Curation

Through the ongoing process of organizing content and media elements which create personal profiles, social media users inadvertently curate versions of themselves. Social media turns users into curators as they create distinct incarnations that are separate, yet become the objectified digital presentation of one’s physical self. Personal curation is content primarily for oneself, a social curation is content for interaction with friends, family, and acquaintances, spectacle curation is content for strangers and authorities to evaluate, and a business curation is content for the furthering of professional interests.  Social media makes self-curators of users by its very function in the distribution of online media content.

With people constantly adding to, tinkering with, amending, reinventing and fragmenting the components that constitute their identity in digital terms (think everything from individual tweets to Instagram photos), they themselves are becoming curators of how their ‘virtual self’ appears to the world.