Identity and representation

Through cyberspace we create represent ourselves with characteristics that we wouldn't normally do in real life. As it is a world where you do not have to show your true identity or personal information, people are likely to feel a lot more at ease if they distance themselves personally and choose an identity which portrays how they would like to be seen by the audience.

Depending on the audience, different users may want to publicise different information as the response they are likely to recieve due to the nature of the site will differ from one another. Sites that involove a love for music such as 'Myspace' might have the user describing their love for music and a list of artist they may enjoy but might not put that on a site such as 'Facebook' where they might find photos shared to be more relevent to the type of response they believe they would get.

"Goffman suggest that there are many ‘sign vehicles’ that are widely recognized as expressions given off unintentionally by people, by which others can evaluate how successful or sincere the self-presentation is. Some sign vehicles, like sex, age and race, are extremely difficult to conceal or manipulate in face-to-face interaction. Although the rest – such as clothing, posture, speech pattern, facial expression, bodily gesture and intonation – are relatively more manipulatable” (Charles Cheung, Presentations of Self on Personal Homepage in web.studies page 47). Profile pictures usually posted on 'Facebook' represent the type of person the user want others to identify them, clothing, facial expression, bodily gesture will present a person in a way that they set out to, even if this given identity is false. An individuals interests in reality and cyberspace may merge and come under both as they might want to be viewed to have some of the characteristics that they might have in the real world, such as name and interests. 

Multi-User Domains (MUD) are online role-playing games, where the virtual world is the real world. Both worlds become completely merged and users represent their avatars (World of Warcraft) how they wish. Real money can be used to change the characteristics of the avatar which is what makes both reality and the virtual world become one. 

People then can change from reality to cyberspace in the lightest or most drastic way depending on the viewing audience. The reason for some people changing could be due to the reason they want to stand out among other users or to fit in, which also depends on their life in the real world and how much they want to be represented in a different or a similar light. 

 Multi-user domains