Facebook as an implied author: an investigation into the characterization techniques employed by users of the social networking site, Facebook, through a comparative study with Jane Austen's Emma

[摘要] AbstractThis research investigates how Facebook guides its users to characterizethemselves. By using Jane Austen, and specifically her characterizationtechniques in Emma as a framework, Facebook is shown to use many of thesame techniques to guide its co-authors into certain characters. Comparing a21st century social networking site to a 19th century novel is unusual, but willshow how in many ways Facebook functions as an implied author. Thecomparison is also used to suggest that, contrary to previous research intoonline social networking which focussed on profiles being used as anexpresson of a users identity, Facebook profiles are a fictionalised version ofthe users and their lives. A case study, a young female studying at a privateuniversity in Johannesburg, South Africa, is used to illustrate this. She isshown to have created a fictionalised and idealized Facebook character forherself, mostly through the use of photographs. Using her photos asexamples, the importance of photographic representation as a Facebookcharacterization technique, including accompanying skills such posing forphotographs and editing photographs, is explored, as are the implications ofthis visually based representation, for example the difficulty in portrayingdepth of character or a believable inner life. The research employs Barthes’writings on photography to guide these explorations.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand