Copenhagen.
The final speaker today at COST298 is Maria Bernschütz. She takes us back to the emergence of the digital individual - identity emerged with the emergence of ID photos in the mid-1800s, but it was determined by the photographer; today, users are able to edit their online identities, photoshop their images, and otherwise control their online presence. So, what practices are in use here, especially by youth? Maria examined this in the context of the Hungarian sites MyVIP and iWiW.
The 15-19 cohort she examined had uploaded comparatively more videos and pictures; there were more males in this group, too. 20-29-year-olds used SMS more, and had accumulated more friends. Younger users also frequently used terms such as 'acquaintance' to describe social networking, older users used terms such as 'community'. There were also significant differences between users on the two sites, though.
And that's it for me from the COST298 conference - I'll miss the half-day tomorrow as I need to get back to Germany. A slow start yesterday, but some very good papers today!
