P ERFORMANCE ON DIGITAL STAGE

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victims of electronic bullying and 11 percent admitted to harassing others online or by mobile phone. According to this research, the harassed teenagers feel ashamed and avoid telling their parents if they fear they would be denied use of the computer or lose their mobile phone.

Li (2006) found significant gender differences in cyber bullying. In her survey of 264 Canadian high school students, she found male students more likely to be cyber bullies than female students, 22 compared to 12 percent of the students in the survey.

Methods include texting derogatory messages on mobile phones, with students showing the message to other before sending it to the victim; sending threatening e-mails; and forwarding a confidential e-mail to all address book contacts, thus publicly humiliating the first sender. Another way to cyber bully is to set up a derogatory web site dedicated to a targeted student and e-mail others the address, inviting their comments. In addition, websites can be set up for others to vote on the biggest geek, or sluttiest girl in the school (Snider & Borel, 2004).

2.4 Performance on digital stage

Blogs seem to have developed into a “stage” for those who want to become popular, constituting a new media use context. This use implies that motivations of blog users are different from Internet users who participated in previous studies. Uses and gratifications seem not enough to account for the staging phenomenon. Some blog users turn out to be a diffused audience, the concept from the spectacle/

performance paradigm (SPP). First, users spend increasingly more time in media consumption. Second, such consumption is gradually more woven into the fabric of

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everyday life. Third, the societies have become more performative, through two processes that intertwine: (a) increasing spectacularization of the social world and (b) individual self-perception as narcissistic (Ambercrombie & Longhurst, 1998).

As Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) argue, audience research has not taken account of the changing nature of audience and social processes. There are three types of audience: simple, mass, and diffused, which all coexist. The simple audience involves direct communication from performers to audience. The mass audience reflects the more mediated forms of communication. The diffused audience implies that everyone becomes an audience at all times, which entails people spending increasing amounts of time in media consumption. Thus, the audience interacts with the form of mediascapes rather than with media messages or text per se.

To examine the performance of media audiences properly, Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998) developed the SPP. As they explained, the SPP foregrounds the notion of identity; being a member of an audience is intimately bound with the construction of the person. Within the SPP, spectacle and narcissism are interwoven with the notion of the “diffused audience,” which is significantly different from

“simple” or “mass audiences” –two earlier concepts of audience performance.

The diffused audience exists in a media-saturated environment. Within the SPP, performance becomes so pervasive that the diffused audience takes part in the performance, blurring the boundary between audience and performer. Media become a resource that audiences can use to formulate their performances in “everyday”

activities, and daily life transforms into a “constant performances” (Abercrombie &

Longhurst, 1998,) in which diffused audience members perceive themselves as performers as well as audience.

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According to Abercrombie and Longhurst (1998), the diffused audience is driven by the concepts of spectacle and narcissism. Spectacle is the idea that everything is a framed performance that should be gazed on, possessed, or controlled. As a performance, spectacle is an elaborate exhibition of surfaces for the audience; often there is little detail or substance involved in such exhibitions. Spectacle teaches the audience how to view the world, as well as how to perform. Everyday life becomes dominated by images—life seems to be transformed into art that can be possessed by the audience. Narcissism, the other part of the diffused audience, is the self-centered or self-oriented nature of the individual that comes from a long affiliation with spectacle. Narcissism is characterized by celebrity worship, absence of a sense of the past or the future, and preoccupation with instant gratification. Spectacle combined with narcissism guides diffused audiences toward ways to perform in everyday life.

The individual is self-centered and exists in a world in which everything can be possessed, including the individual and her or his performances (Abercrombie &

Longhurst, 1998).

The Internet has become an integral part of daily life in today’s sociotechnical environment. In the view of Amichai- Hamburger and Furnham, the Internet brings numerous positive benefits to our lives, such as enhancing the quality of life and well-being of marginal groups, constituting social recognition of individuals, and improving relationships of intergroups (Amichai-Hamburger & Furnham, 2007).

Self-disclosure is communicating with others using one’s own information, including personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences, for the purpose of sharing (Derlega, et al, 1993). According to Wheeless and Grotz (1976), self-disclosure consists of multiple dimensions, including (a) intention, (b) amount, (c) positive/negative matter, (d) depth, and (e) honesty and accuracy.

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Self-disclosure is important to social integration, which refers to the evaluation of one’s relationship quality to society and community (Keyes, 1998). Cohen (2000) has pointed out that social integration relies mainly on the diversity of relationships in which one participates. When people share their deep thoughts, such as feelings of trauma, pressure, and depression, with others belonging to the same community, they may acquire social support and improve their integration with society (Pennebaker, 1997). Niederhoffer and Pennebaker (2002) also report that self-disclosure by writing can produce the positive benefits of social integration.

In this research, researcher takes blog as a digital stage, how do children perform themselves through words, pictures or other creations? How much things do they want to share with their friends or cyber friends, and what that means to them?