Me 2.0: the ability for individuals to perform multiple selves online allows greater freedom than ever to explore their identity – at a cost.
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to examine the moral panic about the impact on individuals living increasingly inside online communities and social networks. I will argue that an inaccurate nostalgia has grown around perceived notions of an ideal past when living in a community supposedly afforded individuals a wealth of support and freedom. A closer examination of life inside real-world communities of the past reveals it was in fact far from ideal and could be far more restrictive and judgemental than online communities are today. Looking particularly from sociological and psychological perspectives, it becomes apparent that current platforms and technologies offer individuals unprecedented opportunities to perform multiple selves across the digital landscape; and to explore, evolve and test out their identity in relative safety, at least when compared with community life of the past. Drawing from sociological and psychological studies of identity undertaken in the mid-twentieth century, this paper aims to show that the present digital age shares more in common with the nature and function of identity formation in the past than is new or different. Only the possibilities and relative freedoms have changed – for the better. While it seems unlikely there will ever be a time when presenting and sharing one’s identity online will be possible with absolutely no risks or limitations, so long as we remind ourselves that any configuration of community has its benefits and costs, we can continue to study and learn from this evolving socio-culture, and recognise its benefits.
Introduction
Alarm and fearmongering about the negative impact social media is having on individuals in our networked society has gained momentum in the extraordinary twenty-five years since the first social media platforms began to emerge. Where once, individuals were limited by a wired, desktop interface, today, only sleep or the most remote location can interrupt almost limitless interactions with a global cohort. Mirroring this mobilization of technology, identity has become fluid and its endless construction possible. However, an increasing moral panic continues to rage over whether life online can be compared favorably to “traditional” community life. (Hampton & Wellman, 2018) An assumption has persisted below the surface of much discussion that somewhere in the past communities offered individuals a kind of sense of place, of being valued and supported that has been lost online. (ibid.) This deserves to be challenged. Not only has it never been easier to explore and develop one’s identity than is possible now online; in fact, the opportunity to explore multiple identities online provides any individual, especially a young one, unprecedented scope and freedom to test, shape and evolve their identity; and with far more anonymity, safety and creativity than was ever previously possible. Being part of a community has always had its benefits and its costs. Increasingly, as online networks and communities continue to evolve, the benefits for individual will continue to far outstrip potential costs.
Identity is Shaped not Born
What we call identity has long been at the heart of sociological study. The internet may have shown us nothing we didn’t already know about our need to project an identity we feel largely positive about; but technology has certainly impacted how we share and shape identity in the 21st Century. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) Erving Goffman describes “performing the self” as “an individual’s effort to […] behave in a way that influences how an audience sees him/her, usually with the intent to create, present, and maintain a favourable image in a social situation for a particular purpose.” (Bullingham & Vasconcelos, 2013, p. 1) Although written in 1956, this description seems prescient of the way millions of people are engaging on a daily (perhaps hourly) basis through online platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and the swelling number of other digital public forums. Using social media as tools, we are all projecting versions of ourselves purposefully, in order to illicit favourable responses from others.
A variety of models of identity have come in and out of fashion over the past fifty years with particular regard to evolving mass communications technologies. These models have attempted to explain how our sense of identity is formed. The classical Liberal model, for instance, suggests that individuals are central, autonomous and supreme agents who form their own identities. According to Mann, Daly, Wilson & Suzor, (2018) “Australia has formally adopted some principles of digital constitutionalism, […] by joining the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) in 2015, […] ‘to protect fundamental human rights – free expression, association, assembly, and privacy online – worldwide’”. (p. 5-6, emphasis added) On the surface at least, this seems to suggest that the Australian government identifies with the Liberal values associated with every individual’s right to autonomy, freedom and the opportunities to develop one’s own identity.[1] According to this model, our modern online society comprises a complex network of these individuals vying for agency and status.
Post-Marxist commentators like Louis Althusser cannot disentangle an individual from the power systems, the “system of institutions unified by the ideology of the dominant class,” (Paul Hirst,1976 p.387) which he believed formed and shaped identity. In this view, an individual sups from the teat of institutional norms and as he grows, either acts these out or acts against them. This echoes current debates about the power of corporate megaliths like Google and Facebook to shape and control information and therefore control not only what, but how people think. How free can an individual be, we might ask, if their access to information is filtered and curated by invisible agents without their knowledge? In this view, identity is handed to individuals like a uniform which you either wear and fit in, or discard and live with the consequences.
Sociologist Irving Goffman was writing in the 1950s when he detailed his post-modern theory of identity in his famous work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956). But his ideas seem prescient in our digitally networked age. Goffman said that, “individuals ‘perform’ in order to project a desirable image [of themselves],” (Bullingham and Vasconcelos, 2013, p.1). Furthermore, he posited, “individuals have both expressions that they give and those that they [unwittingly] give off.” (ibid. p.1) Goffman also talked about the mask as “a means for deception in face-to-face interaction,” (ibid. p.1) I will return to this idea of masks later.
There has perhaps never been more alarm and fearmongering than in our present time with regard to the impact social media is having on individuals in our networked society. Amusingly, Thomas Hobbes warned, in his 1651 masterpiece Leviathan, that “rapid social change in England was creating loneliness and alienation and leading to a ‘war of all against all.’ (Hampton and Wellman, 2018, p. 645). This reads eerily like contemporary commentary about the isolation of the networked self in a world where communities of commonality are breaking down and echo-chamber silos abound. The idea that identity and an individual’s uniqueness matter and should be protected is not new. But we might be over-romanticizing how wonderfully communal life for the individual was in the past.
Individuality Has Never Been Easier
In the past, wherever people lived in a close-knit network of family and community, there were drawbacks: “the density of relations implied a high degree of conformity to similar beliefs, backgrounds, and activities.” (Hampton & Wellman, 2018, p. 644) As Hampton and Wellman remind us, “Rigid hierarchies governed who could communicate with whom,” and an individual’s beliefs, “were amplified through interactions that were largely confined to a closed social system.” (ibid.) In other words, an individual’s family, school, church group, neighbourhood, local club, ethnicity or cultural traditions (to name just a few) could wield significant control and judgement over one’s appearance, behaviour and identity choices.
By contrast, today social media platforms and technologies offer individuals unprecedented opportunities to form “supportive social relations in multiple contexts that do not strongly overlap —family at home; colleagues in the workplace; and friends in the neighbourhood, church, and voluntary associations.” (Rainie & Wellman 2012 as cited in Hampton & Wellman, 2018, p.647). In these ways, people are able to escape the constraints of “tradition and hierarchy and manoeuvre around the insularity of echo chambers.” (Dubois and Blank 2018, as cited by Hampton & Wellman, 2018, p.647) And they can do this more easily and more completely than any other time in history.
Identity can be seen as, “embedded in social relations and as dynamic, contextual, and relational. Social representations and the dynamics of positioning between self and other define identities.” (Arfini, Botta Parandera, Gazzaniga, et al. p.195-6) In other words, how an individual portrays themselves, and how they interact with others feeds back into and impacts how they see themselves and how they react to the actions and words of others. In this sense, negotiating one’s identity online becomes a practical and pragmatic necessity. (ibid. citing Olson 2019, p. 4)
The fact is, online, increasingly, individuals are empowered to explore multiple identities. With more freedom than ever before. Anonymity and the ability to construct several or many versions or representations of oneself make possible some obvious advantages. Wearing a digital mask, individuals can have fun, take risks, try on behaviours and spaces and interactions they might not risk were they exposed. Goffman’s idea of the performed self takes on new and revitalized significance: consider an individual’s scope to act without constraint, take risks without fear of consequences. In a fascinating sense, life can become like being inside a game, where one chooses an avatar, pits one’s skills against obstacles and manipulate one’s way through different worlds. Online, one’s ‘social death’ is temporary; a few clicks and you are reborn, reset, or can take on a new and different identity.[2] This has to be a healthier, less constrictive landscape in which to explore one’s identity than was possible in any community of the past.
Multiple Versions of the Self
It is important here to remind ourselves that almost no individual operates online in a vacuum cell. Almost all online activity involves some degree of interpersonal communication, and much research has tried to pull apart the dynamics of these communities and networks in order to understand the impact on and role of individuals.
Stryker (1980) suggests that “during the process of society becoming conceptualised in different groups, organisations and roles, people’s complexity [by taking on more of these as identities] reflect the complexity of society.” (cited by Qin & Lowe, 2021, p.68) In other words, our social media have become part of the fabric of our most complex version of society ever evolved. The fact that individuals can create and develop multiple identities within this fabric is not only virtually a necessity; it seems to be a largely positive and exciting step in human evolution. As Burke & Stets (2009) put it, “The person is the common nexus of multiple identities, and through the person, those identities have opportunities to communicate, plan, share resources and otherwise facilitate their mutual verification.” (ibid.) It is hard to avoid the conclusion reached by Arfini, Botta-Parandera, Gazzaniga, et al. (2021) that an individual’s personal identity is framed contextually, and by participating in multiple online communities, individuals must continually adjust their personas, their identities, to new and ever-changing contexts.
A significant portion of institutional and academic angst is directed towards young developing minds. Decrying that all this social media must be harming young people’s sense of self. Worried about the dangers lurking in dark corners of virtual communities and networks. But there is mounting evidence that as young people act out and test out their lives increasingly online, social media produce a [valuable] “kind of conceptual excess by collapsing boundaries of public and private, real and virtual.” (Gabriel, 2014, p.108) “Young people are representing their own coming of age processes, negotiating identities, sexualities and friendships, and making moral and ethical decisions regarding their online conduct.” (ibid.) All of this sounds like the good old-fashioned 20th century adolescent psychology of self-development, contextual, community-based boundary-testing and active meaning-making. Gabriel calls it youth as performance. It conjures again Goffman’s idea of the mask, but not so much as a means of deception; rather, we should picture a young individual handed the key to an infinite mask and costume store and invited to explore. Such an opportunity on such a scale has never existed before. Of course, there are mirrors everywhere, and some mirrors have people, groups or other institutions watching from the other side. But nobody said the internet was private.
If we focus on the individual user’s approach to online communities, as Arifini, Bertolotti and Magnani suggest (2017), we find participation in these communities to be an extension of their personal, cognitive, and social life. Described by Arifini and his colleagues as “Virtual Cognitive Niches”, these online communities “represent ways to extend people’s cultural and epistemological community; they support and expand offline values, interests, and social connections.” (ibid. p.209) None of this is to say that there aren’t real and valid concerns for the health and well-being of the modern networked individual. A mountain of data pointing to issues like addiction, fraud, self-harm, delusion, escapism, loneliness and excess has provided fodder for alarmists and challenges for researchers, educators and health practitioners.
Freedom Never Comes Without Cost
To be fair, we need to acknowledge that online communities are enabling a new kind of mob morality. As sociologists Hampton and Wellman point out, “the reorganization of community into a system of persistent relationships with more awareness of others’ opinions and activities also bring(s) about a return of the expedient and repressive sanctions that were common in a traditional community.” (2018, p. 649) This trend is evident in the mounting toll of online mobs, witch-hunts and cancel culture. Consider author J.K. Rowling facing international backlash for suggesting that the push for transgender rights could ultimately endanger women’s rights. Or the top Boeing executive who recently lost his job because of an article he wrote in 1987, opposing (at that time) allowing women to serve as fighter pilots. These and many other cases suggest that while individuals can escape traditional communities, even those in positions of power and influence are now susceptible to mass community backlash online. The explosion of swarm morality, accompanied by online shaming through social media platforms charts a new era where, “Informal watchfulness within networks […] high in persistence and awareness,” may precipitate a speed and severity of judgement which outstretches our legal systems. (ibid.)
Secondly, as most people are growing increasingly aware, “the conditions of access to this infrastructure for social networking and communication include submission to forms of surveillance, data-mining, and target marketing that support the emerging logic of online commerce”. (Papacharissi, 2010, p. 92) As Papacharissi and co. point out, selling consumers the idea that they hold the means of sharing and distributing knowledge, that they possess the reigns of culture, that they are indeed free, is at the very least significantly short of the whole truth. There is a big difference between, “access to the means of online content production [on the one hand] and ownership or control over these resources.” Individuals may own computers and software, but not the infrastructure which makes possible “the maintenance of online social networks, or the forms of content sharing that characterize the emerging online economy”. (ibid. p.97) The extent to which the networked individual has become commodified, is a matter deserving more investigation than this paper can afford. But it is clear that for individuals online, creating and maintaining one or more identities is never without cost.
So long as we don’t reimagine history, we can preserve the understanding that any configuration of community has its benefits and costs. Some of the potential trade-offs are clearer than others. Online today, what Hampton, Shin, and Lu (2017) call heightened persistence and awareness have costs. While they can provide individuals with increased awareness of diverse opinions, this can be coupled with a heightened perception of one’s own membership within a community and the realistic fear of being ostracised. In this way, ironically, all of this newfound individual freedom is wilfully given up for membership to the tribe. (see Hampton, Shin, and Lu, 2017).
Conclusion
It seems clear that romanticising traditional communities is unhelpful when trying to evaluate the costs and benefits of membership to today’s online communities and networks. Sociological and psychological research will continue, but will always be fraught by the difficulties in measuring and comparing individuals’ relative feelings of autonomy, inclusion, their feeling of freedom to explore and evolve their identity, their general well-being and happiness and their sense of being unique. The answers are not straightforward, but it seems foolish to romanticise a nostalgic past when “real communities” were so much better for the individuals who mostly could never escape them.
It is possible that in the future, as our technology enters an age of machine learning and simulated consciousness, identity, relationships and what we mean by community may become even more blurred. One can imagine a digital community which includes many bots of non-human avatars. Perhaps the reconstructed identities of people no longer living. Maybe we will find our platforms overseen by watchful, censorious programs filtering and banning users based on external parameters and filters. For now, happily, we live in a time when billions of people explore, express and redefine their identity online as an ongoing (perhaps lifelong) project. As they select, edit, link, comment, tag, group, block, assign, create and test the myriad elements of their individuality, they get to learn from, respond to and participate in the society of individuals made community, transformed into culture, by the possibilities of online technologies.
Notes
[1] The paper does go on to show how this statement of goals is starkly contradicted by significant legislation permitting governments to intervene and access individuals’ data in the name of national security.
[2] It is true, today individuals may leave a digital footprint they can never erase. But communities of the past were also capable of carrying grudges and character assassination through family names and historical conflict.
References
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This is an interesting argument and I enjoyed your writing. Although we have the freedom to test out identities, I wonder how much of the online identities we create are still influenced by outside forces. Self presentation theory considers that the view we present of the self is goal orientated, in part by how we want to be seen but also by what we perceive our audience wants to see. The online world will never be completely separate from the culture and ideals of the person behind the avatar. I wonder how much damage can these structured identities cause. While young people have the freedom to try out new identities, if they then change their identity as they mature (as we all do), the previous online somewhere and can never be fully erased.
My paper is completely different arguing that social media platforms have a responsibility to make themselves user friendly for marginalised groups, particularly the elderly. This is the link if you are interested. https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/csm/637/facebook-and-loneliness-in-elderly/
Thank you for your comments, Manda. I absolutely agree that you can never separate yourself from the culture, language (including visual language and symbols) and zeitgeist of your place and times. I often imagine drawing a cartoon where thousands of people are walking around in a city looking at their phones, and every phone is also a mirror. Unfortunately I don’t have a cartoonist’s bone in my body. To my mind, none of this alters the fact that it is largely a positive improvement on previous times that individuals not only CAN explore their identity (multiple identities) but the fact that we are more or less INVITED to if not forced to do so. I taught drama classes for many years and direct theatre. I can’t help seeing the parallels. I have seen how people grow when invited to, allowed to play roles, put on masks, explore parts of themselves, switch off other parts. I know people will argue, “but wait, actors aren’t recorded and permanently attached for life to the momentary actions they played.” In the end, identity has a 50,000+ year human history whereas mass communication technology, as an extension of identity is perhaps 400 years old. Our digital human anthill is maybe 20 years young. It’s going to be a fascinating evolution to witness. Now I’m off to read your paper.
Hi Brendan,
Thanks for presenting an interesting argument on how we have the opportunity to present many identities with relative freedom on social media.
I’d like to provide a counter argument and ask a question. You said that users can more easily and completely explore identity online than ever before, without constraint or fear of consequences. What platform do you consider they can do this? In my paper, https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/ioa/184/negotiation-of-privacy-and-social-media-to-explore-lgbtqia-identity-and-advocate-for-their-communities/, I argue that the various platforms have different affordances allowing users to express identity, where Facebook is very restrictive and users have to negotiate high curation of friends and content in order to maintain privacy, whereas Tumblr does offer flexibility to explore more freely because of the anonymity it affords. I would take the stance that while users have more avenues than ever before to explore, this is not without considerable risk to personal privacy.
I liked your point about how social media has enable a very complex version of society. Our worlds are so much more open than they used to be, although I am very relieved that I did not have to negotiate my teens years with social media around.
I think your point about how persistent communities online can allow for swift backlash and cancel culture could warrant more investigation. There does seem to be growth in this area of late, and while I agree some cases, like the Boeing CEO might warrant temperance given how long ago the article was written, others like J.K Rowling are perhaps choosing their own cancellation, because while its one thing to have an opinion, in this ultra-connected community, others are just as free to point out how much of a disservice that opinion can do.
Thank you for your comments, Tracy. You may have seen that I also commented on your paper a few days ago. I think any informed person would have to acknowledge that the online landscape is complex and fraught, indeed more so than any other technology-driven mass communication societal shift in the last 400+ years. I am fascinated by that history (from the Printing Press to photocopiers) and believe the notion that each advance has brought with it dramatic benefits, profound changes and a complex web of dangers, losses and gains which ask a new generation to learn and negotiate the changes. Interestingly, each advance has facilitated its own revolutions and documented wars. Is Ukraine our 1st TikTok war? So I’m certainly not suggesting young people today are free to explore “without constraint or fear of consequences”. I just think there is a danger in idealising some utopian past when things were so much easier or better for young people searching for their identity. And I share your sentiments: I have adult children now. It was hard enough negotiating this terrain with a son and daughter born into the internet. I am very glad I didn’t have to grow up in this era. As for platforms: each platform presents itself as a lifestyle enhancing tool, but each is, finally, a business model. consumers have to be more savvy than any previous generation, and yet it seems for millions, utility, boredom, novelty, a desperate need to be connected and included all seem to guarantee the explosive take-up of the next big thing (for now, TikTok). At the same time, we are seeing unprecedented numbers of young people depressed, self-harming, eating disorders. So there is a lot of research needed to unravel what exactly is going on here.
Hi Brendan,
I did see your comments and replied to those as well, thank you for reading my paper first 🙂
I 100% agree with your last point here, there needs to be more research around the impacts of social media on young people, because as we have both said, they are accessing and stopping them is not a realistic solution to the issue. The research needs to lead to more nuanced services aimed at children, young adults and parents as to how to process the things we see on social media, in healthy ways.
This was a very informative read. One of the things you mentioned particularly caught my interest: the fact that even people in power are subject to receiving backlash online if they have done anything wrong. Considering how TikTok was used as a platform to communicate and eventually overthrow Donald Trump, and the currently ongoing fight in Sri Lanka for a similar matter, social media has definitely become a place where everybody can be seen as equals in terms of power. anonymity has also become a helpful weapon in helping with these. In my paper, however, I discuss the adverse effects of online anonymity, in the form of catfishing. If the topic interests you, do give it a read.
https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/ioa/445/the-dark-side-of-online-anonymity/
Thank you for your comments, Senera. The Trump media battles were a fascinating real-time study of the powers wielded by big media corporations versus the power wielded by citizens versus the powers exerted by governments and lobby groups. I’m not sure we know who won! But the mass media have always been an integral part in these battles. The printing press was the new people’s technology that made the French Revolution possible! The Vietnam War was the 1st television war. There are suggestions Ukraine is our 1st TikTok war! As you say, these tools can be great equalisers. But those in power, those with big money, are never going to just throw up their hands and say, “Ah well, the people have spoken.” So there will always be a series of battles which push and test the technology. It’s a fascinating evolution to watch and unpack.
Hi Brendan, what a great read! You introduce some really thought-provoking points.
The nostalgia of the past seems to be playing out on social media in Australia at the moment with regard to baby boomers’ ability to afford housing and who has it better/worse! But regarding social media and identity, I am in agreeance with you, it is a “positive and exciting step in human evolution”. I love your analogy “picture a young individual handed the key to an infinite mask and costume store and invited to explore”. It really does depend on the personality type of the user, I imagine that for an introverted person that is perhaps depressed and unhappy with who they are, the multiple identity possibilities that social media affords are empowering. But as Manda pointed out and you responded to Tracy too, young people are at particular risk. I’m sure I saw a paper on introverts and identity so I might have to head over there to read that one too for another perspective.
Your question of “How free can an individual be, we might ask, if their access to information is filtered and curated by invisible agents without their knowledge?” is a fantastic point. Senera mentioned Trump and TikTok but it lead me to think about Trump and how his account was canceled by Twitter resulting from events at the capitol building. Previously public-owned Twitter and the recent purchase by Elon Musk will be interesting to watch. Will this be a catalyst in the shift to decentralised social media platforms that I mentioned in response to your post on Zoe’s “The Development of Identity: How the Teenage Demographic is Suffering as a result of Instagram’s Interactive Features”? (this was the Forbes article link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/07/23/what-could-social-media-look-like-in-2022-and-beyond/?sh=4bd42709f750). It will be intriguing to see what changes are implemented at Twitter in the coming months.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. There is an old Polish curse: May you live in interesting times! It might sound even scarier on Polish, I’m not sure. I’m with you on Elon Musk. Big promises of a return to freer speech. But let’s see how that plays out. At the end of the day, Musk is a businessman – and a damn good one. So I expect to see his business model tested on consumers in the marketplace. The way I see it, there will always, in a democratic, capitalist society, be a wrestle between consumers steering society by their consumption choices, and big business trying to steer and drive and limit and curate consumption towards what makes profit. Henry Ford famously quipped (regarding his world 1st production line car, the Model T Ford), “They can have any colour they like, as long as it’s black!” I remember a daring US TV show called, The L Word. It launched in 2004. A show about the lives of a group of Lesbian friends. At virtually the same time, the series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy launched. Queer Eye was an international superhit. The L Word kind of fizzled and spluttered. I watched this as a fascinating example of what I call our Social Narrative. What made the difference? Whatever it was, I’m certain consumers decided. This is never over. Always evolving. It’s the conversations we have with ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. The mass media plays an enormous role now in the exchange, sharing and spreading of these conversations. How large a role big corp gets to play in this conversation is the most interesting question. And we can loo to countries and alternative systems like China or Iran to think about where we are at. What do you think?
You’re exactly right, Musk is a businessman after all. He has definitely made claims in regard to this so it will be interesting to see what he values more, money or free speech. You’re absolutely correct about big corp which appears to be the shift in the West. They own too much of our information, the by-product of democracy. I certainly do not think communism is the answer, as I imagine would not be your choice either. I do, however, have hope, after all the internet was born from a decentralised model so maybe decentralised SNS is not out of reach. Agreed, the struggle between democracy and capitalism is very real – I wonder if the power of many (as in social media) is enough to influence this change?
At the end of the day, this conference, and these papers are placing a spotlight on Communities. I think your question about People Power and decentralised networks is at the core of many issues. I’m not without hope. I’ve watched Uber and Air BnB completely change the game, globally, pretty quickly. Facebook and YouTube, too have been transformative. TikTok seems an unlikely new stormtrooper. Wikipedia defied all critics and sceptics. none of these seismic shifts took very long, either. So we watch and see. I have read a great deal about Innovation. If you get a chance, read Matt Ridley’s wonderful book. Innovation has accelerated and continues to at an ever-increasing rate. It’s all these interconnected minds meeting, bouncing off one another. Feedback loops and access to big data for analysis place a lot of valuable (inspirational) information in the hands of ordinary people. So I’m betting we cannot imagine what the landscape will look like, even five years from now. For your entertainment: my partner has a senior role in a major international health insurance company. According to her, we are on the brink of a health services revolution, led by “wearables”, telemetry, tiny digital implants that talk to your phone and your doctor, digital tattoos that will make fitbits look like the first brick phones. These are just the knowns. It’s going to be interesting times!
Hello Brendan. This has been a great read with a lot of key information. I definitely see what you are trying to argue here but in the past you could just move from one place to another. Join a new community and start fresh creating a new identity. In the current digital age identity is recorded forever. Every mistake a person makes on their journey will never be forgotten no matter where they move to on the planet and those mistakes can be used to portray a negative image of that person by others making it extremely difficult for that person to phase out of that stage into a new one.
Thank you for your comments, Adel. There are certainly, now, many stories of people’s lives badly damaged through online attacks. In some cases, because of things they wrote or photos resurrected from many years past. I wonder whether this is a perceived pressure contributing to some of the anxiety disorders widely documented across the globe, affecting the mental health of many young people? One thread of my paper was the idea that we should avoid the trap of idealising the past, pre-internet, as though these were better times for individuals to explore their identities or better communities, more supportive or offering more freedom for individuals. I don’t know if you have read Jon Ronson’s popular 2015 book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? It’s about online shaming and its historical antecedents. Ronson demonstrates that what was happening on the internet was a RE-emergence of public shaming, particularly as a state-sanctioned punishment. He shows that public shaming was in fact a popular form of community action with a long, deep, dark history. You suggest that a person could “just move from one place to another,” and “join a new community.” I’m trying to picture that. For a child in the 19th century? For a woman of any age, single or married, at any time or place in history before the 1970s? What sort of social mobility or identity freedoms would an African American have had or someone with bipolar disorder or someone physically disabled? When, in the past, and where could a person who was LGBTQIA+ simply move and join a new community? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Our networked world is definitely not perfect. It certainly places powerfully destructive means in the hands of mobs and hidden actors. But I think I’d still rather be growing up now, and I still think on the balance, an individual really does have more freedom to explore and express his/her identity. As a final note, in his book, Jon Ronson investigated whether it was possible for an individual to erase or at least bury their past. He found that there are companies who, for a fee, will do exactly that. Depending on what data a person wants to bury, the cost can be anything from hundreds of dollars up to $10,000+. Not easy, but perhaps easier and cheaper than packing up one’s life and trying to settle in a new community as you suggest was once possible.
Hi Brendan
Thanks for sharing your paper. I really enjoyed reading your paper, especially of the online communities enabling mob morality. Some examples you pointed out were J.K Rowling and the Boeing executive article. This mob mentality has been around for a while, in fact in 1929 people started withdrawing their money from banks all across America resulting in the Great Depression. It is interesting to see what the possibilities are for the future of technology, and what impact machine learning and AI may have on our community. I believe technology is a tool that, like many other tools, having the power to make our lives easier, however if we don’t use this tool for what it was intended for, it can result in real ramifications to our identity and communities.
Thank you for your comments, Peter. Every technological advance that is taken up by the masses sems to have a double edge. This seems to be especially true of mass communication technologies. It is an entertaining exercise to revisit the storm of fear and dire warnings about the dangers and negative consequences of paperback books (cheap enough for married women to waste all day reading and become distracted from their duties and destroy families); television (destroying family’s sacred dinner time, dumbing down children and teaching them to be violent); radio (destroying the unique experience of live theatre and live music), etc. I tend to be a little more optimistic about our ability, as a society, to work through the new adaptations and challenges and absorb innovations as they emerge. I agree with you, the next set of “game-changers” are going to come from AI and machine learning. There are clearly going to be many spheres in society which make tremendous strides of improvement in the quality of people’s lives because of AI. Health care is just one about to be transformed. What this will mean for our focus here, individual identity and community, is harder to predict. I don’t know if you have seen the film “Her,” but it is a fascinating provocation about the near future of AI in terms of personal relationships and identity. It asks the question: does it matter if you have the most wonderful relationship you’ve ever had, and it’s with an online AI identity? And what is she is a supercomputer managing, at the same time, countless other relationships? I highly recommend it.
Hi there Brendan,
Your paper was very interesting and informative to read, and really explored some thought provoking ideas about the ways identity is filtered, moulded by the online platforms. Identity seems so easily expressed and as you mentioned people can also set the “reset” button on themselves and portray themselves in a completely different manner should they choose. The idea of identity being so flexible in this way yet, as you mentioned “how free can an individual be, we might ask, if their access to information is filtered and curated by invisible agents without their knowledge?”. It was interesting how identity was compared to a uniform where it has limitations on these online platforms. I also think its a little disturbing how people can completely mask their identities and in turn choose to take risks knowing there will be limited if no consequence due to the limitations of these sites. This freedom has opened a gateway for scammers and other dangerous people on these online platforms. Should there be more limitations on profiles people are allowed to make? Or will this defeat this exploration of identity on the platforms?
You ask some great questions, Zoe. Like you, I cannot resist weighing up the obvious benefits and equally troubling potential for danger and harm. I think I remain optimistic about our capacity as individuals, alongside our better natures as groups and communities, to learn to adapt to each communications revolution. And not just adapt, but take up and fly with it. It happened with the printing press, it happened with radio, television, satellites, photography, handicams. I try to imagine what is coming in our lifetime with AI and the revolution that will be nano-technologies. (my son is currently completing a PhD with CSIRO in materials nano-tech. Watch that space!) For us, in this subject at least, we are left to contemplate how these changes might impact on individuals searching for identity and a place in community. Will we ever eradicate wickedness or selfish behaviour? Probably not. But it seems to me that increasingly, across our spectacular human anthill, the better angels of our human nature are drowning out the negatives.
Hey Brendan, great article!
You make a lot of really interesting points, but what stood out to me most was the grip that businesses have on expressions of identity and the parameters that users have to engage with in order to use social media. For example, Instagram is a far more visual medium than, say, twitter. As a result, users often give away certain information such as their location and even their face in order to contribute to the site. This, of course, is part of the commodification of users that you wrote about. Do you believe that businesses in the future will try even harder to obscure what user information they have access to? We’ve already seen the Net Neutrality issue crop up with a push to end end-to-end encryption and such talks are murmuring through the Australian government too, under the guise of “protecting the children”. Mark Zuckerberg touting holistic, single identities that follow us all over the internet is also a point of concern (considering Facebook already builds data on people that aren’t yet on Facebook). Going forward, do you think we will gradually lose our privacy online?
The identity/privacy issues are so complex now, it is hard to see a way for governments, institutions, individuals, the legal fraternity and businesses negotiating a logical pathway through it all. And I have a feeling AI and computer learning will soon make the very idea and definition of an identity redundant or impossible to define. I remain mildly optimistic that people will find a way to stay aware, vigilant, antagonistic to being controlled. And we will see shocking abuses, outrageous decisions, dangerous and unanticipated turns. Negotiating one’s life has rapidly become so much more complicated than it was even 30 years ago. I understand the epidemic of anxiety issues globally. But I would still argue we live in a better world than most humans in history had the chance to experience. Ask a working class child in Dickens’ London or any of the millions of women who were not much more than property over recent centuries… Or an ashamed, terrified homosexual… or… you see what I mean…
You’re absolutely right, in recent years especially we’ve seen that when people see injustice, they’re willing to stand against it. I suppose my fear is that businesses/politicians love to purposely obfuscate policies in order to sneak under the radar of the everyman. I can only hope that we can continue to be vigilant. As someone that grew up alongside the internet, the way it is now is almost unrecognisable from how it was in my youth. The stranglehold companies like Facebook (or Meta I guess) have now is insane. It’s hard to have a life-will-go-on kind of attitude when I’ve seen these erosions in real time, though you are definitely correct on our higher standard of living.
Hi Brendan, enjoyed this paper and it’s a great example of concepts we can all related to if we explore how we came to be in a way, our identities and online digital presences’.
– You mention sociological and psychological perspectives which particularly interested me, especially since online platforms we use to develop identities take these two worlds into consideration to map and encourage usage and online addiction: further engagement with that respective platform (if that makes sense i hope). We can’t talk about identity development without talking about human behaviour and it’s patterns and themes.
– The other thing that really stood out to me was the idea “There has perhaps never been more alarm and fear mongering than in our present time with regard to the impact social media is having on individuals in our networked society.” With the current Australian election period reaching its peak, some fringe parties are blatantly lying to the public through fear mongering and I immediately thought of that, how it affects identity development (particularly political and how people may vote). These networks grow and gain momentum through fear and and a desire for attention. It is very true that fear mongering is alive and well in Australia and the world, (helped by networktivity!), and unfortunately sways people’s identities and major decisions and thoughts.
You are spot on, Michael. I guess the more that people like yourself grow media savvy, the less vulnerable we become. Maybe it will force big corp and political parties to treat the public like thinking adults… The socio-psych mapping you raise is, I think, absolutely central to the design and evolution of these platforms and apps. The explosion of TikTok is the latest, greatest example. It wont be the last. But I remain optimistic. See how TikTok is transforming from a novelty dancing selfie app to globally shared instantaneous war correspondence from Ukraine. No professional journalist can match the power, immediacy, rawness, intimacy of those short TikTok clips. Result? I’ve never seen the entire globe unite so quickly, so completely and take such powerful actions against an aggressor state. All of this transformation in what? 18 months? So we live in interesting times. And the AI revolution is pretty close, I think. nobody can even imagine how this will transform our world or the meaning of identity.
Hi Brendan,
Thanks for the paper. You’ve made a strong argument. I like how you explore school/ families/ churches’ influence, control and judgement over people, in a way this is what social media, corporations and users are doing. Goffman’s identity-as-performance theory is a great additional and supports your discussion around how online identities are constructed and shaped in the age of social media. Having done some research on TikTok lately for another project, I am still trying to get my head around TikTok’s affordance and its influence on content creator. I have mentioned it to another post that one of my observations on TikTok is that you can’t add a clickable URL in your profile, this is a function reserved for users with many followers. In a way, it’s a game. How does one get more followers? One must become a performer with attractive content. Being attractive and interesting is measured by the next post and everything else in the feed. Identity construction becomes a competition. At what cost? How conscious are TikTok users? Do they care? What does it say about them, culture, the platform, and affordance?
Here is food for thought and to add to the complexity of identity creation/ recreation – deepfakes (synthetic media) are next in line to join the wall of weird. DeepTomCruise is one thing, but what if one day every user is able to construct a fully AI-generated person who actually does not exist to interact with people as we do now. The technology is already here and it will only get sophisticated and weirder.
Thanks again.
Cheers
Mags
You are spot on, Mags. And I remember reading your comments on URLs for TT. Funnily enough, I’ve also written a paper for another subject about TikTok. I had to force myself to investigate what I had thought was essentially a glorified selfie dancing app. I have to say the rapid evolution of TT into an extraordinary global social network uniting in protest and appal at the Ukraine invasion gives me reason to remain pretty optimistic about our potential as this human anthill. No professional journalist can match the power, immediacy, rawness, intimacy of those short TikTok clips from inside Ukraine. And there is no historical precedent matching the entire globe uniting so quickly, so completely and taking such powerful actions against an aggressor state. Putin imagined it was 1940, but it’s 2022 and he is stuck with an enormous face-saving problem now. I am certain technology has delivered this – maybe TT more than anything else! So we live in interesting times. And the AI revolution is pretty close, I think. nobody can even imagine how this will transform our world or the meaning of identity. But I’m with you – how will we incorporate “constructed” identities? Have you seen the film “Her”? If not – you must watch it.
Cheers.
Brendan.
Hi Brendan, you’ve written a great paper. It was very engaging to read and prompted some deep thoughts. Do you truly agree that we collectively over-romanticise the past? I feel a large majority of us, in particular the younger millennials and gen z, are very vocal about challenging past values, beliefs and traditions held by our predecessors. If anything, I’d say our generation gives no merit to the ways of the past in favour of promoting our own progressive values and beliefs. I agree with your point about rigid hierarchies governing communication, I feel like this is how the generations before us were influenced to hold certain beliefs and perspectives on various concepts, especially religions (Predominantly Catholic here in Australia) on progressive topics such as gay marriage and transgender acceptance. One downside to online anonymity that I think is important to discuss, is the lack of accountability for unacceptable behaviour, it can both allow and encourage hate speech, discrimination and other disreputable acts to go on without appropriate punishment and/or intervention. I’d like to commend you on the use of the ‘infinite mask and costume store with the people/groups/institutions behind the mirrors’ analogy, I found it to be quite an apt take on our online exploration of our identities.
I wanted to note for future reference, that you’ve projected a male identity onto the ‘individual’ (Paragraph 5, Line 2), whilst this isn’t necessarily bad, I, as a female reader found it jarring as I could no longer properly relate to the individual and the concept being discussed. I suggest replacing the ‘he’ with a ‘they’ to be more gender inclusive for all readers.
Thank you for your thoughts, Kiah. Point taken on the use of “he”. What was deemed “correct usage” of English in my formative years has changed, mostly for the better. But rewiring the brain doesn’t happen easily. I like your point about your generation’s perspective on the past. You will enjoy your own children and grandchildren accusing you of being no more than a product of your time. It is ultimately an inescapable truth, but also an important part of the cultural narrative which keeps evolving, and the generational dialogues which are very much needed. There are certainly many voices of concern with regard to what would have to be called an epidemic of anxiety and mental health issues globally. It seems hard not to link these with the internet revolution but unpacking why this should be so is fraught. This is the funnel I took into one line of argument (which I don’t agree with), that communities of the past were much more positive, healthy places for people to grow. Why do you think your generation is on the one hand, so active and vocal and participatory (I would think this feels empowering and meaningful and fulfilling?) yet on the other hand so anxious and insignificant? Don’t get me wrong, I realise you cant categorize millions of people into one or two baskets, but there IS, by any measure, a real phenomenon out there which seems troubling. I’m fascinated by trying to better understand it. Look at my own paper. I’m well aware of the paradox. If things have never been better for young people growing up, why do things seem to be worse than ever?
Regards,
Brendan.
.
Hi Brendan, I agree with you that the values and beliefs held by contemporary society will ultimately change over time. I do, however, like to believe that our generation’s emphasis on being ‘open-minded’ will help us on that journey and that we won’t be as stuck in our ways as our predecessors. You’ve brought up the global rise in anxiety and mental health issues. Whilst I agree that a contributing factor to this can be how our values and beliefs are accepted and or denied by the world and/or people close to us, especially online, I think it is vital that environmental factors are taken into consideration when discussing mental health. My generation has been fighting for women’s rights, minority group rights (especially black and asian people in today’s political climate) and freedom of speech. We are still exploring and forming our identities, in a world where everything is burning. We are spending our formative years living through and adapting to a global pandemic, multiple wars, global protests and more. On top of that, our planet is dying. It is not easy, but can you really call the past easy either? Wars were fought and minority groups were marginalised and suffered tragically. I don’t think that mental health issues were any less prevalent back then than they are today, it was a largely taboo and stigmatised topic that has only recently evolved to become a normalised topic of discussion. I believe this is an important contributing factor to the rise in numbers of mental health issues. It is also important to consider that asking for help has become less stigmatised, which can also account for more people coming forward for treatment and therapy.
To answer your question, I think a big contributing factor to why we may feel anxious and insignificant despite being active, vocal and participatory, is that the people whose minds we are trying to change are ones that we know. We care about these people and it can be terrifying to have that discussion that could potentially alter your entire relationship with that person. It’s definitely easier to be active, vocal and participatory online about such things when the people who know you in real life aren’t aware of your participation. The anonymity the internet provides can be a saving grace to many, especially those with progressive views stuck in ‘traditional’ families and/or communities.
Excluding the global crises that seem to hit us blow after blow, do you really think that we’re worse off now than in the past?
You make some really valid points, Kiah. A reminder that it is really difficult to try to make comparisons between different times. An important thought about the value of anonymity online, too. In terms of your question regarding being “worse off” now, I think this needs some careful distinction. My question, and concerns, are related to the data that seems to be consistently building right around the world: that young people are experiencing levels of unhappiness, depression, anxiety, never seen before. Even taking on board your valid points about reporting, asking for help, destigmatisation; I think there remain questions about why, and we need attempts to research whether there is a real correlation between this trend and the increase in time living online. Actually, in a great many ways, I would argue that the world, and life for the vast majority of people, has never held more freedom, greater quality, better opportunities than any other time in history. This makes the paradox all the more puzzling. There is simply no question that as a percentage of populations, more people are living longer, safer, healthier, freer lives than ever before. As a human anthill, we face challenges, but we have accomplished extraordinary feats, never more so than the problem-solving of the last 100 years. To bring it all back to identity and community, it seems to me that we have reached a time when a young mind, which evolved to operate within a community of 12-20 people, has not had the many thousands of years evolution needs to transform into a mind able to be plugged into a community of billions. Our best hope may be that we approach a kind of “collective consciousness” where we share a global memory, a global identity, an anthill consciousness. It may sound like science fiction but the signs are there and AI is going to accelerate it.
Hi Brendan, I really enjoyed reading your paper; especially the points regarding the costs associated with any and all forms of freedom of representation and identity development within the confines of social media communities. I agree holistically with that notion of cost; however, I was curious as to whether through your research you found proposed alternative methods or slight tweaks to a “configuration of community” that enables ones representation, freedom or both to potentially incur a lower/ more accepted cost? or if you have not, is their any other adjustments, small or big that you may have thought about that could incur a less significant cost within the current standard of social media?
eg. I found an article during my research that discussed the addition of flags to altered images of beauty that denoted exactly what was modified. This comes with the benefit of potentially grounding the ever-changing standard of beauty expressed online, while it was found to come at the cost of a greater desire to achieve what
was deemed unrealistic; but I feel as if these results were only founded due to the notion that the study was brief, while digital alteration has been a thing well since the global adoption of social media; and, if put into effect over a larger period of time could incur a lower potential cost that denoted in the research paper.
thanks again for your amazing paper, I really enjoyed it!
Stephen
I like the way you’re thinking, Stephen. There is a long, slippery slope around beauty and “truth’. I do see signs that there is a growing demand for authenticity. Maybe a younger generation more savvy, more cynical? But the technology enabling fakery is becoming so extraordinary, I find it hard not to foresee a time when there is almost no way to tell what is real. The past will be manipulated so that knowing what is a real film or photo from the past may be impossible. Knowing whether a celebrity really did or said something, impossible. I have read that the technology for perfectly copying a person’s voice is here. And the revolution to come with AI can hardly be imagined. So i dont know what all of this will do to the meaning of an “identity”. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Perhaps, while millions plug into a digital fantasy to escape the boredom of their lives, others will escape “off-grid” and seek authentic adventure in the real world away from technology?
Hi Brendan, this was a great paper,
I think that the entire discussion around identity online is a very interesting topic with a lot of intricacies. You briefly mentioned the influence of large “corporate megaliths like Google and Facebook” and the power that they have, and I also question to what extent they do influence the way that society is headed in terms of identity and expression. The power that these companies hold is unimaginable in the amount of influence they have over people, and it raises the question of trust. How can we trust these large corporations to do the right thing, especially considering that there is no real way of us knowing how much these invisible agents are filtering the information that masses are receiving. As well as this, how much do algorithms which fish for engagement influence peoples identities. Echo chambers of content where individuals fall further down the rabbit hole of an idea have the potential to isolate individuals into one way of thinking, which is potential harmful to the idea of expressiveness in identity.
Thanks,
Ben
You are spot on, Ben. I’m optimistic that if there are enough people like yourself, savvy enough, aware enough, then there will always be, at least, a battle and a tension between big corporations and consumers. They DO needs us. Never forget that. Millions could agree to stop using Facebook tomorrow! The technology by which we could agree is already in our hands.
That’s a great outlook, remembering that they need us just as much (if not more) than we need them
Hi Brendan,
Great paper 🙂 When you talk about the positives of people creating their online identities/ different versions of self, do you think this then inhabits an environment where people can take this to the extreme and can pose as somebody they are not (looking at cat fishing for eg). Do you think this then poses a bigger threat to online identity then we realise? What are your thoughts on this concept?
Regards,
-J
Hi Brendan,
What a well written and in-depth paper great job! While reading your paper, specifically the part about conformity I couldn’t help but think about a past study (I can’t quite remember when from nor how reliable it was) where children who are raised to be a specific way with a specific goal in mind tend to rebel later in life. It’s almost as if identity is more prominent when in a community that provides resistance to freedom and expression. Curious to see what you think.
Thanks!
Hi Brendan, I really enjoyed reading your piece. I agree with you that it romanticising traditional forms of community is unhelpful and we need to embrace new forms of online communities that are evolving to suit our contemporary lifestyles. I found the comments in your feed insightful as well. It will be interesting to see how children and teenagers navigate their identity as it becomes more synonymous with an online presence or lack thereof. I can’t help but think of the major social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram to name a few, that have a huge part to play in the way people communicate and collaborate online and therefore how people present their online identities. Their main agenda is economic gain and this dictates the structure of the platform. Fostering healthy and safe online environments extends as far as the platform allows it to. I wonder what a non-for-profit social media platform would look like, if it would even be possible, and if that would change how people depict themselves online.
Thank you for an interesting and informative read.
Hello Brendan,
Your arguments are well established and well blended throughout the paper about the ways identities are filtered in online platforms. People have the alternative to portray themselves in an entirely different way that they want to be viewed. Teenagers have the choice to immerse new identities online but as time flies ,their real identity cannot be fully erased. I agree with your point of view about how social media platform has authorized a very multifaceted version of society. You also mentioned of the online communities enabling mob morality which is an interesting point that you have made.
Hi Brendan,
Great paper! I agree that social media sites have made identity performance both more fluid and continuous than ever before.
It was very interesting to read about the moral panic around online communities and social networks, and I enjoyed that you have succinctly challenged the notion that the “traditional” offline community life of the past somehow offered a greater sense of place, value, and support. As someone who has researched Queer community spaces for their paper, I can definitely agree that the traditional notions of community are over-romanticized, particularly as marginalised individuals often faced rejection, discrimination, danger, or erasure from community spaces. As you stated, “…an individual’s family, school, church group, neighbourhood, local club, ethnicity or cultural traditions (to name just a few) could wield significant control and judgement over one’s appearance, behaviour and identity choices,” with these judgments negatively effecting the LGBTQ+ community in particular!
In your paper I found myself particularly interested in that despite exploring the positive aspects of individuals being able to perform multiple identities across online spaces, you have also touched upon some of the more negative consequences of the systems, infrastructure, and culture that allow and support this. I wonder if you have a personal stance on whether the consequences (including the surveillance & mob morality you mention) outweigh the benefits of identity creation and freedom in online spaces?