MENU DRIVEN IDENTITY RESPONSE

1. Which categories are available for users to choose from when signing up for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or in order to use the Second Life gameworld? What presumptions do these categories make about users, and what does the absence of certain categories of identity say?
2. What sort of 'identities' are visible in the profiles on Lavalife? How are they displayed? What presumptions does this display make about both the people reading these profiles and those users who made them?
3. How much of the "identity" that we can see online for the users on Lavalife is restricted by the overall design of the website? What changes would you suggest in order to "improve" the sorts of identity Lavalife users can construct?
4. Are any of the websites you've visited inherently racist? Why or why not?
1) Hotmail: Other than standard categories such as name, gender etc, Hotmail does not seem to give its users an option to create an identity based on race information. However, you could interpret that some form of race identity could be created through the choice of Country and Language. If we look at this the default language is (surprise) English and the default country is US, even though I am accessing the site from Australia. From this point of view we can interpret there is some bias in favour of a dominant English speaking US group. However, in the US there are a number of ethnic and racial groups, and the selection of the US as a country, as well as the spoken language of English (which Tama admitted himself is the most common language if we include second learned) does not act as a completely discriminatory act in terms of race etc. The fact that race is not explicitly a question in the form can mean one of two things : when filling out this form it is irrelevant what race you are, everyone gets the same treatment, or, the dominant thought is that everyone is white so why bother with the question. In Hotmail’s privacy statement and user agreement forms etc, they do include ideas of race, and also the notion of internet stalking and signing up under a false name or identity. Hotmail remarks that it is not right to sign up without using your correct name or that any racial abuse etc should be carried out within their sites otherwise it is breaking the terms of the agreement. YAHOO: does not seem to take race into consideration, similar to Hotmail, however the default country is set to Australia. However, it is interesting to note that an example name is ‘dairyman’ is this a play on words considering our question or what? The example seems to point to a ‘white male’….SECOND LIFE: no question for race in this sign up, however I would think options would be available later on when creating your character. It is interesting to see though that examples of names appear to be typically western.
The absence of questions relating to race seems to suggest that in these contexts it is not a factor in the signup process, and that the standard appears to be for a white person, speaking English. However I think it is important to note that there are a number of factors for why these signups would not question race and assume that English would be the dominant language. Also when listing countries, languages etc there are a large number of choices. I don’t think it would be fair to say that from this specific viewpoint of looking at these sites that they are racist. If there was a site that explicitly asked me to list my race, what would that imply? Why would they want to know? And how would it affect the service I received?
2) Ok, Lavalife does seem to have some issues on gender and race….for a start the default setting is a male seeking a woman. Interestingly enough if you accept that it comes up with a predominant listing of Asian women. Maybe if you were to access the site from inside the signup option you would be given a more detailed search where you might be able to discriminate between asian, other, white etc in who you want to search for a match with. Peoples descriptions do tend to include their race, and most seem to be white, most gave their alternatives such as asian etc, while a few gave OTHER as a type. I would think in a dating service the notion of race would have to be brought up based on cultural compatibility. Naturally some asian women would only want an asian boyfriend/lover etc, due to simply a fact that they would have the same cultural background and it would make it easier to date. I don’t necessarily think the listing of race on lavalife is negative. I think lavalife illustrates the distinction between online and offline self perfectly. Here we can really see that race is an issue to people. For Hotmail and Yahoo in their signups race did not appear to be a factor, this is not necessarily saying they thought we are all white, but that they just don’t need the information for the creation of this online identity. In lavalife there is the assumption that at some point the people who are reading your description are going to meet you face to face, and so obviously both the readers and writers believe race to be an important factor, why, we can only speculate depending on the individual. It would be an interesting space in which to attempt the delay race issue brought up from the reading.
3) For a start, those people that don’t want to place photos could put up avatars, that would be cool. That would be a great way to indicate race and a number of other things. The site isn’t really catering for gay/lesbian from what I gather but there are other sites specifically for those. In terms of search criteria they could do to include race and language searches. There category pictures of ‘dating’, ‘relationship’ or ‘something else’ could do with some other racial groups in them other than just white people. However they do have a ‘black’ couple in other photos around the site.
4) I don’t think it is possible to say any of these sites are inherently racist. They seem to assume at times a certain internet user, but, if research has shown that this is the dominant user, than they are just using good business sense in assuming that user. The sites do seem to allow for the identification of race on the net. Remember, in Hotmail and Yahoo these are just the signup pages, once inside people can identify their race in a number of ways through the use of avatars etc. What is evident though, is that race in many situations does not seem to be an option to select from, like male/female. If I had to say that any of these sites where racist I would say Hotmail and Yahoo, and only because on their profile options in their member directories you cannot list what race you are, unless by means of a photo. This may suggest that they view that there is no place or necessity for race on the net. Whether this is a discriminatory attitude or a way of preventing racial discrimination by other members of the site I do not know.