Facebook and dramauthentic identity: A post-Goffmanian theory of identity performance on SNS (original) (raw)
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Facebook and Dramauthentic Identity: A Post-Goffmanian Model of Identity Performance on SNS
First Monday v.19(4), 2014
Early and persistent scholarly concerns with online identity emphasized the ways that computer-mediated communications have allowed new, inventive, and creative presentations of self, and the lack of connection between online identity and the facts of offline life. After the ascendency and following ubiquity of Facebook, we find our online lives transformed. We have not only seen online identity reconnected to offline life, but we have seen, through the particular structures of social networking sites, our online lives subjected to newfound pressures to unify self-presentations from various constitutive communities; pressures different from and in some ways greater than those of offline life. After describing identity in computer-mediated communications prior to Facebook, and investigating the kinds of changed conditions brought about in social networking sites, I put forth a dramauthentic model of post-Facebook online identity. This model is comprised of three methods of exposure through multiply anchored self-presentation (mixed, agonistic, and lowest-common-denominator) and four strategies of interaction (spectacular, untidy, distributed, and minimized), each of which are employed non-exclusively and at different moments by most social networking site users.
This article aims to expand the critical frameworks by which online social networking can be contextualised and understood within the broader cultural practices of identity and selfhood. Utilising Judith Butler's theories of performative identity, it is argued that the use of social networking sites are performative acts in and of themselves. Two facets of social networking are examined from theoretical and critical perspectives: (1) the use of social networking profiles (Info pages, taste selections, biographies) as a tool for performing, developing and stabilising identity as a narrative in line with cultural demands for coherence, intelligibility and recognition; (2) identity performances that occur through relationality among online friends through list maintenance and communication (wall posts, tagging, commentary), and how identity is reconfigured within a network morphology. Finally, the article aims to open discussion around the broad cultural practices and implications of online social networking by developing some theoretical approaches to understanding the incompatibilities between these two facets which compete and risk the 'undoing' of online identity coherence. Within the framework of the growing use of social networking sites as one area in which our selfhood and subjectivity are performed, this incompatibility and undoing has both risks and benefits for future the cultural production of identity.
THE HOLLOW USER: THE PRESENCE OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTED ON FACEBOOK
During the last ten years the use of social media has greatly increased: social networks, especially, are widespread among a large amount of people, of different ages and gender, and from all over the world. Our presence online involves a great part of our time, and this kind of instant communication has been integrated in our lives: from the accomplishment of tasks, passing through the sharing of contents, news, information from every field, until interactive discussions and exchange of opinions, sending messages. The first necessary function, though, to be a part of this particular cyberspace, is the construction (or re-construction?) of our identities through the building of the "user profile", which is supposed to be our mirror online, and the public presentation of it. This new presentation of self in everyday life, to say with Goffman's words, has become a new dimension of the Self, a (social) presence in the cyberspace achieved through the presentation of our self, and through the interaction of it with the cyber-world of the others. This paper investigates specifically the case of Facebook, the network where the phenomenon of identity is clearly in evidence.
Negotiating and Constructing Identities through Facebook Communication
This study was premised on the observation that in the contemporary moment, the online construction and presentation of the self has become a general cultural practice. Using the idea of persona, a concept that explains the presentation of the self and masks that people " wear " to constructthemselves in real and virtual settings, this paper argues that the existence of multiple personas is clearly demonstrated in the context of Facebook communication. Using a " desktop " analysis of a selected Facebook pages, and a semi-structured interviewing of the owners of the selected Facebook pages, this study explored the construction of self by Facebook activists in order to identify how they negotiated and constructed personas that they deployed and employed in their everyday Facebook communication. This study also established the versions of identities that emanated from such constructions and how those versions came to prominence.
The Renegotiated Self: Social Media's Effects on Identity
Stacey Koosel’s PhD thesis is a collection of articles that explore the effects of social media on personal identity. The communication of identity narratives online has become abundant with the increasing popularity of social media. Social media enables users to build profiles based on their personal identities, making identity play a primary source of entertainment in the information age. Topics such as privacy, ethical use of information, authenticity, social control, self-expression, self-censorship and other media affordances have all, subsequently, become important issues. The topic of ‘identity’ is used as a framework through which social media use can be analysed. The cultural phenomenon of digital identity is explored in a collection of seven articles using different approaches, including media ecology, the philosophy of technology, virtual ethnography and artistic research. The articles raise questions about the ideology of identity creation in social media, by interviewing artists on how they use Facebook, pointing out paradigm shifts and paradoxes in contemporary culture and the discussion of other research in the field of digital culture.
Narrative Identity and Social Networking Sites
Etudes Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies, Vol 4, No 2 (2013), 108-122
The following paper takes on a double hypothesis: (1) that the concept of narrative identity, as developed by Ricoeur, is a strong candidate to account for the consequences of the "emplotment (mise en intrigue)" of our identities on social networking sites; and (2) that social networking sites can be useful to reconsider some of the assumptions at the basis of the Ricoeurian concept of narrative identity. The analysis is developed in three sections: (a) Ricoeur's "temperate" notion is compared to the "savage" post-modern concept of performative identity; (b) part of the literature about identity on social networking sites is criticized in the light of the Ricoeurian concept; and (c) the paper considers the impact of such a "detour" through social networking sites on Ricoeur's still monomediatic and monolinear notion.
Hybrid-Identities: Degrees of Digital Selves
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2013
Digitally mediated social network sites can be conceived as 'sandbox games' where users can play with and perform identity in a variety of ways. This paper will look at the ways in which Facebook and Pinterest offer two different platforms for identity play with both actual and idealized forms of selves through the posting and framing of personal information and the (re)appropriation of pre-existing content on the internet. In doing so, it will be demonstrated that it is possible for hybrid-identity to emerge and stabilize through the archival nature of the internet.
The Effect of Social Media on Identity Construction
The social media platforms have a growing importance in our lives since they are the places where we "showcase" our living experiences. They also reflect a variety of dimensions regarding our position in the virtual and physical social life. Both of these factors make people to play certain characters in the social arena. The Social Network is gaining more and more importance in today's world and has a deeper impact on the society as to the traditional media. Social media enables identity expression, exploration, and experimentation; something natural for the human experience. It is the agencies in real life, which provide a source of names for different sectors, that inspire the internet communities and the interactions they make within themselves. It is essential to comprehend the motives of agencies to have an understanding of the group interactions on social platforms. The enable individuals present themselves to others and determine the way they would like to be perceives in addition to helping them connect and interact with people, and participate in the activities they wish. Communicating online offers many ways to connect with others: individuals may or may not use their real names, and they can open as many accounts as they want to. This study explores practical aspects of identity construction, relating to issues virtual communities and social media. It also analyzes the probable reasons that individuals feel the need to create a virtual identity for themselves as well as "the spiral of transformation", that is, the creation period goes ahead of the internet to reach the real life. This study also aims at concentrating on the virtual communities appearing in the social networks while questioning their social and cultural qualities and values.
Personal Identity and the Self in the Online and Offline World
Minds and Machines
The emergence of social networking sites has created a problem of how the self is to be understood in the online world. As these sites are social, they relate someone with others in a network. Thus there seems to emerge a new kind of self which exists in the online world. Accounting for the online self here also has implications on how the self in the outside world should be understood. It is argued that, as the use of online social media has become more widespread, the line between the two kinds of self is becoming fuzzier. Furthermore, there seems to be a fusion between the online and the offline selves, which reflects the view that reality itself is informational. Ultimately speaking, both kinds of selves do not have any essence, i.e., any characteristic inherent to them that serves to show that these selves are what they are and none other. Instead an externalist account of the identity of the self is offered that locates the identity in question in the self's relations with other selves as well as other events and objects. This account can both be used to explain the nature of the self both in the online and the offline worlds.