Relating Manovich and Social Networks (Models of Authorship in New Media )

Manovich discusses how “collaboration over the network to create new media is the most visible example of a more general phenomenon.” He says “new media culture brings with it… new models of authorship which all involve different forms of collaboration.”

With respect to the digital social network, I believe that interactivity as collaboration in this case is indeed an example of how new technologies afford users a new form of authorship that in term results in new forms of interpersonal connections. I believe that in the network, miscommunication is avoided by limiting the identity that the users are able to create online. Networking sites limit the extent and forms of identity by designing their site interface in specific ways. In this way, sites themselves are assured that they will attract users and be able to maintain them by providing a medium “real” enough, yet not TOO real, in which users have some sort of liberty to make certain connections. In this way, the limitation is a factor in the creation of the version of the individual, or identity presented. This ensures that the success (in terms of maximized interactivity, and therefore, connections forged through the network) of the users’ online identity will be maximized. Of course, this “success” will be still be limited in terms of what kind of audience the users are attempting to attract. Nonetheless, as Manovich says, the comprehensions of the narrative, in this case the user, will be improved.

I have to disagree to an extent though that the user has no idea about the “work”, or identity, that the author (the creator of the profile/identity) has created. It is evident that depending on what sort of information the author discloses will in fact have a direct effect and message, positive or negative, in the user/reader. As author, the user is perfectly aware of this situation and thus uses the ability to create an identity to his/her advantage. I believe that both user and author in the case of the online social network are perfectly aware of each other intentions. And so, while they may be strangers, they certainly are collaborators of sorts.

Interactive feedback in the social network would then be extended to mean not only the response an author receives from other users or from the type of users that approach or contact the author, it could also come to mean the editing of a profile to achieve a heightened success for the authors creations of identity.