Introduction

There has been much discussion of media and identity over the past few decades. For the most part media has been seen as appropriating culture and the individual, manipulating them and rendering an image of reality that is formulated and homogenized. Based on hegemonic ideologies with rigid and sensationalized ideas of gender, race, and class, media was far removed from the masses. Mediated images offered one, stilted, interpretation of culture and identity. However, within our technologized era new media are expanding most of what was thought of media and its relation to identity. New media shifts the balance of power to the hands of the humble lay person, transferring the construction of mediated images reflecting identity and culture.

This transformation is reminiscent of the personal revolution Elizabeth Eisentien (1985) proports of the printing press, as it was influential in releasing the clergy’s power over interpreting reality as written in the Bible in the 15th century. The new technology revolutionized society and offered the masses power to manipulate and interpret the world free from interference and control. In some ways new media, specifically computer technology and its multimediated formats, provides the individual with an unprecedented ability to exercise control over mediatized images that depict who they are and their reality. In addition, computer technology presents the masses with a medium through which individuals can create an abstract and distinctly personal subjectivity in the form of an image. Through multimedia formats, specifically cyberspace, people can share their innermost thoughts and opinions with a virtual public in the form of an image. The novelty of this technological revolution perpetuated by new media is that these personally constructed images transcend traditional media. They are lavish public displays - diverse, pluralistic, highly experimentative and interactive. This freedom of self expression, identity construction and representation has transformed society and the individual, causing a revolution of identity. Identity is now a spectacle of self.

This essay will reflect one aspect of this revolution, stemming from an investigation of cyberspace, identity, and culture. The immediate focus is mediated personal identity, as it is represented through the image of the ‘very personal’ homepage within cyberspace, where individuals share information about their private lives. Personal homepages are only one example of a technologically created image of identity, but they are common within cyberspace. This particular platform of identity representation transcends commonly held notions of identity. The latter have been exploded. This dynamic upheaval is quite clear when one looks at the general perception of identity.

One could say that usually identity is expressed in images - through visual tangible media. The “image” of someone is reflected through choice of clothing, hairstyle, cosmetics and other signs of personal and public associations. Sometimes one person may present differing images, personalities, identities, however, the individual must feel comfortable enough to reveal these various sides. You would have to get to know a person more intimately to observe these personas. Fundamentally, however, identity is always contained within the parameters of physical space and time, which controls what occurs: the content, timing, and duration of identity representation. In addition, identity is controlled by the individual. He or she has power over who sees various sides of their persona. Lastly, when a person is crafting an identity he or she chooses their social, gender, political, and racial identifications. Conversely, the image of the cyberspatial personal homepage has a spectacular quality, with quite distinct with differing characteristics that transcend physical or visual reality.

Due to cyberspace being a technologically created realm the personal homepage is a simulation. It is a product of technology and individuals construct their ‘imagized’ selves through technological formulae, which appear on the homepage as text and graphics. The homepage is open to all who have the technology and the interest. Because of its technological underpinnings the personal homepage represents an identity within a different concept of time and space. The context, timing, and duration of on-line identity representation takes on a different meaning and usage. First, because the media environment of cyberspace allows the placement of as much data as a person chooses to program onto the virtual pages of the homepage and facilitates the merging of public and private images or personalities. The individual encountering this image can witness many sides of an individual for as long as they decide, pointing and clicking their way through the identity image. Secondly, however, as the interlocutor engages this platform there is a shifting of control, whereas he or she is given the power to construct an image of identity based on what aspects of the individual represented interests them. Of course the creator supplies the information, albeit once it enters cyberspace he or she has diminished control over who sees it, how a person interacts with it, and the time an individual spends at the homepage.

Lastly and most importantly, theses identity images are an inherent aspect of a advertising culture, as it is represented through media, and dictates the style and format of an individual’s self-expression. In the physical world the language of identity construction is that of the culture and/or the society we live in. However, when building an image of self, through the personal homepage, one adopts the display and language of advertising, based upon a form commercial visual communication. The homepage, thus becomes an advertisement of self open to a virtual public. This is reflected in how the image of the personal homepage is manufactured and embellished with symbols that represent the creator and transmit meaning to an audience. Also, just as advertisements come to life as a medium, an image, within various media. A person’s identity is also changed into a medium within the media environment of cyberspace. Therefore, as a result of new media formats, identity transcending reality, the shifting of ownership over the identity image, and the self as advertisement, the personal homepage represents a ‘spectacle of self,’ a condition in which identity becomes a product of technology, simulating and supplanting reality - akin to a fiction or simulacra.

The Spectacle of Today

‘Spectacle’ finds its root in Guy Debord’s (1967) work, The Society of the Spectacle. Debord presents the 'spectacle' as transforming that which is "directly lived” into a representation or image (p. 12). This idea has profound implications for new media. Cyberspace is a virtual society in which everything is represented is in the form of an image, extending right down to the personal level. But in stark contrast to Debord, who with his Marxist underpinnings, perceived the ‘spectacle’ as the outcome of one particular economic and social manipulation, controlling media for their own purposes, the spectacle is now an individualistic choice. In Debord’s view, individuals were powerless, brainlessly allowing themselves to be duped by the overarching authority. But now, through the individualistic metaphors depicting identity on the personal homepage, it is evident that media is being utilized as a means towards personal ends. People are assuming control of new media to create and maintain a technologized image of their lives.

Techonologized Identity

Through an image visible on a computer within a technologically created virtual environment, people are engaging and understanding themselves, as well as interacting with others. Transcending reality, identity construction, representation, and interaction becomes “mediatized . . . a product of media technology” (Auslander, 1999, p. 5). Auslander, in analyzing the live performance of rock culture, argues that live performance is a simulation through the process of ‘mediatization,’ whereby individuals gain an awareness of self as “. . . various media within a mediatic system" (p. 5). Personal homepages are a medium created by computer technology to exist within a technologically produced environment of cyberspace. Cyberspace is made of the computer and the “the structure of its chips and circuits,” all of which rely upon programs and electronic flow for its operation (Strate, 1999, p. 390). Accordingly, a binary coding system makes it possible for a cyberspatial world to materialize and simulate a reality within our computers. Thus, the personal homepage is an encoded platform which materializes because it is programmed to do so. From a McLuhanesque (1964) standpoint identity representation becomes a product of a “mechanization,” in which identity is being transferred to, constructed with and by the technology (pp. 56-57). Therefore, lived identity is not just being transported into this milieu, it is being translated and recombined.

‘Hyper’real Power

However this “mediatization” of the identity image takes on “hyperreal” characteristics within the virtual world and is the key to our ability to manipulate new media, as well as transferring control of the identity image into the hands of those encountering the personal homepage. To extend Baudrillard’s concept of the “hyperreal,” in which media reflects signs separated from their referents in the physical world, “hyperreal” also signifies a new mode of personal being and interacting within cyberspace (Poster, 1999, p. 45). The image has undergone an expansion of the type representation Baudrillard referred to, changing into a ‘hyper’ image that immerses and involves people (Morse, 1998, p. 21) . This is possible because of hypertext. As it is utilized to technologically construct and depict identity on a personal homepage, hypertext promotes a personal manipulation and shifts control of the represented identity. Hypertext is virtual digital text - words and/or graphics. It is nonlinear, intertexual, and composed of heterogeneous parts joined together through links, which when clicked on take the individual to a different location on the personal homepage. What this means for the creator of the homepage is he or she can construct links or hyperlinks between related information that assists in piecing together different aspects of themselves (Turkle, 1995, p. 17). In this way the links amplify the identity image, allowing a Protean flux of identity, with differing personalities or personas to be created and perceived moment to moment. This is a fundamental difference between off-line identity and on-line identity as represented through the personal homepage.

Further contrasting the image of physical identity, the homepage offers the individual a platform to create a condensed identity image of pure information, situated in what appears to be one location. This image can be interacted with as an entity on its own terms, separated from the physical person. Independent of material reality and physical time and space, which imposes restraints upon off-line identity, the creator has the power, fostered through ‘hyper’mediatization, to use new media as personal tool in creating and publicizing their on-line identity image. As with my own personal homepage, I have complete power, within the dictates of the technology, over the construction of content and the message I am distributing within the virtual public of cyberspace. How that information is interpreted is another matter. Even though the ‘hyper’ mediatization within cyberspace promotes such freedom in constructing an identity image, it also limits the creator’s control over how their identity is being interacted with, as it is no longer attached to the body.

Whose Identity Image is it Anyway?

As the personal homepage is a visual image of identity within cyberspace, its purpose is an interactive on. In a way the identity image undergoes a shift of ownership. Yes, the creator produced the on-line identity and designed the links that signal the appropriate paths to engage the viewers, helping them to uncover the represented identity. However, the makers of the personal web pages have no control over how a visitor will manipulate the links, in what sequence, nor does the creator have knowledge of who interacts with their image. Once it does become public, the individual's image comes into contact with viewers outside of the person’s control. The visitor peers into the homepage, clicking only on the links that interest them, in any order they choose. Thus, they may only perceive sound bytes of information revealing various aspects of the represented identity or concentrate their attention on one segment and anytime they may visit only the segment that is of interest to them, leaving the rest of the identity image in oblivion. It must be noted that the personal homepage is only real when someone accesses it. If there is no visitor then multiple elements of identity are inactive, unseen. Whatever aspects of the homepage remain unopened, those pages are also nonexistent to the viewer. Therefore the visitor gives life to the homepage, for the time he or she is engaged with it and when they leave the personal homepage, it is put to sleep, figuratively speaking. Additionally, the technology allows the visitor to gain possession of the identity image by downloading portions of or the entire homepage on to their harddrive, by printing it out, and by basically doing anything to the personal homepage they wish, from tacking pages onto their bulletin board, cutting out various portions of the homepage and building a collage, to burning the hardcopies. They can even create a link to the personal homepage on their own homepage.

This is quite different to identity in the flesh. The off-line identity fundamentally cannot be possessed to this degree by anyone other than the person it reflects. Also, in the physical world a person has a reasonable amount of control over whom they come in contact with, how that interaction takes place, and has some degree of control over another’s perceptions. The ‘hyperreal’ characteristics of cyberspace fosters an environment that absolutely alters perceptions of how identity is represented and interacted with, and in addition provides those interacting with the on-line identity with an ability to personally manipulate the image according to their own desires. So, ultimately, not only does the new media transcend reality, it also transcends the traditional way in which we have interacted with media.

Old Media, New Media, and the Image

Old media presents an image that is contained within an environment that does not allow the viewer a way in. As with television, no matter how many times we video tape The Jamie Fox Show, edit the images by juxtaposing scenes in a different order or even cutting out commercials, we cannot alter the image -- tthat is the cultural symbols and/or identities represented. We can change the channel, but the next show or commercial has imagery that is also fixed. New media, as revealed through the personal homepage, provides an image that we can construct with our own symbolism, reflecting our own identities to an audience.

But in one respect, old and new media are the same, in that both are constructed through the language of advertising. Cross (1996) offers that “ . . . advertising transfigures the [world] into . . . an image” (p. 4) As well, Postman (1985) posits that advertising has become “an important paradigm for the structure of every type of public discourse,” (p. 126). Through the images of The Jamie Fox Show the show communicates a commercial way of being, as the image can only be constructed utilizing the signs and symbols of advertising culture (Boorstin, 1961, p. 183) An advertisement, print or commercial, also utilizes the image and commercial visual communication for the same end. Advertisements are packaging an ‘imagized’ product, technologically produced, distributed, and mediatized, to sell the image to an audience. In effect the image of the personal homepage utilizes the same commercial visual communication, as it adopts what is intrinsic to advertising - the image. As a result, advertising language becomes the vocabulary of self, as we create our identity image for a virtual audience.

Self as Advertisement

As in advertising, identity is communicated on the personal homepage through “style and appearance” (Cross, 1996, p. 5). As the on-line identity is manifested within cyberspace, disengaged from the context of subjects, time, and place, it must be reinvented through the input of personality and imagination. For Boorstin (1961) the personal homepage would be seen as a product that replaces ideals and traditions, as it has replaced the truth of physical identity (p. 240). This is inevitable, according to Boorstin, within this technological world that strives to turn to commercial advantage all that is directly lived (p. 179). Therefore, image of the personal homepage becomes void of any referentials, projecting its own illusions (Cross, 1996 pp. 3). As a result becomes a “pseudo-ideal” (Boorstin, 1961, p. 185). The perception of the homepage comes from the ethos of the situation it is in - cyberspace, a virtual world driven by commerce. Accordingly, just as cyberspace is an illusion, so is the personal homepage a commodified simulacrum, a tailored representation of identity, independent of the complexities that come with encountering and creating the off-line image of identity.

As a billboard of the self, words and pictures on the personal homepage become a material object, a product of the creator and media to sell the self. Basically, the creator of the homepage is transformed into an ‘ad man’ whose job is to “attract attention, arouse interest, stimulate desire . . . and get action” (Vestergaard & Schroder, 1885, p. 49). With banners the spread across the top of the page to attract attention the personal homepage is self sensationalism. Individuals use graphics and text to sell their identity image, their views, culture, and idiosyncrasies to a larger audience. The success of an advertisement is dependent on how many people buy the product and that is an outcome of how many people saw the ad, accepted the concept, and purchased the product. Numbers become crucial in advertising campaigns and numbers are also important to the personal homepage. The homepage has an optional counter that keeps track of the numbers of visitors to the page. Visitors to the homepage take the counter into consideration when coming to a personal homepage. If the counter has low numbers, then the site may be seen as unpopular. The identity image may be perceived as substandard, not good enough for others to visit, so the visitor may just leave without engaging the site. Success of the personal homepage is usually tied to the counter. If there are no visitors to the homepage, then like any worthy endeavor in advertisement the creators wonder what can be done to make the homepage more appealing? Some ads have appeal and other’s fail miserably. However, the ad is pulled and revamped. A constructed image, the personal homepage can be changed according to the creator’s desires. This change is imminent on some level, especially if the homepage has low ratings. Consequently, as with most advertisements, the symbols on the homepage have more credence than the reality of the individual behind it.

Based upon this public approval and due to its placement within the simulated ‘public’ of cyberspace, the personal homepage is a visible personality. The homepage offers a public profile of an individual’s personality. Again, Boorstin (1961) offers that “public and image go hand in hand” (p. 87). Ultimately, the identity image is an act of ‘vanity publishing.’ As a society we are completely enamored with self and now demand to be to seen. We have been endowed with a narcissistic tendency perpetuated by advertisements and television. The personal homepage is structured aesthetically to capture and hold attention. Off - line identity is being turned into something immediate and intimate as the imagery on television. Public and private identities are melded and our secrets are placed in a virtual public, just as celebrities produce tell all books, advertising their identity for the fans. In the Repeal of Reticence (1996), Rochelle Gurstein offers that " . . . the [virtual] public sphere [is] . . . a stage for sensational displays of matters that people formerly would have considered unfit for public appearance. . .” (p. 3). However, these sensationalistic displays on the personal homepage only have value when they become public, akin to an ad or a tabloid headline which has no appeal or audience unless in a magazine and/or on the newsstand. The represented identity has no influence or presence unless it is seen by others within the virtual public cyberspace.

Reflected through the personal homepage is a ‘hyper’mediatized psuedo-ideal, offering a forum for self-disclosure and publicity within a worldwide virtual public. Transcending the organic, identity becomes a form of media itself. As a bare bone identity, the personal spectacle is constructed through virtually everything we identify with. In real life there is only so much we can reveal of ourselves. The spectacle has no problem displaying our well roundedness and the ups and downs that contribute to it. Is this an ideal situation? Well, the spectacle of self ideally allows for freedom not available within the real world. Ultimately, the image of self on the personal homepage becomes more prized than authentic identity reminiscent of how the images on television an in advertisements become the barometers by which we measure real life.

Conclusion

Based on these conclusions one would have to wonder what are the are the larger social ramifications, especially with the millions of personal homepages in cyberspace today. Fernback in Virtual Culture (1997) posits that “ . . . cyberspace is a repository for collective cultural memory, it is narratives created by its inhabitants reproduced by technology (p. 37). The personal homepage adds to these narratives. However, the spectacle of self signifies a time where participation in public life is now conducted through media and dependent on media consumption.

In the past, old media, i.e., advertisements and television in particular, are put forth as a system of representational imagery that appropriates culture for its content. These images were seen as mediating communication and providing barometers for people to compare their own life, growth and success in society with. Eventually, however, media has taken control of everyday life and social relationships. The world is media saturated, in which all life is under electronic control - a “hypermarket,” in which there is a “ . . . retotalization in a homogeneous space-time of . . . the body and social life . . . a whole operational simulation of social life. . .." (Baudrilliard, 1981, pp. 76-77)

But now there has been a reverse appropriation. Representation of self through the personal homepages reveals an individualistic appropriation of the image. We have been so bombarded by these images that we now desire to be one ourselves. Individuals may look toward media for validation. However, in our contemporary time people can maintain a virtual life within a space that is a product of media technology. Cyberspace is the epitome of a Baudrillardian hypermarket, which has commerce at its very center. It is a simulacra, the total simulation of social life. Here the image is deified and metaphorically renders business, conversation, and, of course people with an image of their identity ready to be observed and interacted with.

The image appears magical, passive, while the individual appears to be in control. However, in order to be a part of this virtual amusement park you must play by it rules, which dictate the consumption of media and technology. Even Auslander (1999) perceives the higher sociocultural significance of the mediatized image when he acknowledges that it is affected by a “socioeconomic-technological domination which determines its aesthetic dimension” (p. 40). The domination stems from the necessity of having to utilize the language of advertising, a crucial component of commerce and having to use the technological apparatus crucial for the construction the spectacle of self as rendered through homepage.

Therefore, reflecting identity, the personal homepage represents a unique type of conformity, in which as producers of the personal spectacle we are presented with “choice already made" (Debord, 1967 p. 39). The tools necessary for creating and maintaining the spectacle have already been determined and the language necessary for the spectacle to transmit meaning has also been established. Boorstin (1961) reflects this idea most adequately as he states, a “conformist is one who tries to fit into the images found vividly all around him” (p. 191-192). As a result, it can be argued that those creating the spectacle of self are acting in accordance with the rules and regulations set for by technology and advertising culture. Also, because we have been immersed in a world of advertising images, depicting an ‘ideal’ of life, by which we measure our success, why not try to transfer our life into the format of the image we so admire? Instead of measuring our world against another person’s idea of how an individual should and can exist within society, we can now measure our real life success against the images we personally construct.

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