Space is my Place

"Which one is your Space"

We live in a world where the internet is known as our “private space”. Where we post, or write down our personal thoughts about life, but what people sometimes don’t understand is that the internet is not as private as we think it is. When telling a story in a vital space we not only make it ours but we make it for others as well (Kuttainen, 2017). The internet has many symbols that connect to our self’s and through these symbols it has a way of making it our place. On Tumblr for instance once you have an account it is your own “private space”. There is a variety of different genres that can be shown on your page which symbolises the type of person you are, for example if genre you consistently choose is sports and then all types of sports show up on your page it is because it sparks your interest. Tumblr has a variety of ways to get the message around. It has a never ending variety of genres which is also collaborated with different texts to spark different interests in unique ways. These types of genres and texts are important to these social networks to be able to get personal with the internet user. The genres on Tumblr actively helps us generate and shape our knowledge of the world, verbal or non- verbal communication can still affect Tumblr users in a sense of being able to communicate to others and help them transform into being able to identify themselves in the network (Kuttainen, 2017).

A specific space can give a whole different meaning to the person. Space greatly influence our personal thoughts of how they can make the space into their own place (Thuan, 1977). A simple phrase such as, “There’s no place like home” simplifies the meaning of the personal feeling of making that individual making him or herself comfortable in where they are. Tumblr can give you such a feeling of being at home with the course of including all your likes and dislikes in the one social network and being able to communicate to each other in your own way.
In relation to what modalities of power you can observe in this social network is that Tumblr shows a very powerful quality of having a substantial range of reaching out to online user’s feelings. The nature of the power of Tumblr and how it is wielded is that it influences young or old users of the specific network to be able to widen out their minds and explore more of what is out there that they don’t know. It will give them the knowledge of that specific space and is able to catch along with what is going on around them.


All these little things such as genre and text can shape not only our world but our identity. The social media that we use today shows a little sneak peek of how we act and what we do on a day to day basis. Ulrike Schultze talks about that when having a profile on social media helps you connect to those around you and the information that you gain from others will help your knowledge expand and it will shape not only your knowledge, but your identity because it helps change the way we think of and process different things (Schultze, 2015).

Reference:

Tuan, Y. (1977). BA1002: BA1002 Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, week 3: (Readings), Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 3: Power. (PowerPoint slides). Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Schultze, U. (Ted Talks). (2015, April, 23). How social media shapes identity. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSpyZor-Byk

Visad, M.(2012). Social media optimisation. https://www.visnetwork.com.au/social-media-optimisation-smo/