8THE DIGITAL SELF by GROUP 5

THE
DIGITAL
SELF
TOPIC
•
S:CYBER SPACE
ONLINE IDENTITY AND
SELF IN
• SELECTIVE SELF PRESENTATION
AND IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
• IMPACT OF ONLINE
INTERACTION ON THE SELF
• GENDER SEXUALITY
ONLINE
• PERFORMING GENDER
• ONLINE
BOUNDARIES OF THE
ONLINE SELF
ONLINE IDENTITY AND SELF IN
CYBER SPACE
• The term "online-identity" implies that there is a distinction between how people
present themselves and how they do offline.
• SPLIT BETWEEN “ONLINE” AND “OFFLINE” IDENTITY IS
NARROWING FOR 2 REASONS:
 People today use social media primarily to communicate

with people they know in “real life” contexts like homme,
work and school.
 Wireless network and portable devices like smartphones
and tablets make it easy to access social media as part of
day-to-day life, rather than having formally “log on” to
the internet (Marwick, A. 2013)
CYBER SPACE
• We are living in a DIGITAL AGE and other than face to

face interaction, we have interactions involving
technology -- cellular phones, computers, and other
gadgets. Thus, we build or DIGITAL SELF.
CYBER SPACE
(I, ME, MYSELF, AND My User ID Online Identity)
• Online Identity is the sum of your characteristics and interactions. Because you interact
differently with each website you visit, each of those websites will have different picture of
who you are and what you do.
• "Your online identity is not the same as your real world

identity because the characteristics you represent online
differ from the characteristics you represent in the real
world." (InternetSociety.Org, 2011)
CYBER SPACE
• "Social media like social network sites, blogs and online personals require users to self-consciously
create virtual depictions of themselves. One way of understanding such self-representations is the
information and materials people choose show others on a Facebook profile or a Twitter stream. But
identity is also expressed through interacting with other, whether over instant messenger or email."
(Marwick, A. 2013)
• Since there are fewer identity cues available online than face-to-
face, every piece of digital information a person provides, from
typing speed to nickname and email address, can and is used to
make inferences about them. (Marwick A. 2013)
CYBER SPACE
• You build your Online Identity when you interact with websites, it will collect its own version of
who you are based on the information that you have shared. It depends on you if you want your
online identity near to your real identity or far from reality.
SELECTIVE-SELF PRESENATION AND
IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
• According to Goffman (1959) and Leary (1995), self-presentation is
the process of controlling how one is perceived by other people.
• Individuals selectively provide information about them and carefully

cater this information in response to other’s feedback.
• Anything posted online is considered “public” despite what our “privacy” settings are.
• Personal identity is the interpersonal level of self which differentiates the individual as unique
from others.
• Social Identity is the level of self whereby the individual is identified by his or her group
memberships.
• Belk stated that sharing ourselves is no longer new and has been
practiced as soon as human beings were formed.
• Online friends are even more updated than the immediate family
Schwarz mentioned that we have entered an extra-ordinary era of self-
portraiture.
• As a result, researchers and participants become concerned with actively managing identity and
reputation and to warn against the phenomenon of “oversharing” (Labrecque, Markos, and Milne)
• People become unware of the extent of information they share online.
• FEAR OF MISSING OUT - The lack of privacy in many aspects of social media make users
more vulnerable, leading to compulsively checking newsfeeds and continually adding tweets and
postings in order to appear active and interesting.
• DISINHIBITION EFFECT - The lack of face-to-face gaze-meeting
with the feeling of anonymity and invisibility, gives people the freedom
for self-disclosure but can “flame” others and may cause conflict.
• According to Foucault (1996), confession along with contemplation, self-examination, learning,

reading, and writing self-critical letters to friends, are a part of the technologies of the self through
which we seek to purge and cleanse ourselves.
IMPACT OF ONLINE INTERACTION
ON THE SELF
• Social Interactions are demanding.
• Online interactions does not require cognitive or emotional involvement, making our
interactions with it much easier (Riling, Sanfey, Aronson, Nystrom, and Cohen, 2004)
• Research suggests that young users report increased self-

esteem and general well-being following instances of
positive feedback on social networking sites just like
Facebook, Instagram and twitter (Valkenburg, Peter, &
Schouten, 2006)
ON THE SELF
• However, online interactions cannot reveal our true feelings and can decrease people's happiness
levels.
• Studies were conducted to show that within the first 2 years after people first accessed the internet ,
their happiness level decreased (Kraut,1998) and that social media has a small, yet significant
detriment on over-all well-being.
• This is because browsing social media sites alone can lead to

feeling jealousy when we compare self to the online
personality of others.
• We cannot control our self-presentation on online interactions

and this may be both beneficial and harmful to the individual.
ON THE SELF
• Compared to face-to-face presentations, online interaction enable us to self-censor to a greater extent
and manage our online identities more strategically which provides greater opportunity to
misrepresent ourselves
• This is due to asynchronous communication or time delayed interactions that does not require
participant to be online simultaneously.
GENDER AND SEXUALITY ONLINE
• According to Marwick (2013), while the terms “sex,” “gender,” and “sexuality” are often thought of as synonymous,
they are actually quite distinct.
• Sex is the biological state that corresponds to what we might call a “man” or a “woman.”
• While “sex” is often explained as biological, fixed, and immutable, it is actually socially constructed (West and
Zimmerman 1987)
• Gender, then, is the social understanding of how sex should be experienced and how sex manifests in behavior,
personality, preferences, capabilities, and so forth.
• While sex and gender are presumed to be biologically connected,

we can understand gender as a sociocultural specific set of
norms that are mapped onto aa category of “sex”
(Kessler and McKenna 1978; Lorber 1994)
• Gender is historical
• It is produced by media and popular culture

• (Gauntlett 2008; van Zoonen 1994)
• It is taught by families, schools, peer groups, and nation states (Goffman 1977).
GENDER AND SEXUALITY ONLINE
• It is reinforced through songs, sayings, admonition, slang, language, fashion, and discourse (Cameron 1998;
Cameron and Kulick 2003), and it is deeply ingrained.
• Gender is a system of classification that values male-gendered things more than female related things.
• This system plays out on the bodies of men and women, and in constructing hierarchies of everything from colors
(e.g., pink vs. blue) to academic departments (e.g., English vs. Math) to electronic gadgets and websites.
• Given this inequality, the universalized “male” body and experience is often constructed as average or normal, while
female-gendered experiences are conceptualized
as variations from the norm (Goffman 1977)
• Sexuality is an individual expression and understanding of desire.
• While like gender, this is often viewed as binary (homosexual or

heterosexual), in reality, sexuality is often experienced as fluid.
PERFORMING GENDER ONLINE
• JUDITH BUTLER (1990) - she conceptualized gender as a performance.
 She explained that popular understandings of gender sexuality came to be through discourse and social
processes.
 she argued that gender was performative, in that it is produced through millions of individual actions, rather
than something that comes naturally to men and women
• In 1990's many internet scholars drew from Butler and other queer theorists to understand online identity.
• According to the disembodiment hypothesis, internet users are free to actively
chose which gender or sexuality they are going to portray with the possibility of
creating alternate identities (Wynn and Katz 1997)
• The ability of the users to self consciously adapt and play with different gender
identities would reveal the choices in the production of gender, breaking down
binaries and encouraging fluidity in sexuality and gender expression.
PERFORMING GENDER ONLINE
• The Pew internet and American life project found no discernible differences in user generated content by
gender except remixing, which was most likely among teen girls. (Leonhart et al. 2010)
• Researchers has constantly shown that similar members of men and women maintain a blog about 14% of
internet users. (Lenhart et.al 2010). While the number of male and female bloggers is roughly different, they
tend to blog out different thing.
• Although the technologies are the same, the norms and mores of the people using them differ.
BOUNDARIES OF THE ONLINE SELF:
With the proliferations of multiple online personas, the core self idea crumbles in the digital world, the
self is now extended into avatars, which can affect our offline behavior and our sense of self, from a
more private to public presentation of self which is now co-constructed that can help affirm or modify
our sense of self. It is highly recommended that we set boundaries to our online self.
• PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC

• PERSONAL VS. SOCIAL
IDENTITY ONLINE
• GENDER AND SEXUALITY
ONLINE
PRIVATE VS.PUBLIC; PERSONAL VS. SOCIAL
IDENTITY ONLINE; GENDER SEXUALITY ONLINE
THE FOLLOWING GUIDELINES WILL HELP YOU SHARE INFORMATION ONLINE IN A SMART
WAY THAT WILL PROTECT YOYRSELF AND NOT HARM OTHERS.
 Is this post/story necessary?

 Is there a real benefit to this post? Is it funny, warm-hearted, teachable – or am I just
making noise online without purpose?
 Have we (as a family or parent/child) resolved this issue? An issue that is still being
worked out at home, or one that is either vulnerable or highly emotional, should not be
made public.
 Is it appropriate? Does it stay within the boundaries of our family values?
 With this seem as funny in 5, 10 or 15 years? Or this post better suited for sharing with
a small group of family members? Or maybe not at all
PRIVATE VS.PUBLIC; PERSONAL VS. SOCIAL;
IDENTITY ONLINE; GENDER SEXUALITY
ONLINE
Additional guidelines for proper sharing of information and ethical use of the
Internet according to New (2014):
• Stick to safer sites.

• Guard your passwords.
• Limit what you share.
• Remember that anything you put online or post on a site is there forever, even if
you try to delete it.
• Do not be mean or embarrass other people online.
• Always tell if you see strange or bad behavior online.
• Be choosy about your online friends.
• Be patient.
THAN
K YOU

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THE

 People today use social media primarily to communicate

• We are living in a DIGITAL AGE and other than face to

• "Your online identity is not the same as your real world

• Individuals selectively provide information about them and carefully

• According to Foucault (1996), confession along with contemplation, self-examination, learning,

• Research suggests that young users report increased self-

• This is because browsing social media sites alone can lead to

• We cannot control our self-presentation on online interactions

• While sex and gender are presumed to be biologically connected,

• It is produced by media and popular culture

• Sexuality is an individual expression and understanding of desire.

• While like gender, this is often viewed as binary (homosexual or

• PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC

 Is this post/story necessary?

• Stick to safer sites.

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