Viable Social Identity: An Identity Model to Analyze Products, Processes, and Reflections Using Digital Technologies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 69
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring the Role of Digital Media Play in Understanding Identity

Abstract

Digital technologies enable young people to express their identity, some through online avatar others through digital films. This paper presents a model of identity that has been used to successfully analyze, understand, and explain the identities of those who use media to share representations of self across media types, focusing on adolescent users. Using viable social identity (Côté & Levine, 2002) as a model for understanding how people use these technologies to represent self, I analyzed digital media products, youth produced digital films, the process of creating a digital radio show by freshman in a seminar course about identity and representation, and reflections on experiences with digital film from a youth artist turned youth media arts organization director.

Author

• Michelle Beth Bass, University of Wisconsin - Madison