Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping

Virtual Technologies have enabled us all to become publishers and broadcasters. The world of information has become saturated with a multitude of opinions, and opportunities to express them. Track 2 " Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping " of the 9 th Conference on Human Choice and Computers (HCC9) explores some of the issues that have arisen in this new information society, how we are shaped by it, and how we shape it, through i) two papers addressing issues of identity on social networks (Pearson and Burmeister), ii) two papers about the glut of information now available on the web and strategies for dealing with it (Lenarcic et al. and Westwood), and finally iii) a paper on the tricky problem of virtual property theft (Patterson et al.). In the first pair of papers, Erika Pearson's " Making a Good (Virtual) First Impression: The use of visuals in online impression management and creating identity performances " argues that visual elements are becoming an increasingly important component of identity performance on social networking sites. Working from a narrative approach to identity, this paper explores how images on SNS are used both as part of an impression management strategy to present identity, and as signs that others on the site can read and interpret as they develop an understanding of the identity of others. Drawing on interview data conducted with users of the Livejournal SNS, this paper argues for a growing visual literacy among users of social networking sites. Oliver Burmeister, meanwhile, in " Virtuality improves the well being of seniors through increasing social interaction " argues that virtual social interaction amongst seniors is strengthened through face-to-face contact. While confirming previous studies that have shown the strengthening of virtual friendships result from physical meetings, this study also showed that virtual face-to-face meetings have a similar benefit. As more seniors around the world are encouraged to stay at home longer, rather than enter institutional care, virtual sociability is being shown to provide the necessary social inclusion benefits for particularly mental well being, that has been identified in psychological and sociological studies of seniors. The democratisation of the web brought about by the social networking phenomenon and the associated web 2.0 tools enabling easy web publishing for the masses not only brought about the blogosphere, but additionally the phenomenon of 'dead' blogs, and the primacy of search – and its greatest purveyor, Google – in the …