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When I was reading Ch. 5 of Baron, I couldn't help but think of the away message as a disappearing act that a magician would do. In a way, they kind of are because they illicit a reaction to each performance. For example, Baron talks about the different archetypes of away messages and the meaning behind the content of these messages. More specifically, she alludes to everything from random, to lurking/filtering, to intentional fabrications of away messages. In Baron's language, this kind of "onstage" and "backstage" space allows the audience [people who read the away message] to be mystified as the magician [the author of the message] uses extraneous information and misdirection to fool us into thinking he or she is on the other side of that little box.

However, it is not all about smoke and mirrors here. I think there is a certain level of value and entertainment in away messages. First, itinerary-based messages serve to let everyone know a person's schedule for the day without having to make any direct communication with this person. While it may be a little unnecessary to do this, some people function better with a schedule and a plan. There are other things that make people function more efficiently at their computers, such as humor. We want to be entertained when reading away messages. It is so bizarre that there is this unspoken expectation to be funny in our messages. There are also times where people are actually sitting at their computers and want others to chat with them, despite being involved in other tasks as indicated by their aways. This idea goes back the notion of "multitasking" we talked about previously. We want to be interrupted because, nine times out of ten, our work is less interesting than what so-and-so's Facebook status reads.

This brings me to the ever-so-popular medium of Facebook. Is this the ultimate indicator of a person's online identity. I believe it is because people have the ability to edit, restrict, and spin other people's communicative acts on their Facebook profiles. One of the most interesting parts of the Facebook study in Baron was the issue of privacy and how by 2006 some 56 percent of Facebook users set limits on profile views from searches. The issue of gender and social utility preference was interesting to me because I was surprised that females tended to pay more attention to Facebook statuses and males looked at AIM away messages more.

In conclusion, we are living in an online community where we limit as well as challenge people to get to know the real person sitting behind the computer.

P.s.- Here is something I found amusing. Just a little something about Facebook. Enjoy!

An away message is the easiest way to hide myself from most of the people in my little world. I put one up when I do not feel like dealing with anyone, which ironically enough is most of the day. I do not want people to believe that I am antisocial, I just spend most of my day with people and I need a little bit of alone time now and then, but then again doesn't everybody. On page 76, Baron conducted a study that shows us that most people put up elaborate, socially active away messages that misrepresent our actions, however I don't agree with these findings.

Students at Allegheny College spend all 4 years on campus trying to come up with an idea for their comp and I am no different. I really hadn't come up with any real concrete ideas, I just knew that I wanted an idea that pertained to me. I wanted a topic that deals with behaviors that I exhibit. And then I reHowever, for this blog, I decided to deal with humor and the necessity of emoticons to display it.

When I was reading Baron, I was just wondering why we feel the need to post so much about ourselves? Why do we need to communicate that information online as opposed to doing it in person? And why do we need to be so socially connected all of the time? Lastly, what did we all do before the internet, cell phones, and CMC/EMC? I mean, it seems like so much of our time now is spent attending to EMC and being in contact. Is it taking away from doing other things?

As for the Tong article, I'm curious to see how you felt about a comment on page 543 that stated, "The optimal number of friends [Facebook friends] is related to the rater's number of friends." It also noted that "judgments of social attractiveness are due to similarity of the rater to the target. In other words, do you agree that you judge people as being more socially attractive if they are more like you in terms of your number of facebook friends?

I've been thinking about what I want to do for my comp for a while now, and frankly, I'm having trouble deciding what I want to do. I've run countless ideas through my brain trying to see them all from a million different angles, and all I end up doing is sitting there scratching my head. However, I do tend to find myself looking up information on schizophrenia and the brain areas and functions associated with it. For example, the frontal and prefrontal cortices are the most common. These control our everyday organizational and management functions. Specifically of interest to me is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which "executes high functions such as working memory, differentiation of conflicting thoughts, determination of right and wrong concepts, correct social behavior and personality expression" (Martins-de-Souza, 2008). Since these behaviors/functions play a major role in our everyday lives, I'm curious to see how people with schizophrenia fare in our fast-paced and judgemental world and what the mechanisms are that may affect their lives in relation to ours.

Here's a link to an article that piqued my interest.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8T-4V6YT59-2&_user=637333&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000034061&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=637333&md5=b4ca0abf5c109442fbcdafb3c70d1333

For my Exploring the field entry, I decided to look at a study about consuming products when music is involved in an advertisement. I chose this article because I am interested in looking at how we connect or disconnect with advertisers through media. This article opens up with a brief literature and theoretical view of the research that has been done on the topic. This research has revealed that the likelihood that a person will buy into an advertisement is dependent on the logistics the background song present, that is, the song's rhythm, tempo, musical key, and so on. In addition, consumers typically are more attracted to ads that simply advance the product with the help of music. This study focused on the musical feelings as well as the moods of the subjects and whether or not they are congruent with the purchase occasions of advertisement slides. One of the most interesting points of the article was the method section. I thought that the manipulation of the music and cards were valid; however, I do question the fact that the researchers took a convenience sample from marketing students of southwestern colleges rather than a truly random sample. Nevertheless, researchers found that when there was a consistency between a happy-occasioned slide and a happy song, the consumer was more likely to purchase the product. This motivation was attributed to the enhanced mood of the person, which was predicted as a hypothesis earlier in the article.

The real question here is: Are we just being led around like little kids by our Big Brother?

Article Link

In Baron's closing chapter, she makes a number of references back to some of the issues concerning multi-tasking and controlling the volume, but I am very interested in how we begin to define ourselves through communication. For example, Baron talks about some of the consequences for always being connected and states that while we can be totally engrossed in technology, we can be completely alone at the same time (215).

An example from my own life that I am reminded of goes back to my days in the food service industry, more specifically Panera Bread. As a worker, I became very familiar with the "regulars" who would come in and get coffee and pastries in the morning. In addition, there were also people who would come in for hours and use their computers or cell phones for hours on end. Perhaps it was the free wi-fi connection that Panera had; however, with many people on at the same time it would take hours to load a single page. My point here is that their work could have easily been done somewhere else, but I do think that they chose to come to Panera to be in a social atmosphere.

I find it very ironic that we want to be included in societal space, but will do almost anything to get out of interacting with someone in that space. In class, we briefly discussed this notion, but I think that Baron places it in a great context when she talks about "stronger" vs. "weaker" ties. Stronger ties are ones that are forged with close friends and weaker ones pertain to acquaintances. The argument here is that with less and less face-to-face communication, we will build weaker ties rather than stronger ones (222).

This is also apparent in our ideologies of the American family. Our "helicopter" parents feel the need to be involved in just about everything that we are doing today. This raises the question: Are the generations before us attempting to live vicariously through us and our technology to gain access modern culture? In some ways I believe they are; however, there is also a symbiotic relationship going on here. On the one hand, parents feel the need to stay connected with their children, but the children also contact their parents very frequently. Research has shown that college undergrads were communicating with their parents more than ten times a week (224).

Is the overload of technology a passing whim as Baron suggests? Or is it here to stay because it has become apart of our societal structure? Only time will tell.

With technology advancing almost everyday, we have been provided with a multitude of ways to stay connected to our friends and family. The unlimited connection we possess may be viewed as a bit excessive by some people who believe Americans as a whole may be too connected to the outside world. In my opinion, we need to focus on the positives that have come from this technology and realize how convienent our lives have become because of it.

While reading Baron's book and discussing topics related to electronically mediated communication, specifically the internet, I've been wondering what exactly makes this all so real to us. I mean, we are constantly connected, although to whom? I'm always curious about why people enjoy being in a network of thousands or millions of people and how that affects them. How do you know who you're really talking to? Maybe it's exactly who you think it is, but maybe not. And very likely, even if it is someone you know, they may portray themselves very differently on the internet or other means. I guess what I'm asking is, how real should this be to all of us, with real consequences? It's already happening. Do you think we should want to do anything about it?