For me i would have to say that aim is an area where my identity and communication are mediated. If i know a persons screen name i can send them a message, and not provide any evidence as to who i am, they are still receiving a message fully constructed by me but my identity is unknown. this was also true when i was an AOL user. I could enter a chat room and say what i want with out any of the other chat participants knowing the true source of the message.

These two instances allow/allowed me to communicate with others with the option of informing the receiver as to who i am. In some instances i have been able to say thing i would never say in a face-to-face conversation. as stated by Goffman, when one person is talking to another in a face-to-face situation, there is a lot of thought put into a message (taking inconsideration the receiver, environment, and past knowledge) by the sender. i personally would rather not say anything then take the chance of offending another. That is why some of the attributes of communicating online appeal to me for certian topics.

At work I am a heavy user of instant message and email and seem to be more productive using those forms of communication. According to Goffman, we are all playing roles, have fronts, and are negotiating complex social rules when having face-to-face communication. It seems like a whole lot of baggage to deal with and maybe why I find email and IM more productive at work.

As I already mentioned, I am originally from Bulgaria but I have been in the States for the last four and a half years. The only way for me to communicate with my friends and family back home is through CMC.

In the beginning we used mainly IM, e-mail, and phone. Because these media do not provide visual contact, I have developed the habit to perform additional, unrelated tasks in the meantime.

But, as Skype gained popularity, it provided an easy and fast way for video chat, web cams became cheaper and more popular. We started using it, because it gave more realistic feeling of being in contact with the other person.

However, I still have the habit of multitasking while talking to people online. This sometimes creates awkward situations when people see that I don't focus my attention solely on them. Currently, I am still learning to either refrain from multitasking, or to conceal it better, since they see only me, but not what I see.

This is a situation that is common for mediated communication, because it relies on technology and technology changes very rapidly. This can cause confusion in the established rules for communication, because they need to be revised often and people need time to get used to the revisions.

The most profound experience I have had in mediated communication has been creating photographs. While the technology involved in creating images seems like a very different method of communication than internet based forms of communication, I have found the ability for the photographic process to both stop time and fragment truth has always presented me with the opportunity to tell a story mediated by the medium. The images that I created were both an expression of my identity and messages to all those who viewed them.

In the field of information technology, I have found many similar experiences, although more subtle. Interface design has given me the ability to express my visual insights, while also attempting to communicate the message of how a user should interact with what I have created. In both photography and interface design I have found a place where the medium allows me to express a vision and present a portion of my personality.

Since I started attending RIT I have been exposed to relay services. For those who don't know, a relay service enables hearing people to communicate with deaf/hard of hearing individuals via phone. This is a good example of my identity and communication being mediated. When my hard of hearing friend wants to call me, he places a call to a relay service (video relay in his case) and the operator calls me and tells me who the call is coming from. After that the operator takes on dual roles, pretending to both my friend and I. In my case the operator signs my spoken words to him on his video screen and she tries to use facial expressions and body language that may convey my tone of voice and mood. Thus she completely takes on my identity and interprets my words exactly. She then voices for my friend (who signs to her via a cam) and does a very good job of mimicking his real accent and attitude! I've had to 'argue' (not a serious argument) with him just once over the phone, which ended up being a very funny conversation for my friend and I, since the interpreter did a great job of conveying our voice tones and accent... my friend jokingly said he could see my Jamaican accent in her signs! FYI the calls are kept confidential... some jokingly call them professional evesdroppers.

I am a member of several online forums. Most, if not all, of those forums allows the users to choose avatars that display in each post the user makes. These avatars are only images, and not entire characters in games such as WoW and Second Life. Despite the presence of an avatar, my forums-persona shines mainly through the posts that I make, whether they are original posts or responses.

Aside from internet forums and the common AIM & email setting, I frequent a site called Stickam. Stickam contains chatrooms, but each user has the capability to turn a webcam for the rest of the room to see. The chatroom that I use is one in which there are ~20 regular users that have all taken part for almost 2 years now. We have come to know eachother as friends, some more than others, and have seen just about everyone on cam. Many people have put on a front and act a certain way towards certain people.

One of the oddest aspects of the Stickam room, to me, is that we mostly know eachother's real names. Even so, we all call eachother by our Stickam names. One person's real name is Ashley and we call her Lenore, another's is Carl but we call him Percocet, and Cory is known as Alpha. These names are comfortable to us, almost like nicknames that our parents gave us. When I'm in the room and someone says "Hey Fizz", I respond as though they are saying "Hey Jake", even though they may be able to see my real face, hear my real voice, and even know my real name.

For me, Facebook is primarily how my online identity is mediated. Facebook allows me stay in touch with friends that I haven't seen since high school or longer. It also allows people to let their friends know what they are up to in life. The identity that you give off on Facebook is not always accurate. For example, if one of my friends that I haven't seen for seven years posts a profile picture that was taken four years ago, I would not know that this may not be their current appearance.

I have accounts in many of the existing social networking sites. If I just count them as I remember it would definitely come around a minimum of 12 sites. And my online identity is pretty much the same in almost all of those social networking sites. Except for my profile picture which I tend to change from one site to the other, for no reason. On Yahoo, I have an avatar instead of a real picture of mine, as to my knowledge it is the first such feature provided on the internet. But off all the many sites in which i have my profile, my true identity is on Orkut. The reason for me being so biased towards it, is that it is the site where I have almost all my nearest and dearest ones. Also, it is the site that gives me only the tools needed for me to do some real social networking. It never threw up a bundle of features on face to be used. Instead it slowly comes up one feature after the other always keeping me excited. There's always something or the other new to be used when ever I feel like this so boring, this keeps me and also many of my friends to use it.

I still use Yahoo messenger, when the talk usually gets personal or needs immediate response, or needs some thing like group conference, video chat, voice chat. I also, visit 3 other social networking sites, but mostly only on the weekends, and almost a dummy character on those sites. Most of my activities and updates are only seen on Orkut. I primarily usse other sites to just learn if what the other part of the world is up to. I would use them for my information retrieval and almost for nothing else.

One problem that I am having on orkut for the past one month is, some with the profile name "....... catch" has been visiting my profile. The profile has no images, videos, scraps, messages, or for that matter the profile details themselves are incomplete. So, there is no clue that I can get if who is this person who has been visiting my profile regularly. the only clue that i got was the the person is a female and is from India. Even that information, is not certain, as it is the data that is displayed as the user wants it to be displayed. So, this is the problem that I faced with online identity on a social networking site.

One situation I've seen is an online multiplayer game developed by Disney called Virtual Magic Kingdom (http://vmk.disney.go.com/vmk/en_US/index?name=VMKHomePage). Identity on here is heavily mediated for security reasons. Lots of children use this game, as well as adults; having such a large gathering of children also brings about issues of predators. People in the game are not allowed to reveal any information about themselves and their identity other than gender and possibly vague semblances of their appearances based on how they design their avatar. In this case, I think the mediation is a very good thing as it provides a great deal of security in a very vulnerable environment with people who may not have the knowledge to protect themselves.