Session 5 Blog: Identity-Making in Social Media

Source: www.scoop.it/t/online-identity-by-aimee-wright

Have you ever experienced something like this? After adding a new friend in social media, the first thing you would like to do is to glance over the content in his or her social media account to learn more about this person. Or you establish the first impression of someone through his or her social media posts, yet you find the person is quite different from what you thought when you meet each other offline. This process of social media, to some extent, has become an effective way for us to understand and evaluate others. Therefore, identity-making is of much importance when we talking about social media, as it can not only effects other’s impression on you, it also helps discover yourself.

To be honest, at first I just use the social media platform like WeChat to share my daily life and keep in touch with my friends. Most of the content I posted in “moments” was pretty casual, without carefully designed or specific purpose to show who I am. Nevertheless, as the friend circle enlarged and more social media platform I was engaged in, I gradually pay more attention to the online identity-making. Like other young people, I am playing various self-roles in different social media platforms. For instance, I prefer to share delightful and interesting parts of my daily life in WeChat with my friends to keep a positive personal image, while in Weibo I become a crazy fans to talk about my idol and explore my personal interests since there is place without parents, bosses and colleagues. In LinkedIn, however, I have to be as professional as possible in order to establish networks and attract attention from HR. When we look at our smartphone screen, it is just like looking at the mirror. I’m pretty sure that all the identities I presented online are various angles of myself and my life, but is this “social image” the real me? How do people form the identity they want be in social media? Now, it is time to stop checking your social media status updates and think about why all these things take place.

Source: www.scoop.it/t/online-identity-by-aimee-wright

After reading Identity-Making: A multimodal Approach for Researching Identity in Social Media, I came to notice the deeper theoretical and philosophical roots of identity presented in social media, where is not “just a place for self-presentation, but becomes an active part of how people form identities and how they come to understand themselves”. In the article, the authors derive a framework and distinguish three modes of identity-making: reflective, narrative and active. I found the narrative one really interesting, as the narration is how “we come to know, understand, and make sense of the world” and our everyday life events can be given meanings. In my opinion, it is reasonable for people to narrate themselves into the shared stories to show some aspects of themselves. One of my friend once made a “WeChat Book” for me as my birthday present, which recorded the most impressive posts in my WeChat moments for the past a few years and it is just looks like my own autobiography. I really love this “book” which remind me of how I got to where I am today and I guess I may share it with my child one day in the future >.<

In the discussion of identity-making in social media, I stand on the side of non-essentialism and believe in the constructivism theory in social sciences. When we take part in various social practices and contexts, the self can be continuously being constituted and reaffirmed. However, we may sometimes get lost in the multiple identities in social media and forget the real self. We are in a dilemma in social media--it is not necessary to consider how other people think of you all the time, but what does social mean if we only focus on yourself?