Spence Blog Post # 5

                The overall argument that the author is trying to portray in this article is that social networking sites can preserve and culture real relationships yet promote faulty relationships based on a person’s narcissism.

                The intended audience for the New Atlantis would be people who have at least an interest of the science implemented in modern technology. The audience that Christine Rosen does not intend to write for is the older folks that are not into social networking sites. Given that the article uses social sciences to back up the human interactions on social networking sites would be an example of how the articles of the New Atlantis are formulated. Since the article is written by Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis, this isn’t her first article so she knows how to properly compose an argumentative article. The article that Rosen wrote is biased because argumentative articles are supposed to support one main point over the other. Rosen’s particular bias was that although social networking sites preserves relationships made in the real world, the social networking sites also promote narcissism of a person.

The evidence that the Rosen uses to support her claims are the different ways to interact and friend people on various social networking sites for the reader to understand how social networking sites work. She talks about how social networking sites are becoming big booming businesses by the amount of registered users on MySpace which is over 100 million users and how much Rupert Murdoch bought out MySpace for $580 million. She also cites NBC’s Dateline about how a police officer posed as a 19 year old boy and found out where the girls involved in the experiment lived and their names to inform readers about the danger of posting information online.

Overall, I agree with everything that Rosen has stated about social networking sites in general. I believe that social networking sites can maintain relationships with people that I haven’t seen in person in years. I also believe that social networking sites are promoting narcissism online due to a person having to create their own little space of information that is related in some way to a person him or herself.