3.2 The Ethics of Identity and Community on personal Networking solutions

Social networking technologies start a type that is new of area by which individual identities and communities, both ‘real’ and digital, are built, presented, negotiated, handled and done. Appropriately, philosophers have actually analyzed SNS in both terms of these uses as Foucaultian “technologies regarding the self” (Bakardjieva and Gaden 2012) that facilitate the construction and gratification of individual identification, as well as in regards to the distinctive types of public norms and practices that are moral by SNS (Parsell 2008).

The ethical and metaphysical dilemmas created by the synthesis of digital identities and communities have actually attracted much philosophical interest

(see Introna 2011 and Rodogno 2012). Yet because noted by Patrick Stokes (2012), unlike previous kinds of network by which privacy additionally the construction of alter-egos were typical, SNS such as for instance Twitter increasingly anchor user identities and connections to real, embodied selves and offline ‘real-world’ networks. Yet SNS nevertheless enable users to control their self-presentation and their internet sites in means that offline social areas in the home, college or work usually try not to allow. The outcome, then, is an identification grounded into the person’s material truth and embodiment but more clearly “reflective and aspirational” (Stokes 2012, 365) in its presentation. This raises lots of ethical concerns: very first, from just exactly exactly what supply of normative guidance or value does the content that is aspirational of SNS user’s identity primarily derive? Do identification shows on SNS generally speaking represent exactly the same aspirations and mirror the same value pages as users’ offline identity performances? Do they show any differences that are notable the aspirational identities of non-SNS users? Would be the values and aspirations made explicit in SNS contexts pretty much heteronomous in beginning compared to those expressed in non-SNS contexts? Perform some more identity that is explicitly aspirational on SNS encourage users to do something to really embody those aspirations offline, or do they tend to damage the inspiration to do this?

An additional SNS occurrence of relevance this is actually the perseverance and public memorialization of Twitter pages after the user’s death; not just does this reinvigorate an amount of traditional ethical questions regarding our ethical duties to honor and don’t forget the dead, additionally renews questions regarding whether our ethical identities can continue after our embodied identities expire, and if the dead have actually ongoing passions within their social existence or reputation (Stokes 2012).

Mitch Parsell (2008) has raised issues in regards to the unique temptations of ‘narrowcast’ social network communities which can be “composed of the the same as your self, whatever your viewpoint, character or prejudices. ”

(41) He worries that on the list of affordances of online 2.0 tools is a propensity to tighten our identities up to a set that is closed of norms that perpetuate increased polarization, prejudice and insularity. He admits that the theory is that the many-to-many or one-to-many relations enabled by SNS provide for contact with a higher selection of viewpoints and attitudes, however in practice Parsell worries that they frequently have actually the reverse impact. Building from de Laat (2006), who implies that people in digital communities accept a style that is distinctly hyperactive of to compensate for diminished informational cues, Parsell claims that into the lack of the entire variety of individual identifiers obvious through face-to-face contact, SNS might also market the deindividuation of individual identification by exaggerating and reinforcing the value of single provided characteristics (liberal, conservative, homosexual, Catholic, etc. ) that lead us to see ourselves and our SNS associates more as representatives of an organization than as unique individuals (2008, 46).

Parsell additionally notes the presence of ourtime full site inherently pernicious identities and communities that could be enabled or improved by some internet 2.0 tools—he cites the exemplory instance of apotemnophiliacs, or would-be amputees, whom utilize such resources to produce mutually supportive companies in which their self-destructive desires get validation (2008, 48). Associated issues have now been raised about “Pro-ANA” web web internet web sites that offer mutually supportive systems for anorexics information that is seeking tools for them to perpetuate and police disordered identities (Giles 2006; Manders-Huits 2010). While Parsell thinks that particular Web 2.0 affordances enable corrupt and destructive types of individual freedom, he claims that other online 2.0 tools provide corresponding solutions; for instance, he defines Facebook’s reliance on long-lived profiles associated with real-world identities as an easy way of fighting deindividuation and advertising accountable share to the city (2008, 54).