Lister pages 172-184 and my response

I think that online communities can be seen as both empowering and disempowering, depending on how it is viewed. It is seen as empowering due to every user having their own passwords and details so that only they can log in. Certain people are also able to then become someone else through this community, depicting themselves in a way they choose. This notion allows people to feel empowered as they are fooling others or leading others to believe this. This gives people a great deal of empowerment. However, it has been revealed that sites like Facebook and Myspace keep personal details like phone numbers and adresses for years and people from all over the world have access to this. What is empowering about that? Also, the fact that with things like Facebook, people can put photos up or write things about you which can expose you, so again, this is disempowering.

This does mean however, that the net can provide people with a public sphere where they can interact. But with this public sphere, the problem is that people can hide behind a different identity, and who you thought you were interacting with in this sphere, may not be who you thought.

People are able to then produce this culture themselves as opposed to having it supplied to them. But the flaw with this is that the culture must exsist in some form before it can be produced, or people are already demanding it to some extent. This goes back to the idea that media culture is never really new, it always takes some previous form and evolves. So while ordinary Net users can become producers, their role is still mainly a consumer, and are responding to a need for culture.