Background Study

My topic is camwhoring and how it is related to social networking. So, I have decided to focus on camwhoring as the content and social networking as the concept.

What is camwhoring all about?

• Camwhoring is someone who have high self obsession and likes taking pictures of themselves in any places or circumstances but without showing any unnecessary part of their body.
• They usually like to seek for attentions and will use online social networking services such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster as their medium.

Why I choose this topic?

• Adapted from Japanese pop culture. The adaption is the effect of "Look East Policy" which is launched in 1982. In that policy, our 4th Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad suggest Malaysian to follow the work ethic of Japanese and Korean. By that, we also adapting the technologies and the hi-tech lifestyle/cultural in our community.
• Japan is also known as the land of camera. They are really loved to take pictures of themselves either captured by someone else or by their own. But taking pictures of own self which is also known as camwhoring is started to be a trend. These scenarios can be seen through their drama, movies and also anime.
• They usually take pictures using their camera mobile phone. After taking the pictures, they will share it via their mobile email. But now, in cyber community era and the technologies growth on internet, the focused will be on the online social network services.
• The habit of taking own pictures has been mushroomed to all over the world including Malaysia.
• Capturing and uploading own images have become a core subject in online networking world.
• They will capture their images in every place they visited and also on every circumstance that they had been through to update their online friends on what they are doing now or where they are.
• This phenomenon is proven when one of the Malaysian celebrities became a host to an award giving events and the show was aired live on television at the beginning of 2010. During the show, while waiting for the performers to get ready, he took out his phone and captured the image of himself with the audiences as the background. He then announced that he already uploaded the image on his online social networking account and the fans can checked for it there.
• This trend also can be seen in Malaysian drama and movies.

The concept of Social Networking site

• bring user close to each other virtually
• people can share information easily on net
• a collaborative technologies for individuals to interact with one another through the web.
• "Social networking is not new; we just have new ways to do it" - Google's Joe Kraus
• "In social web,your users will simply expect to be part of the conversation" - Google's Joe Kraus