What could it all tell us?
The first part of this chapter shows how Facebook became a centerpiece for discussion and
critique in the context of this conflict. In the last part of this chapter, I will discuss what this
means to my informants, what it can tell us about Facebook’s position in their life? What can
it tell us about them as persons?
After his work in Trinidad, Miller wrote that in the Trinidadian context Facebook was “the
book of truth,” referring to statements such as “on Facebook, you will find who you are” He
continues to describe how one cannot see the actual person through face to face conversation;
the truth is what you see on Facebook. Lambert asks: “Does Facebook allow us to produce
ourselves through first objectifying our self?” (Lambert, 2013, p. 40). if we then follow
Miller´s perspective, which also emphasizes the role of objectification, the answer to
Lambert´s question is yes. One can produce one’s self through watching the objectified
reflection of self, which is, in this case, the profile that is made on Facebook. The performed
sociality is then shaped as a fluid form through the frames set by the self and the social frames
set by society and by Facebook. As already discussed, Facebook´s context and the social
frames produced are shaped by the three levels mentioned earlier. It is all a complex, fluid,
infrastructure that is forever changing.
A similar way of interpreting Facebook post can be seen in the Yangon context as well.
Recall how Mimi and Pemala describe how the real feelings are on Facebook and that what
you meet in “real life” can be fake. Following what Miller described, we could then conclude
that Facebook helps construct what is perceived as “true persons.” However, according to
polymedia theory, Facebook can never exist in isolation; it is defined through its existing or
non-existing relations to other media (Daniel Miller, 2011). Facebook would, therefore, never
actually be able to show the totality of a person’s life, with all the variations and different
contexts. Miller suggests that the ‘public’ that is represented by Facebook is better understood
as a combination of private spheres (Daniel Miller, 2011, pp. 174-175). The suggestion would
then be that the ‘public’ that Facebook represents is better understood as the combination of
the different spheres. This can be understood as the frames that are produced through the three
levels. To be a popper, as discussed in chapter 5, can be looked upon as an example of one of
these social frames or norms. To avoid being a popper, one must perform according to the
social norms in a certain way – to show more of life than just the positive.
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