In the age of technology, many new forms of life narratives have emerged such as Facebook. The online article on CNN.com by Fiegerman states that the number of users Facebook is around two billion users (Fiegerman, CNN.com). This signifies its global impact. These users represent all the masses of different types of personas people carry online. Again, giving this platform a very big diversity because it is used by people belonging to different ethnicities, religions, and countries. The history of Facebook is that it was developed by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard University, and at first this website was only accessible to Harvard students but later it spread to other US universities and then to the whole world. (Phillips, The Gaurdian)
There are many ways in which life narrating is done on Facebook. The most common way being by posting pictures and attaching a concise caption along with it to give the more “a picture is worth a thousand words” delivery. Often users also make a collage of photos from any occasion or a significant event in their life. An example being parents posting a complied picture of their child’s first day at school. Another example of this can be when people post pictures from their vacations or travels. These types of posts can also be considered a travel diary of that person’s journey as we get to experience their travels with them picture by picture. When a person opens an account on Facebook they must input all their information, and by giving access to Facebook, many things are suggested to users based on their provided information. Personal information such as place of employment, schooling, and country where you are from is also asked which also narrates a person’s basics, painting us a picture of them. Facebook also has a feature of “Feeling/Activity”, where a user can write about what they are doing and how they feel about it and cater their audience which usually includes the people from the friend list being friends and family
On Facebook, different kinds of narratives are done as there are a lot of pages that produce different kinds of content. Pages such as Humans of New York produce content that is non-fictional and it is an autobiography of your everyday citizens (Humans of New York, Facebook) However, some pages that are administered by motivational speakers such as Gary Vaynerchuk post their content on facebook in the form of Vlogs (Gary Vaynerchuk, Facebook). Vlogging is a medium where content is produced by filming themselves and addressing the audience as they would in a normal blog but just on video (Gunelius, Lifewire). Another type of life narrative that is produced on Facebook are “secret” or “member-only” groups. These groups have a local audience and people share their experience on these groups, for example “Halaat Updates”, is a local group where people share their good and bad experiences in Karachi, Pakistan and post their opinions on local matters such as traffic or road constructions, etc. (Haalat Updates, Facebook). Whereas there are a lot of Facebook pages which post content related to food such as Tastemade and they feature food from all over the world and, so it represents the country by their food (Tastemade, Facebook). Whatever shows up on one’s newsfeed is also based on the fact of what they usually watch or read on Facebook, and so similar things show up pertaining to their history. Time to time, when a disaster happens, or ground-breaking innovation happens, Facebook also has a trending section where one is up to date about what is going on and the user may share the post and give their opinion on the matter as well, giving us insight about the user and their views.
To conclude, in this modern era, where people are busy, and it is difficult to find time to carry out conventional methods of life narrations such as writing a diary or an autobiography. This is where social media platforms such as Facebook are used by people to narrate their day to day life as it is easily accessible through a mobile phone or laptop.
Works Cited:
Fiegerman, Seth. “Facebook Is Closing in on 2 Billion Users.” CNN Tech, Cable News Network, 1 Feb. 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/technology/facebook-earnings/index.html
“Gary Vaynerchuk” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/gary/
Gunelius, Susan. “What Is a Vlog?” Lifewire, 25 Sept. 2017, www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-vlog-3476285
“Haalat Updates.” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/haalatpk/
“Humans of New York.” Facebook, www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/
Phillips, Sarah. “A Brief History of Facebook.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 July 2007, www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia
“Tastemade.” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/tastemade/