On Feb. 24, Bridges to the Future hosted keynote Speaker Alice Marwick, director of the McGannon Center for Communication Research and Assistant Professor in Fordham University’s Department of Communication and Media Studies to speak to DU about social media and its place in today’s culture.
According to its website, Bridges to the Future is DU’s premier program for generating local discussions about pressing global issues and how they might affect the future. Each year, it chooses a theme to hold a series of lectures on, and, this year, Bridges to the Future is exploring the cultural shift of the digital revolution on multiple facets of our daily lives.
Marwick’s goal was to discuss today’s technology-focused generation, and the effects of sharing our lives via social media.
“Many of you worry about your kids,” said Marwick, addressing the adults in the audience. “We think of Facebook and the selfie culture as a reflection of a generation who is narcissistic, clueless, shallow and apathetic, but that is not really what is going on here.”
Marwick elaborated on how social media is used by students as a means of managing their own information and feeling empowered by their choices of what to show and what not to show.
“The selfie is an object to think with,” said Marwick. “Posting pictures of yourself online lets everyone know where you are and what you are doing. It represents how we wish to see ourselves, and how we want everyone to see us.”
According to Marwick, we all have two selves: the back-stage self and the front-stage self. The back-stage is who we truly are, and the front-stage self represents the version we project out into to the world.
“We present different aspects of ourselves to different people, and we form a mental image from one another, said Marwick.
Marwick explained that we have more means to do this than ever before. It used to be that there was a fine line between what professional photographers could create and what could be done by the average person. The line, however, has now become somewhat blurred. With apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and Photo Editor, she says, it has become a lot easier and cheaper to create beautiful pictures.
“Status is present in every human interaction,” said Marwick. “With the ability kids now have to create professional-looking self-portraits of themselves, social media and the posting of the selfie have become ways of keeping up attention and social status. Competing for attention becomes an obligation, and so we partake in ‘self-branding’—we convert ourselves into something to sell to someone else.”
Marwick further explained that the root of the so-named “selfie culture” runs deeper than just vanity.
“Creative practice is deeply embedded in consumer culture,” said Marwick.
With the rapid increase in tools and apps, Marwick believes that the obsession with the selfie and with social media has less to do with narcissism and more to do with creative expression and self-branding.
Marwick then introduced Lynn Schofield Clark, a Professor and Chair of the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies at DU, to share the stage for a Q and A.
The main theme of Schofield’s questions revolved around the concern that young people today are focusing heavily on how they want their peers to see them, and consequently sharing too much about themselves via social media.
To this concern, Marwick emphasized the importance of maintaining privacy.
“What does the information that you’re putting out there reveal about you? Is it having positive or negative effects? It may be unfair, but the reality is that potential employers will judge you for what you post on social media, so make sure that there is nothing out there that is detrimental to your image,” she said.
“Put some good stuff out there,” said Marwick. “Make sure that people will find something interesting and upright when they Google you, because they will Google you.”
