The Challenges of Expressing Online Identity

Next up at AoIR 2015 is Sonia Vivienne, whose focus is on self-exposure and social surveillance. She suggests that in using social media we are creating an exhibition of the self: the story of social presence builds on the perpetual connectedness of contemporary life, the intimate publics which emerge through this, and the networked private spheres that arise from it.

Intimate citizenship involves asserting the right to chose what we do with our bodies and identities; networked identity and privacy is negotiated and mediated, whether we are pseudonymous or not. There are both risks and rewards in establishing and expressing an online identity.

Sonia highlights the 2013 Russian law against "homosexual propaganda", and the Deti-404 campaign against it which utilised apparently secure online fora for its supporters – but information about participants quickly leaked out and some of them were persecuted by homophobes. The more violent homophobic, openly fascist groups actively use online and social media both to identify homosexual people and to boast about their physical abuse of their victims.

If individuals who feel that they cannot express their personal identity in the physical world seek affirmation in private online spaces, they may well place themselves in grave danger, therefore. How can stigmatised people express their personal identities safely online, then? Who controls our online identity, its representation and dissemination?

There are two broad options here – either our culture will become less judgmental and we are able to more broadly express our identities online, or we will be restricted to only express socially accepted identities. Beyond the extreme cases, these questions apply to any and all of us.