You Are What You Pin: An Analysis on Pinterest Identity

Below is the link to my final paper.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByE7tud1xQwBM3duYW1HRlRTVTA/edit?usp=sharing

P.S. Sorry about the screenshots from the survey. They are getting messed up when the .pdf is uploading to Google Docs, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Here are the links to the pinboards if you would like to look at them.

Extroverted
Introverted
Sensing
Intuition
Feeling
Thinking
Prospecting
Judging

Curating with Pinterest

First thing is first. Sorry about the late post. I got some exciting news on Thursday and was a little distracted!

For my curation tool, I have been using Pinterest. Pinterest, as you may well know, is a very interesting medium. My purposes in using this as my creation tool are to study identity according to what is posted on individual users accounts. Think of it as "you are what you pin," if you will. I think the main point of Pinterest is used as an expression of individuality, although the interesting thing is people don't really pin their own content; they repin other people's content. I also think this is relevant with the book that I chose: Girl Wide Web 2.0, and I'm excited to see how each contribute to the idea of girls' and women's identity.

Courtesy of jackie vanover on flickr.com

Monuments of our Age: Foundations of Civilization in the Digital World

 Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike 2.0
By Greg Bayles, graphic remixed from Mary Harrsch

Last week, I posted a bunch of my curation findings as to digital civilizations specifically. This week, however, I've been working to flesh out my research in terms of the requirements for civilization to exist, and I've had some pretty good success through both social and more traditional modes of inquiry. On Monday, I posted to my Facebook and Google+ profiles asking for people's insights as to the foundational elements of civilization. Google+ didn't yield a ton--just a post from my sister--but I was able to start up a rather healthy conversation on Facebook and got a lot of insights from friends, especially those studying political science, history, and anthropology.

You can check out the conversation below if you prefer to just read through the responses (I personally like the one about chocolate-covered almonds), but to sum up the arguments, my friends gravitated toward five or six main points:

1. Social surplus (extra resources)
2. Unified sense of culture
3. Code of law
4. Cohesive economic system
5. Territory (according to the UN)
6. A population (a more obvious but nonetheless essential component)