Identity Performance in Social Networking

Hong Kong.
The afternoon session at The Internet Turning 40 starts with a paper by Zizi Papacharissi on identity performance in social networking. She begins by noting the common question of whether social networking makes its users more or less social, and suggests that ultimately social networking is simply integrated into the social lives of its users; a better question may be what media and what online spaces are more or less social, and what online sociability actually means.

Zizi and her colleagues conducted a number of studies to explore those questions, and found a different kind of sociability on Facebook, for example - characterised for some users by a somewhat more passive sociability conducted from the home, but also by a greater flexibility, mobility, and convergence of social behaviours which are linked across Facebook and other spaces. The public privacy of social ties was also notable - users recognised the privacy risks and showed a complex, reflexive understanding of privacy.

Another study examined Facebook photo galleries and examined their visual characteristics - common types of photos depicted friends, popular events, mundane activities, and self-portraits, and common behaviours were overt interactions with the camera, smiling, play, and comparatively exaggerated displays of behaviour, and there was a specific non-professional aesthetic to the photos. Photography appeared integral to identity formation, and many events and relationships were announced through these photos; photos also enabled friends to bond and were directed at a close group of friends - they reinforced group membership and cohesion.

A third study examined the architecture of social networking sites - key themes which emerged here were the differing balances of public and private, the varying self-presentations in spaces that were publicly private and privately public, the intricate performances of taste and class, and the tight and loose structures of sociability which the different architectures allowed for.

What emerges from this is that we might be moving towards general expression and communication in these spaces, and away from more specific identity performance and community formation. There is a certain theatricality which these social networking sites offer, and what results is a sociality which can be activated only at the expense of privacy. What results is also a sense of self that is reflexive and liquid - a display of self that needs to make sense to a range of viewers, but without losing the user's own sense of self.

Technorati : Facebook, Internet Turning 40, identity, performance, privacy, social networking
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