Blog 5

My research topic: How do Hong Kong golden forum construct an online identity for local teenager?

I have finished all the interviews, three male members and two female members of golden forum. I got some useful data from the interviews. They shared some special post/event on the golden forum that they read. The sharing is related to my references.

Here is one part of the interview data. I interviewed a female member, Miss Yu who is 19 years old. She shared she read a post about missing person. In February to March, some students committed suicide in succession because of the pressure of studying. A golden member is worried about his friend also wants to commit suicide because his friend posted many statuses about commit suicide on Facebook. So, the golden member posted a post in order to seek help from other members. Many members were constantly following up the post. Finally, they contacted with the student union and the university. They requested that the school need to pay attention to this incident. For this sharing, although they never know most of their fellow-members, they still will be sympathetic response to the post. If the members are not holding in their minds a mental image of their affinity, they would not have same feeling in any incidents which are shared by different members. It is indefinitely stretchable nets of kinship and clientship. (It is the commonality of summary 1 in blog4). Another interviewee, Mr. Chung also shared his feeling and opinion about the umbrella revolution’s post on golden forum. I described an article in blog 4 which is also related to Golden member’s opinion of umbrella revolution. It shows that they can construct the online identity from golden forum.

On the other hand, I read an article, “Imagined Communities and Educational Possibilities: Introduction” by Yasuko Kanno. She quoted an argument from an educational theorist, Etienne Wenger. The imagination is a process of expanding oneself by transcending our time and space and creating new images of the world and ourselves. It is another important source of imagined community and belongs to a community. The interviewee, Miss Tang mentioned she has another disposition when using the forum. It is quite different to her real life. She is more candid because other members never meet her. She has a new image of herself and it is another source of constructing the online identity.

The basic questions that I asked in the interviews:

1) Why would you want to become the member of the forum?

2) How do you think of the golden forum?

3) Are you always using the golden term/language? Why?

4) Have you find some same interest/opinion from the forum?

5) Do you read any special post/event on the forum? What is it?

6) Have you find your online identity from the forum?

Student name: Tam Yi Ki (10585203)