Mildred's Online Reflection

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/02/twitter.steve.jobs/index.html

The online source I found is from the website of CNN, it is about Twitter suspends fake Steve Jobs‘s account. I think this article totally consistent with Self.Net unit. From this article, we can clearly to see that there is a problem existed in online communities like twitter, facebook, MySpace etc.: users can create their identity whatever they want, a person can create multiple identities in virtual world, they can totally hide their actual name and gender: a man can create a female identity; a high-school student can claim to be an expert in Science-that means users can be a new person completely in the Internet, so, some users even pretend themselves as celebrities to cheat netizens like the case in this article: a news reporter pretended himself as Apple's CEO-Steve Jobs. It is known that the primary activity in online communities is information exchange and in that exchange the identity of a message’s sender is one of the most important things to know, thus, identity plays a key role in online communities. Therefore, this case not only reflected that online communities provide a huge freedom for netizens to be, almost to be anyone, it also enlarged the space of identity between actual and virtual world, self-identity is easier to change in virtual communities, we can see that how technological decisions shape the nature of identity.

Moreover, from this article, we can also see that the power relations between the online communities and the users. As the ‘real’ Steve Jobs is proved that he does not own a twitter account, Twitter finally shut the fake Steve Jobs’s account down to protect the users’ benefit. According to the Twitter parody policy, it states that the site protects its users' free-speech right to create parody accounts, but the site also ask the users to make profile information clear that the creator of the account is not actually the same person or entity as the subject of the parody/commentary to avoid impersonation. We can obvious to know that it seems users have a great freedom in online communities, users still have to, and supposed to follow the regulations, guidelines or rules which are set by the communities. If users break the rules, the online communities have the right to punish the users like suspend their accounts permanently. However, interestingly, the sites will never refused users’ application, netizens still can create their new identities again and again.