New media not only introduce new ways for us to express ourselves, but also new forms of self-awareness-new ways to refl ect on who we are and how we relate to others. This article analyzes the experiences of self-awareness generated by creating, viewing, and responding to deeply personal, unaddressed vlogs on YouTube. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, it is argued that the globally connected, recording webcam linking privatized spaces creates a context for sharing profound moments of self-refl ection and for creating connections that are experienced as profoundly deep yet remain ephemeral and loose.Slightly more than a decade after launching the fi rst iteration of the journal Explorations with Marshall McLuhan in the 1950s, anthropologist Edmund Carpenter was hired as a communications consultant for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Colonial administrators were seeking advice on how they might use radio, fi lm, and television to reach, educate, unite, and "rationalize" remote areas of the territory as they moved toward independence. It gave Carpenter (1972), as he writes, "an unparalleled opportunity to step in and out of 10,000 years of Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. Following his doctoral fi eldwork exploring the effects of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, he turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society.
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