LESSON 5: WHO AM I IN

THE CYBERWOLRD?
ACTIVITY: “THREE FACTS, ONE
FICTION”

Construct four sentences that should

start with “I am____________”. Three of
the four sentence should be true about
your self. You can talk about your
characteristics, strength, weaknesses,
accomplishments, personalities, and
behavior. One statement should be a lie.
Introduction:

These day, more people are becoming

active in using Internet for research,
pleasure, business, communication, and
other purposes. Indeed, the internet is of
great help to everyone. People act
differently when they are online and offline.
Thus we have our real identity and online
identity.
Abstraction:

It has been only 25 years since Tim Berners-

Lee made the World Wide Web(www) available
to public, but in that time, the internet has
already become an integral part of everyday life
for most of the world’s population. And
Philippines is among one of the countries with
the most active internet users.
 Online identity is actually the sum of
all our characteristics and our
interactions, while partial identity is a
subset of characteristics that make up our
identity. Meanwhile, “persona” is the
partial identity we create that represents
ourselves in a specific situation.
Selective Self-Presentation and
Impression Management:

Self-Presentation is the “process of

controlling how one is perceive by other
people” and is the key concept to
selectively inception and development
(Goffman 1959; Leary 1995).
 Belk (2013) explained that sharing
ourselves is no longer new and has been
practice as soon as human beings were
formed. Regarding with the diaries that were
once private or shared only with close
friends are now posted as blogs which can
viewed by anyone.
 Then the lack of privacy in many aspects of
social media make the users more vulnerable,
leading to compulsively checking newsfeeds and
continually adding tweets and posting in order to
appear active and interesting. And one of the
reasons for so much sharing and self-disclosure
online is so-called “disinhibition effect”(Ridley
2012; Suler 2004).
 In addition to sharing the good things
we experience, many of us also share
the bad, embarrassing, and sinful things
we experience. We also react and
comment on negative experiences of
others
Gender and Sexuality Online:

According to Marwick (2013), while the terms

“sex”, “gender”, and “gender” are often thought of
as synonymous, they are actually quite distinct. The
difference between the common understandings of
these terms and the researchers think about them
yield the key insights about the social functioning of
gender.
 Sex is the biological state that corresponds to
what we call a “man” or a “woman”. This might
seem to be a simple distinction, but the biology of
sex actually very complicated. While the Gender,
then is the social understanding of how sex should
be experience and how sex manifest in behavior,
personality, preferences, capabilities, and so forth.
 The Gender online is a system of classification
that values male-gendered things more than
female related things. This system plays out on
the bodies of men and women, and in
constructing hierarchies of everything from
colors to academic departments to electronic
gadgets and websites.
 Sexuality is an individual expression and
understanding of desire. While like gender,
this is often viewed as binary (homosexual or
heterosexual), in really, sexually is often
experienced as fluid.
Performing Gender Online:

Theorist Judith Butler (1990) conceptualize

gender as performance. She explained that
popular understandings of gender sexuality
came to be through discourse and social
processes.
Setting Boundaries To Your Online Self: Smart
Sharing:

The following guideline will help you share

information online in a smart way that will
protect yourself and not harm others. Before
posting or sharing anything online, consider the
following:
• Is this post/story necessary?
• Is there a real benefit to this post? Is it funny,
warm-hearted, teachable- or am I just making
noise online without purpose?
• Have we(as a family or parent/child) resolved
this issue? An issue that is still being worked
out at home, or one that is either vulnerable or
highly emotional, should not be made public.
• Is it appropriate? Does it stay within the
boundaries of our family values?
• Will this seem as funny in 5, 10, or 15
years? Or is this post better suited for
sharing with a small group of family
members? Or maybe not at all?
Rules To Follow:

Here are additional guidelines for proper

sharing of information and ethical use of the
internet according to New (2014):

• Stick to safer sites.

• Guard your passwords.
• Limit what you share.
• Remember that anything you put online or post
on a site is there forever, even if you try to delete
it.
• Do not be mean or embarrass other people
online.
• Always tell if you see strange or bad behavior
online.
• Be choosy about your online friends.
• Be patient.
Thank you for listening