Portfolio #5

I am choosing to write about Ella Bands. She is one of my favorite rappers’ girlfriend. I chose to write about Ella because she is very active on Instagram and Snapchat. Not only is she entertaining to watch, she also promotes her own products and her boyfriend’s music daily.

Ella communicates her identity via social media by always being active and showing her followers that she is online. I would say Ella is active on social media about 75% of the day. She participates in self-branding by always promoting her products. Right now, I think the only thing she is selling is her eye lash company. Not only does she take pictures of her promotes and posts them, she also wears her own lashes to show her followers that she too wears them. This helps her company because it shows her fans that her product is not just a way for her to make money but a way for her and her fans to feel good about themselves.

In the reading, Online Identity it says, “identity expression through media differs both across and within platforms based on several factors” (Marwick, 357). People can have different obligations when using social media. Ella’s identity plays many roles on social media platforms. Not only does Ella promote for herself, she also promotes her boyfriend’s music, uses social media for entertainment and gives her fans a glimpse of her personal life by showing her daughter and vacations.

In another one of our readings, Interaction and Identity it says, “In general, then, communication on the internet was seen as establishing a distinction between an embodied self and disembodied — potentially multiple — digital selves or identities” (Lindgren, 89). The internet, especially social media platforms allows people to have different identities. Information is my keyword, and this works perfectly with what we are talking about. Without information people wouldn’t be able to make/have different identities. People gather information from social media platforms by comparing themselves to others which allows them to be someone else via social media. You can find all types of information via social media. Before social media, people didn’t have the capability to hide their real-selves from society.