FACEBOOK

The page I analyzed on facebook is of a Caucasian female who comes from Chicago. She is nineteen years of age and is in her sophomore year in college. She states that she is interested in men. When I looked at her photos, I picked some when she was in Florida for spring break with her friends. The pictures show her and friends having fun on the beach. All her friends on the pictures are Caucasian females showing that she usually is found around Caucasian friends hence restricting her friends to one particular race. This is one way in which race is constructed on facebook because it allows you to invite friends to your page thereby narrowing the people that can view your profile to only those you consider friends.
Other pictures on the same spring break trip shows her and friends in a hotel they used to live in. by looking at the nature of the hotel pictures, one can tell that this person and her friends are of an upper middle class social economic status. I reached at this conclusion by also analyzing the types of clothes that she wore with her friends. This is another way in which facebook encourages people of the same social economic status to be found together and share their pages. I say so because the pictures of friends you put on your facebook kind of tell what type of a person you are and so most people mind to put only pictures of people that are their true friends and those that give a correct representation of different aspects of their lives. Therefore, facebook constructs social economic status by restricting people’s invitations to mostly those that are at the same social economic status as that of the person inviting others.
Finally, my analysis of this page made me see how gender and sexuality is constructed on facebook. One of the things asked for on your profile is gender but it also asks for your interests. Even though this person indicates that she is interested in men, you can see from her pictures and friends that she is more oriented around her female friends. Again female that indicate to have interest in men are generally thought to eventually end up in a heterosexual relationships, while those that indicate that they are interested in people of their gender may be thought to eventually end up in either gay or lesbian relationships. I.e. a female interested in females may be thought to be lesbian while a male interested in males may be thought to be gay.
It was really interesting to look at people’s pages and not only look at them for the sake of doing so. But looking at the pages in an analytical way made me see things that I would ordinarily not see. This was a wonderful exercise.