1.1: Identity

Identity, once an elusive concept, is now expressed overtly online.

Diana Daly

Key points

• Identity online depends on what platforms allow you to express and what social norms influence you.
• Self-presentation often involves our performances of other people’s performances, or “performativity”.
• Authenticity is an ideal in self-presentation, but what appears to be authentic can be complicated, especially for people who are not part of dominant social, racial, and ethnic groups.
• We present ourselves differently in each context we are in. Social media collapses these contexts, which can cause problems.
• Social media intensifies our interactions by making them more persistent, visible, spreadable, and searchable.

In this chapter

• Section 1 Creating a profile
  • Student Insights: Observing social media as a placeholder (audio by Bella Villalpando, Spring 2021)
• Section 2: Who are you? Offline? Online? Across modalities?
  • Student Insights: The Snap Map Scandal (audio by Ally Hendricks, Fall 2021)
• Section 3 Self-presentation, Performativity, and Intersectionality
  • Student Insights: Stereotypes of the perfect man (audio by Mohith Reddy Vanukuri, Fall 2021)
• Section 4: Context collapse
• Section 5: Affordances of online communication
• Timelessness — Social Media and Ourselves podcast
• Core Concepts
• Core Questions
• Consider It: Social media still a closet for too many LGBTQIA+ employees (Amaral Lauriano, 2023 from The Conversation)

This book is about people, including you – all of you, through whom culture passes and takes new shape. You are a huge part of social media – but factors come together to make you, you? Identity is an iteration of the self that links individuals with how they are perceived by others. Identity combines how you see yourself and how others see you, in an endless riff that becomes your positioning in the world.

Section 1: Creating a profile

Male and female identities are often the only options given to users building an online profile. This reinforces gender divisions and performances enacted on those sites, making people present themselves as more strictly male or female than they otherwise might.

Let’s imagine that you were told that you must create a profile to continue reading this book or get a grade associated with it. Who would you be? I imagine many of you would reply, “Well, I’m not sure yet. Who is the profile for?” An audience or a public with whom you interact shapes your identity at any given time.

If the profile you are creating is simply for other students and instructors in the class you are taking, perhaps you’d craft the profile to reflect student teams or organizations you are part of; or perhaps you would keep it vague if the student community on your campus feels large or impersonal. Compare that to the profile you might craft for a professional site, like LinkedIn, and you might see distinct differences. When students in my courses share LinkedIn profiles they often look very different from the same students’ profiles in our Course Management System (CMS). On our CMS students upload small, fuzzy photos if they upload photos at all, whereas on LinkedIn those same students look directly at the camera, proudly wear suits, and boast of their accomplishments. In class, they want to blend in; but when applying for jobs, they want to stand out.

And now compare your student and professional profile to the profile you might use in online dating. Is it different? I imagine so! Perhaps the focus moves to looking attractive and inviting to attract those you are interested in.

^{Student Insights: Observing social media as a placeholder (audio by Bella Villalpando, Spring 2021)}

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Respond to this case study: This student speaks about watching someone else curating their online profile, and interprets those actions to infer things about that person’s life. Can the way someone uses online platforms tell us real information about their offline life? What are some examples from your life that could be seen by others as not being the “real” you?

You may find your self-presentation of your identity is limited or enhanced by what options or features the platform you use offers. These are affordances: cues in an environment that communicate how to interact with features or things in that environment and that can also communicate to others. A button affords being pushed; Snapchat’s snap streaks affords keeping a visible running count of two people’s interactions with one another. Affordances can also be expanded, as they often are by users on social media platforms. For example, many platforms that do not afford the claiming of gender identities other than male or female find users exploiting creative ways to express gender fluidity.

Another example of identity limitations online—and in offline systems relying on categorization—relates to race and ethnicity, which are related but distinct concepts. Race is the visible perception of whiteness, blackness, Latinidad, or other categorization related to people’s characteristics such as skin color, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural expression or history, potentially including elements like religion or language. The racial and ethnic identities of many online media users and particularly those in the US can be complex combinations of races and cultures that are inadequately reflected in categorization systems.

The decisions and challenges users face in creating online identities get even more complex when it’s time to post content. Of course, users of social media are not always seeking to express their most “realistic” selves. Some platforms are desirable to users because they afford fantasy filters or the trappings of other identities. Video game avatars offer compelling examples of profiles that embody other lives and beings. But does that mean you don’t spend much time designing that avatar, since it’s “not you?” Of course not; it has become standard in the gaming industry to charge significant sums for downloadable content to customize your avatar or “skin” – because your avatar is you, for one or more gaming publics. And that avatar and profile will influence how people treat you in-game; they constitute your in-game identity.

Identities online are associate with financial capital and social power, demonstrated most clearly by influencers —online celebrities and microcelebrities whose popularity is leveraged to sway the opinions, preferences, and purchasing decisions of their audience. Meanwhile, online audiences seem to crave the sense of “real”-ness, or authenticity, from online influencers and personal contacts alike, associating that quality with trust and closeness. As of 2023, the rising app BeReal was designed around one daily invitation to users to capture what they are doing during two-minute window, in a clear attempt to capture authentic moments. This design may not be built around simply wanting users to enjoy one another; authentic moments are big business to those who buy and sell user data. The pressure to be authentic can be particularly complicated for people of color, who can be challenged with meeting expectations online of what Mikaela Pitcan and coauthors refer to as a “vanilla self:” exhibiting the trappings of conservative whiteness, while simultaneously appearing to be authentically part of their racial group. This identity conundrum is not new—Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu found pressure to “act white” existed for black students in the 1980s, well before social networking sites existed—but social media’s capacity to gather varieties of audiences means different expectations of how to behave “right” can all come together at once.

Section 2: Who are you? Offline? Online? Across modalities?

Like the concept of information, identity is a notion that used to be amorphous and philosophical. You couldn’t easily set “identity” apart from the human to whom the identity belonged. Today, though, humans try to project every unseen aspect of our lives onto the binary-minded digital world. And that means the formerly shapeless concept of identity has to take shape and if we want it to represent us online, we have to know what we want and put it out there.

As a human, you don’t just have one identity, or even one online identity and also one offline identity. Our legal world and policies from platforms like Facebook may limit people to having one identity, but in life, both online and offline, we play many roles and thus have many identities.

^{Student Insights: The Snap Map Scandal (audio by Ally Hendricks, Fall 2021)}

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
https://opentextbooks.library.arizona.edu/humansrsocialmedia/?p=36#h5p-293

Respond to this case study: What people and contexts did the student seem to have in mind and not have in mind when they set up the Snap Map? How did the Snap Map collapse these contexts?

Section 3: Self-presentation, Performativity, and Intersectionality

Two theorists have given us important tools to understand these identity roles, although both theorists began writing about these roles before the internet drew so many of us to craft identities online.

Backtrack to the 1950s. Social roles in North America were rigid. Then, sociologist Erving Goffman put forward a new way of looking at identity in his 1956 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman wrote that we are all actors on a “social stage,” who play particular roles to create our identities and that these roles change as we interact with different people and situations. He also wrote that we can only really understand ourselves when we look at all of the roles we play.

The cultural critic and feminist theorist Judith Butler deconstructed the behaviors of identity roles expressing to gender in her 1990 book Gender Trouble. Butler’s theories introduced the notion that gender itself is our playing of roles like “boy,” “girl,” “man,” and “woman,” rather than these being “natural” or connected to our biologies. Butler’s concept of performativity says that roles like gender are only constructed through our performances of them; they would not exist without our acting them into existence.

Also beginning in the later 1980s and early 90s, civil rights theorist, activist, and law professor Kimberle Crenshaw wrote about how the power dynamics related to gender, race, and other identity categorizations must be understood for how they intersect with one another. Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality has been crucial both as a tool in holistic identity presentation and in recognizing that racism, sexism, and other types of oppression do not take terms impacting people, but instead work in compound ways.

If these theories have truth in them – and I believe they do – what does this mean for our identities online? Well, our online identities offer some additional evidence that gender and other social roles are constructed. Many early internet adopters were thrilled at the possibilities of expressing themselves without being defined by their bodies. But what we have learned from the maturing of the internet – aided by Goffman’s and Butler’s theories – is that humans’ “selves” have never existed only in or on our bodies. We perform ourselves into existence. And so when we perform ourselves into being online, we carry much of that same old offline, embodied baggage with us.

^{Student Insights: Stereotypes of the perfect man (audio by Mohith Reddy Vanukuri, Fall 2021)}

An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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An interactive H5P element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here:
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Respond to this case study: The author describes how others’ “perfect” self-presentation on Instagram made him withdraw from life’s activities until he deleted Instagram and then learned more about his own identity. Have you experienced these feelings when you view other people’s posts? Have you thought about how it might be harmful when you create posts that appear “perfect”? What are our responsibilities to others when we post on social media about ourselves?

Section 4: Context collapse

What if the profile I asked you to create above would be seen on multiple social media sites? What if you learned the profile would be associated with both your dating and your LinkedIn profiles? And also visible to your network where you connect with family? If this idea makes you feel uncomfortable, you are experiencing the threat of context collapse. Context collapse is when the different contexts or worlds you associate with overlap or become mixed together. Friends snicker at an embarrassing comment your mother makes in reply to your photo online. A job recruiter sees an Instagram photo of you partying and decides not to recruit you.

Political views expressed online can lead to particularly fraught situations. White supremacists preparing to demonstrate in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 discovered this when AirBnB canceled demonstrators’ Charlottesville reservations after being alerted to the demonstrators’ intentions. After the demonstrations, a campaign on Twitter to identify and publicly shame protestors led to problems for some protestors, who were prepared to promote white supremacy when surrounded by sympathizers but not prepared to defend these views before broader network contacts.

Context collapse is a constant danger as our online identities proliferate. In her research, new media scholar danah boyd found that teens develop strategies for dealing with context collapse, including using coded language to communicate. It is also common practice for people to try to keep their social media accounts separate and hide some details or even entire accounts from specific people and publics (as we’ll discuss in more detail in Chapter 3).

What keeps us using platforms even when our interactions feel uncomfortable or compromising? Well, network effects, which means that the more the platform is used – the more often we go there to interact with family, friends, customers, or all of these – the more valuable it becomes.

When my ‘professor’ and ‘mother’ roles overlap

Identities collapse, including those of author Diana Daly

I (Diana Daly, an author of this chapter) deal with context collapse too. As a professor of social media, I encourage my students to embrace their online experiences as part of their real worlds; in this professor role, I recognize the value in online interactions. And then I head home from class to find my teenaged son or daughter has been on social media for hours. I freak out. Enough screen time! I shout. I don’t care what you’re doing on there!

It feels hypocritical that I behave so differently in these two roles. So why do I do it? I ask myself this a lot, but I only have tentative answers; they have to do with what I perceive as distinct responsibilities in each role I play. When I teach, I don’t want my students to shut me out; I know from experience that they are only willing to examine their online interactions in my class when they feel comfortable I’m not judging them. But my job as a mother is not to help my son understand his online life. My job is to keep him safe and healthy, and when he spends too much time in virtual worlds, his safety and health slip out of my control.

Section 5: Affordances of online communication

You could say I am getting off easy with my own professor-mother context collapse. My mother role is mostly an offline role, so context collapse between my mother and professor roles online is not frequent, and it doesn’t last forever online. Whatever roles you feel the need to keep distinct in your life, it is likely their online expressions that you worry about the most. There are four key affordances of online communication that danah boyd emphasizes are far more pronounced than they would be offline (It’s Complicated, pg. 11). They are:

• persistence: online content and expressions can last for a very long time
• visibility: many audiences and publics may be able to see what you post over time
• spreadability: it’s nearly effortless to share content posted online
• searchability: content posted online can be searched for

The four affordances identified by boyd raise the stakes of online context collapse and communication in general. When we consider who controls our data, and what we agree to when we agree to use their services, it can be especially chilling to realize how easily what we express online might become visible to unintended audiences. They may spread this information to other publics, who will be able to search and find it easily. Finally, this threat will persist for a very long time.

Timelessness — Social Media and Ourselves podcast

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Timelessness (2021 Rerelease)

Release date: October 1st 2021 (This is a rerelease of an episode produced in 2019.)

Digital memory is perfect. Thanks to technology we remember so much more than we used to. And that’s good…or is it? Featuring more stories by college students about the once-cool outfits, hairstyles, and moments that bring shame on social media later; then a story of surviving a mass shooting only to relive it in response to a photo on Facebook; and an interview with Diana’s sister about Diana’s MC Hammer pants and her hideous blazer that mysteriously disappeared in middle school.

LISTEN • LISTEN WITH TRANSCRIPT

Respond to this podcast episode…How did the podcast episode “Timelessness” use interviews, student voices, or sounds to demonstrate a current or past social trend phenomenon? If you were making a sequel to this episode, what voices or sounds would you include to help listeners understand more about this trend, and why?

Core Concepts

affordances

signals or cues in an environment that communicate how to interact with features or things in that environment

authenticity

the sense of “real”-ness

context collapse

when the different contexts or worlds you associate with overlap or become mixed together

ethnicity

shared cultural expression or history, potentially including elements like religion or language

four key affordances of online communication

there are four affordances of online communication that danah boyd emphasizes are far more pronounced than in offline communication (It’s Complicated, pg. 11). They are: persistence (online content and expressions can last for a very long time), visibility (many audiences and publics may be able to see what you post over time), spreadability (it’s nearly effortless to share content posted online), and searchability (content posted online can be searched for)

identity

identity is an iteration of the self that links individuals with how they are perceived by others

influencers

online celebrities and microcelebrities whose popularity is leveraged to sway the opinions, preferences, and purchasing decisions of their audience.

intersectionality

Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory that different identity categories and associated forms of oppression intersect and must be taken into account

network effects in platforms

a concept meaning that the more the platform is used, the more valuable it is – because the more likely it is where we go to interact with family, friends, customers, or all of these. A shorthand definition is “the more, the merrier.”

performativity

Judith Butler’s concept in her 1990 book Gender Trouble that says that roles like gender are only constructed through our performances of them; they would not exist without our acting them into existence

race

the visible perception of whiteness, blackness, Latinidad, or other categorization related to people’s characteristics such as skin color

Core Questions

A. Questions for qualitative thought:

1. In what ways have a social media platform’s affordances on how you can present your identity felt restrictive to you? If you were in charge, how would you rewrite them?
2. Write about an example of context collapse you have seen or experienced online. Who were the intended publics or audiences? How did the situation end up?
3. Consider one or more aspects of yourself that do not feel like they have places to be expressed online. What is happening with these aspects of yourself that cannot be expressed online? How does it feel? Envision and describe or map out a platform where this type of expression can be shared.

B. Review: Which is the best answer?

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C. Game on!

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Related Content

Consider It: Social media still a closet for too many LGBTQIA+ employees (Amaral Lauriano, 2023 from The Conversation)

shutterstock.

Lucas Amaral Lauriano, IÉSEG School of Management

Social media has revolutionised how we relate to our colleagues and higher-ups, offering us opportunities to showcase different aspects of our lives. Currently, three out of four employees are connected with their coworkers via social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Be it in person or online, we all strive to present the best versions of ourselves, and social media allows us to filter these representations in ways that are specific to each platform. Twitter, for example, emphasises short, text messages, while Instagram focuses on images and videos. We also consider the diverse audiences and how they will interact with our content when determining our online behaviour.

But what happens when lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQIA+) employees, often marginalised in their workplaces, also need to decide whether or not to show their true selves online? As a management researcher interested in social issues, I recently delved into the experiences of gay male employees at the Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational automaker. My analyses of 480 hours of observation and 20 interviews with gay male employees uncover how they navigate online self-representation in the face of adversity.

When professionalism equals heteronormativity

I found that LGBTQIA+ employees adjust their social media use to align with the platforms’ functions and their professional lives. This was particularly the case with Instagram and Facebook. Many individuals I interviewed reported feeling that the traditional notion of professionalism, which favours heteronormativity, affects their online self-representation. As a result, some employees feel compelled to employ exhausting tactics to hide or regulate their sexuality. The latter can broadly be divided in three main strategies:

Fabrication, or the use of social media to create counterfeit straight relationships. Gabriel (29, sales executive) pretended for years that he had a girlfriend named Paula. She was a friend who accompanied Gabriel and his same-sex partner to social events and frequently appeared in pictures with them. Gabriel intentionally fabricated this narrative to fit his view of professionalism on Facebook and Instagram, as he explains:

“When someone [from work] sent me a friendship request, I was like ‘Fuck, what am I going to do?. I thought that if I disclosed my sexuality I would be judged, professional doors would close, and colleagues would be talking about me all the time… So, I never posted anything about my real boyfriend.”

In his evaluation, colleagues and superiors would have access to information about his sexuality, impacting how he is seen as a professional. He decided to hide homosexuality as much as possible, leading to a spiral of fabrication online.

Content control, or the careful curation of pictures, comments, likes, and posts in a bid to tone down, or even erase, traces and evidence of their sexuality. Roberto (31, engineering coordinator) explains:

“I usually do not post anything that could indicate that I am gay; I post mainly scenic pictures from my trips.”

Carlos (29, human resources analyst), on the other hand, steers clear from posting in general. Others prefer to change their profile names to avoid being found, such as Mario (28, marketing analyst), who uses only his initials:

“For years I kept my profile only with the letters ML, for Mario Lontra, my surname. I guess it was also a defence mechanism not to be found by colleagues at work.”

Audience control Through privacy configurations, individuals can target their posts at specific audiences, or limit the visibility of posts and comments on Instagram or Facebook. One of my interviewees, Diego, explains his reasons behind adopting the method:

“My colleagues screenshot pictures of other possible gay colleagues and send them to our chat group saying, ‘Look at what this faggot is doing.’ I’ve seen this happening, and I’d rather hide my profile to avoid them talking about me.”

When professionalism and homosexuality co-exist

While some individuals strive to conceal or manage their homosexuality on social media, some of my participants feel that being openly gay and professional is feasible. Through my research, I identified two strategies adopted by those who choose to publicly embrace their sexuality:

Community support building Rather than perceiving social media as a threat, these users make the most of it to network with other members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and downplay the idea of professionalism as heteronormativity online. This can be achieved by engaging with colleagues via comments, posts, and likes. Expressing opinions and engaging in gay discourse is less crucial for those who prioritise SNSs as a means of community support. Ravi (32, marketing executive) recognised the potential impact of being open about his sexuality on his LGBTQIA+ peers:

“I’m adopting a more activist posture. I met Mario at a meeting and he hugged me and said: ‘You don’t know how happy I am to see one of ours being promoted!’”

Mario and Ravi are from different departments but follow each other on Facebook and Instagram. Mario could see that Ravi expresses his homosexuality online and decided to talk to Ravi when he heard he had been promoted. Social media, in this case, had a community support building role for them.

Activism These individuals take advantage of social media to amplify their voices and destigmatise being gay, thereby also destigmatising their identities at work. Mario shares content on social issues affecting minorities and opposes Bolsonaro. He follows left-leaning LGBTQIA+ political profiles and drag queens, often posting pictures with his boyfriend. Gabriel is becoming more open about his sexuality, expressing himself at work and on Facebook and Instagram. He comments:

“It was one of the best things I did. I changed my relationship status to “engaged to Luigi” on Facebook. If anyone had a doubt, it is very clear there. A lot of managers congratulated me on the engagement… when you are in a situation like that, you have to act so that others who suffer can see that they have support, and also that those who have prejudice see that it can end up badly for them.“

Open political activism has the notable advantage of helping dissociate professionalism from heteronormativity.

Testing the waters across different social media channels

Overall, my study found that employees’ behaviours are not static over time. Instead, employees adapt their online behaviour based on workplace experiences and external feedback, constantly “testing the waters” to strike the right balance. As social media audiences evolve, LGBTQIA+ employees may shift their self-representations to align with the new norms of popular platforms. For instance, Twitter might be perceived as a more “niche” social media channel today. If that changes, and colleagues and superiors start using the platform, LGBTQIA+ employees might also behave differently.

Sadly, old-rooted ideas such as heteronormativity equalling professionalism are still pervasive. In an ideal world, sexual identity would not compromise professionalism, and there is still much work to be done before that is the case. Some positive examples to take inspiration from are IBM, Google and Deloitte, who have introduced structures for LGBQT employees to “be outspoken”, “authentic” and “confident” about their sexuality.

Lucas Amaral Lauriano, Assistant Professor, IÉSEG School of Management

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

About the author

Diana Daly

U of Arizona

https://ischool.arizona.edu/people/diana-daly

Dr. Diana Daly of the University of Arizona is the Director of iVoices, a media lab helping students produce media from their narratives on technologies. Prof Daly teaches about qualitative research, social media, and information quality at the University of Arizona.

Media Attributions

• Choosing male or female is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license
• s21_089_p2gpp © Isabella Villalpando is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license
• f21_005_gpp © Ally Hendricks is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license
• f21_065_gpp © Mohith Reddy Vanukuri is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license
• Identities collapsing © Diana Daly is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives) license