CLASS CONCEPT AND HOMEPAGES
Text
Sites of struggle over meaning. We construct text to influence other peoples' meaning. Homepages are a representation of who we are literally and figuratively - representation is the text, created to tell people who I am and Influence hopefully positively how they view me. There is power struggle over meaning - when the information presentation is not taken as a representation of us and the meanings created by readers contradicts the message we are trying to present. Text created to tell people who I am and influence how they view me is contained in the page "about me".
Asynchronous Mass Communication
The representation of self on the web through text, graphic,audio.visual media available for "public" veiw. This idea is discussed further in Daniel Chandler's "Personal Home pages and the construction of identities on the web" available at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html#C This webpage is a representation of me through text, graphic and audio and visual media. My page includes various pictures of myself and family which give a guest to the page a pictorial representation of me. The music that plays on some of the pages also represents me in the context of hethe broad range of music i enjoy. Finally every text on this webpage represents my person in one way or another. For example the text on the "About me" page represents me in the context of what I enjoy.       The mass communication Portion of the term is evident in the publich of this website - The representation of myself is available to anyone to veiw. In the words of Steve Rubio - When you visit this page, you don't meet me, but you get a presentation of me, which is just as accurate as meeting me face to face.
Bricolage
Bricolage is defined  in the article "personal Home pages and the construction of identities on the web" as the process of  adopting and adapting borrowed material from the public domain of the Web in the process of fashioning personal and public identities.     In the creation of my web page I adapted Templates from tripod to provide a medium of self fashioning. The graphics on the "my country page" covers the definition of bricolage fully. The flag and Map are graphics borrowed from a public domain to fashion a part of my identity. The music palying on the first and last page are an adoption of  sounds to construct my identity. Chandler in his article also introduces the concept of  bricoleur .   Bricoleur is the individual "appropiating materials"  to make a "value statement" On my webpage - The template(Picture of big ben) , music and Grapics are all examples of Bricolage which moi - the Bricoleur appropriated to make a statement about ME!   For more on Bricolage read  "Personal Home pages and the construction of identities on the web" http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html
Blur about Public Vs. Private on the Web   According to Daniel Chandler, homepages are the ultimate answers to the question of who we are. We used homepages to construct our personal identities, we use it to represent our person. The web is the "publishing tool" and it is global , so that once we publich our home pages to the web, we make public what is private. information about ourselves. Most of the information on my web page is directed to members of my cyberculture class, friends, and family - The information on the site is just for those people , however because it is published on the web, all the information on the site becomes public information to anyone.