975) getting to know each other is based on reducing uncertainty about each other. We are desperate to prevent miscommunication and, information about each other can take the uncertainty away. Social networks give the opportunity to collect information in a very passive way and this can speed up bonding between people. The next Youtube movie shows that Twitter actually is an application that brings social interaction to a whole different level.

Final conclusion; making real friends on social networks is possible and happening. According to a blogpost published on molblog. 32% of the dutch youth between 9 and 16 years old has online friendships and 66,9% of them considers a few of their online friends as real friends.