Intervening in Identity Shift’s Place in CMC

• In Event: An Intervention for Identity Shift: Unpacking the Challenges and Discrepancies of a CMC Theory and its Future

Abstract

Amy Gonzales (Indiana University, USA), first conceptualize identity shift, along with Jeff Hancock, in 2008, when the social internet was dramatically different than it is today. The world of “social media” was still evolving from web pages and semi-private communities to platforms that aggregated self-generated content and displayed it for large, amorphous audiences; but the digital affordances that originally girded the nearly decade-old concept have changed. Early computer-mediated communication (CMC) theory privileged text-centric communication and often implied that communication was between strangers or weak-ties (e.g. SIDE, hyperpersonal model). Today, most online interactions are with people we know, and often include visual content. Moreover, early studies of how, why, and to what effect people engage in online “selective self-presentations” (Walther, 1996) tended to emphasize idealized or positive presentations (e.g., Gibbs, Ellison, & Heino, 2006; Hancock & Toma, 2009). Yet today, scholars are also delving into presentations that reflect a sometimes complicated relationship to privacy, support, identity, and publicness (Ellison, Vitak, Steinfield, Gray, & Lampe, 2011; Hampton, Lu, & Shin, 2016; Vitak, Blasiola, Patil, & Litt, 2015). Given this, Gonzales will discuss new possibilities for the concept of identity shift as it grapples with a changing media landscape. This will include discussion of the longevity of the concept in a Pre-Facebook (Pre-F.B) versus Post-Facebook (Post-F.B) world, discussion of failed studies of identity shift using naturalistic feedback and photographic self-presentations, and attempts to broaden the concept to appreciate difficult, complicated, and even negative self-presentations or self-concepts. As we have these discussions, we can consider our expectations for theory in CMC more broadly. For example, have we become beholden to specific platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, which have come to dominate the CMC experience. How can we use an intervention on identity shift to think about the field of CMC, and its ability to yield new theoretical constructs that are at the forefront of describing and understanding the next twenty years of the social internet?

Author

• Amy L Gonzales, Indiana U