When reading through the reader and other people’s ideas my mind was cast back to Japan and when I saw Mina Niikura’s fantastic work on a similar subject I felt I wanted to voice my thoughts. The popularity of the public commenting on blogs and other sites to voice their feelings on the arts (mainly ballet companies, young dancers in competitions and individual artists) were massive in Japan; the online bulletin board. A great idea in theory as it gave the public an opportunity to speak freely with the added bonus of anonymity however of course, once again, human nature got in the way; these sights became riddled with mindless, unconstructive criticism and blatant bitching. The ease with which this came was the almost cowardly attitude of the public where they clearly felt there were no repercussions to their actions thanks to the luxury of hiding behind a screen name.
In the interest of making a balanced argument here another thought popped into my head, I suppose the anonymity would have also prompted those who would not have shared their feedback before to do so and in a positive, constructive way. These people may have used these screen names and other forms of identity to speak for the general public and not as a single person- (Feenberg& Bakardjieva 2004) identified that web 2.0 allowed communities to develop beyond their ‘existing professional networks’ and offer a ‘social space for people, strangers and almost strangers with diverse backgrounds to come together as equals, as generators of ideas, to deliberate and act collectively’ (Feenberg & Bakardijeva 2004, p.38) The word ‘collectively’ is very important it shows us that the voice of a group of people can posses much more impact than the voice of one individual and thus emphasizing the importance of group thought and action offered by social networks and what I believe to be the true motive of some users of the early bulletin boards.
If we Return to my original thought- Websites concerning the dance community, however, are not all bad. More and more now I see, and am part of, social networking sites designed for self promotion and feedback; these particular websites such as Networkdance.net and Dancerspro.com offer job opportunities and the key point i’m trying to make here is the way you can comment on and share information (pictures, videos, CV’s etc.) and at the same time letting them see your information, this not only deletes the facade of anonymity but also creates links to friends, contacts in the business and ultimately perspective employers which for any dancer is sort of the ultimate goal if you will. Fortunately social networking has become such a popular part of everybody’s lives, although before this assignment i had no idea that my other vice (facebook) was part of web 2.0! Even Facebook was not primarily designed for dancers yet it is so easy to find links and groups to dancer profiles and job information which is indeed a real paradigm and testament to the benefits and success of the inner workings of the social network.
It appears to me that, not only does the use of the networking sites help dancers but it also helps the sites themselves to grow and develop when more and more information is shared and commented on. As the network grows and more hear of it’s capabilities and join in, the further the site can improve and thus creating a sort of development cycle that is ongoing.
To conclude I am so glad to see an amazing progression from the early, bitchy bulletin boards to the now purpose specific social networking sites which are linked to from multi-purpose ones such as Facebook where free information can be shared without the dangers of anonymity (no consequence bitching) but to keep the pros of it (group thought and action).
