Disscusion questions

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think MySpace profiles are “social portraits”? Is this a way for people to express who they really are or is this a way to express themselves how they think others want them to be? Is this a way to be accepted by others to be liked and seem normal? In the article Gender Differences in “Social Portraits” Reflected in MySpace Profiles it says “MySpace is a social networking…it offers each user a network of friends” but do users make these friends based on their true selves or based on other factors that have nothing to do with who they really are?

2. Do male identities revolve more around themselves than do females? Do females tend to include their significant others in order to describe their self identities? Do males see their significant other as just another component in their life that does not define their identity? What would be some reasons for this? What do you think defines yourself identity? If you don’t have a significant other do you think that if you had one they would become part of yourself identity? Why or why not?


3. What plays a bigger role in identity formations, relationships with family members, influence from peers, personal ambitions or your significant other? Where do all of the other factors stand, what kind of influences do they have?


4. Do MySpace pages help us study differences in male and female personal views? How realistic and reliable do you think a MySpace page is? Do you have a MySpace page? Why or why not? Are you honest in the thoughts and ideas that you include in it? Do you think others are honest with the information that they supply on their page? Why or why not?

5. According to Erving Goffman “users’ presentations of self by means of networking websites provide a rich source of conventionalized communicative symbols that reveal the social construction of realty…” What do you make of this statement? Do you think that a website like this that promotes social reality can be dangerous for young people to use? If so in what way? If not why? Is this cause that many people parents especially try to make their children avoid encounters with these types of websites such as MySpace?