How Gender Consciousness Works on the Construction and Identification of On-line Dating Participants'' Self-image--an Analysis from "Alltogether" at PTT Bullitin Board System
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Chen, Wei-Fen
Abstract
Abstractnline dating forum participants usually intend to meet their internet friends face-to-face. Therefore, the way we discuss online dating users’ interaction should be distinguished from other internet activities. Online dating users have to consider life experiences when they try to construct their new online images. Although online activities may remain anonymous, users cannot just perform any way they want, because authenticity is an inevitable question in online dating relationships. owever, users may still utilize some skills and strategies to represent themselves while attract positive responses. Informants of this study are people who consider themselves aware of gender consciousness. The focus of the study is not about the strategies informants use in online dating, but how they view and identify the image constructed by their choices. This thesis is mainly framed around Theory der Praxis of Bourdieu, and I’d like to discuss the dialectic relationship between structure and agency. There are three issues I try to discuss: First, how do informants construct their on-line dating image? Second, how do informants explain the meaning of their practice of gender consciousness in the field? Third, how do informants change their habitus to improve the consistency of self-identification? The research findings indicate that informants design the content of self-disclosure with highly intentional selections. The expectation and condition set for the people they want to meet online are included in the introduction of themselves. Informants optimize the usage of language, which is their capitals in on-line activities and allows them the power to challenge traditional gender ideologies. According to the different levels of self-identification, informants’ identification is like a concentric circle--the core of the circle is the bottom line to insist their agency. Informants negotiate with the structure and hope to raise the level of agency. If gender consciousness discourses are not the mainstream in the society, then it is quite possible that people with gender consciousness may feel threatened to borderization. Informants have contradictory and uncomfortable feelings toward their position, and the resistance and accommodation to the structure coexist in informants’ behavior. The process of resistance and accommodation requires the change of habitus, which could be explained more thoroughly by Foucault’s four modes of subjectivity in self-technology.The findings also provide us subtle insight to the subjectivity of informants, who are usually ignored in traditional gender consciousness research. The thesis is trying to further our understanding to the limitation of theories and the direction for further studies.
Subjects
gender consciousness
on-line dating
identification
Theory der Praxis
Self-technology
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