Locating the Subject: Teens online @ ninemsn

Abstract

In this paper we examine how the figure of the teenager is positioned within the discourses and practices of commercial online media. In particular, we explore how the popular, Australia-based web portal “ninemsn” works discursively to shape the identities of young people. Ninemsn not only constructs and circulates selected representations of teenage media users, but also makes available to them particular kinds of texts and communication practices. At the same time it pursues its own commercial agenda, which aims to attract and expand particular audience segments and niche markets and sell them on to advertisers for a range of media forms and products. Ninemsn's development of “personas” to aid the processes of site design and marketing is especially notable as an attempt to more precisely outline particular subject positions for users and offer detailed representations of imagined consumers to advertisers.

Notes

1. There would seem to be some resonance between the design and marketing communities’ understanding of the term and the Jungian sense of “persona”, where it refers to the face an individual presents to the world, a mask distinct from a deeper sense of self, and also to the etymological origins of the word, “per sona” meaning to “sound through”, as in the case of an actor in character who speaks, whether literally or metaphorically, through a mask (see Hartley, 1999, p. 14). Personas in each of these instances are presentations for the world of appearances. This raises the related issue of perception. It could be argued that the tension between how one is perceived and how one wishes to be perceived is a core problematic of both academic ethnography and market research, one which further contributes to the difficulty of determining the representativeness of samples.

2. The use of the verb to “opt in” places an emphasis on the voluntary and consenting nature of the interaction, thereby allowing it to be considered a transaction or form of “transactivity” in which information is given in exchange for services or “further information”. ninemsn's privacy policy underscores this understanding when it states that it will not disclose personal information it collects unless (among other reasons) “We believe it necessary in order to provide you with a service which you have requested” and “We will never share your personal information with a third party or allow a third party to promote its products and services directly to you without your explicit consent” (ninemsn privacy policy: http://help.ninemsn.com.au/support/privacy.asp#4).