Identities through Social Media and Location Based Social Networks

• In Event: Media

Abstract

Social media affords people a means to broadcast personal illness and the illness of others. Social media lends itself to open discussions about these sensitive subjects. These open discussions should be recognized as one of the positive consequences of social media’s accessibility and should be recognized as a healthier approach to dealing with inevitable life events. With location based social networking, individuals have another means by which to display their lived experiences associated with suffering, sickness and dying. A person’s spatial self is formed in the moment the individual identifies him or herself with a physical location and its corresponding virtual location. The spatial self becomes a means by which the individual can self-present some tangible component of his or her identity. The concept of the “spatial-self” indicates that when an individual posts his/her location on social media in relation to a particular ‘real’ setting, he/she is connecting him/herself to the values and groups that are signified by that specific physical place or virtual space. Someone seeking healthcare related treatment, who “checks-in” to his or her doctor’s office via a mobile device, is at once physically located with a given practice, and if connected via Facebook, Twitter or other social networking site in which his or her physical location is displayed at the tap of a button, virtually located in proximity to the physical while also becoming a consumer of medical information that identifies him or her as a healthcare recipient. These individuals create a self-presentation of identity that is built around their medical and clinical facilities as well as their online virtual support groups. These healthcare recipients may also become advocates of others with the same illnesses or similar conditions, connected by nothing more than their aforementioned physical location status update that was displayed in the virtual environment. Healthcare recipients have identified themselves relative to the medical and clinical facilities where they have “checked-in.” Affiliative relationships form as a result of the connections made by an individual to other social groups, real or virtual. These affiliative relationships shape both the spatial self as they do an individual’s ‘real’ identity.

Authors

• Atsuko Kawakami, Tarleton State University

• Katrina Hinson, Tarleton State University