"OMG - It's Over!?"

The final post – I can’t believe it has come to this already!! There has been so much to say, and so little space to say it all, so hopefully those who haven’t read everything I’ve read over the past 6 weeks have been able to keep up!

With this post, I wish to not only summarise what I have said so far, but to also attempt to draw some conclusions as to what my research has discovered about teenage girls and their identities online.

So, a brief recap: through the use of Web 2.0 applications, such as MySpace, teenage girls are able to create and control an online presentation of their self, and can manage the impressions others form of them more easily through this medium than in face-to-face interactions. These profiles and online identities can also be considered to be ‘liquid’, in that they can, and are prone to, change at the whim of the user, as a result of the liquidity of everything else in a teenage girl’s life. The liquidity of these online identities allows them to ‘try on’ as many different identities and play out different roles, which is imperative for the formation of their identity, as well as for overcoming the identity crisis faced during adolescence, as highlighted by Erikson.

With these profiles, teenage girls post information and photos of themselves, as well as a multitude of other things with which they wish to be identified, in order to create an online version of their offline self. The term ‘wikidentities’ is a useful one, which encompasses both the collaborative nature of teenage girls’ online identities, as they look to others for cultural cues as to what is appropriate, and also the fluid nature of all online content, so that once something is no longer ‘in fashion’, it can be removed from one’s profile. ‘Wikidentities’ is also useful in relation to both Bauman and Goffman, and how their theories apply to teenage girls’ online identities.

This blog has also demonstrated how and why teenage girls use elements such as ‘MySpace Angles’ amongst other things in order to present themselves in the best light, which helps control the impressions others form of them, in relation to Erving Goffman’s work on the presentation of self in everyday life. Additionally, how and why teenage girls change their profiles and identities “as often as they change clothes” (Rich, in Chandler, 2007: 4) was explained with the use of Zygmunt Bauman’s conception of liquidity. Without originally intending to, some of the theory behind how adolescents need to experiment with different identities in order to overcome identity crises as outlined by Erik Erikson has also been covered. "Adolescence is a time when people develop and construct identity and, notably, negotiate feelings of confusion as they straddle childhood and what most would consider some rather 'adult' concerns" (Stern, 2007: 2), and using social networking sites like MySpace can assist in this time of confusion.

There are so many different aspects of this project that have far more detail and information behind them than has been able to be accounted for in the limited space of this blog, as well as many other things that were discovered along the way that could very easily have been included if not for the restrictions. I take comfort in knowing that my behavioural studies honours thesis that will be underway next year will be able to cover these areas much more thoroughly, and delve even further into teenage girls’ liquid presentations of self online.

This blog is in some ways a part of my online identity. I used ‘kirstyleigh’ in the URL (my first and middle names) as it is how I like to identify myself on the internet, and stems from something my friends and I used to do when we first began using Web 2.0 applications (I had to add the –bhs to it because someone had already taken kirstyleigh.blogspot. I had a look at this site, and there was one post made in 2005 and it has never been updated since. Such is the nature of Web 2.0!). The background and layout of this blog are actually quite similar to my now disused MySpace profile, and is quite aesthetically pleasing to me, and also is a reflection of some of my ‘girly’ tendencies. (After some playing around, below is what my blog would look like with the same layout as my MySpace page). 

So I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. :)

References:

Chandler, J (2007), 'The virtual generation', The Age, August 14, 2007. First accessed 13 September 2009.

Stern, S (2007), Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging, Peter Lang: New York.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?"

With this week’s post, I had planned on taking an overall look at identity in relation to the other factors I have examined in previous posts. However, after I had begun, I realised that much of it would be better placed in my final post, and also that there were other things that still needed to be said in relation to teenage girls’ identities before that could happen.

I originally hadn’t even considered Erikson’s work as something to explore in this project, as my focus was on Bauman and Goffman, but once I began delving into a more overall look at teenage girls’ identities, it seems almost inevitable. At this point, I’m almost literally smacking myself on the forehead saying “Idiot! Of course!”. So here it goes.

It has been firmly established that adolescence is a pivotal time for identity formation, and during this time teens often face an ‘identity crisis’ (Erikson, 1951; Erikson 1971). It is during this time that

the young adult through free role experimentation may find a niche in some section of his society, a niche which is firmly defined and yet seems to be uniquely made for him…for it is of great relevance to the young individual’s identity formation that he be responded to and be given function and status as a person whose gradual growth and transformation make sense to those who begin to make sense to him (Erikson, 1971: 156).

Erikson also states that

In general, it is the inability to settle on an occupational identity which most disturbs young people. To keep themselves together they temporarily overidentify with the heroes of cliques and crowds to the point of an apparently complete loss of individuality (Erikson, 1971: 132).

SO…

During this critical stage of identity formation, teenage girls ‘experiment’ with different roles and identities in order to find a ‘niche’ into which they can fit once they ‘grow up’, so to speak. Erikson suggests that adolescence is over once, and only once, this identity crisis has been resolved. Nothing has changed for teenagers since Erikson came up with all of this, except the mediums available for this experimentation. Girls now have the internet to help the process. Or does it perhaps hinder the process?

Gross’s research suggests that 51% of participants in their study had pretended at some stage during their internet use, but only 2% of these had “explicitly mentioned wanting to explore a new self or identity” (Gross, 2004: 644). From this, it would seem that teens do not in fact use the internet as an “identity playground” as much as it was first thought. However, this research is directed at identifying teens who pretended to BE someone else, rather than experimenting with different aspects of THEIR identity, and furthermore, many teens would not even realise that what they are doing online is ‘exploring a new self or identity’, and thus would not respond in that way. It is more about experimenting with different aspects of identity, rather than completely different identities.

As has already been established in previous posts, the internet, and in particular social networking sites such as MySpace, provide a space where teens can ‘try on’ different identities and be whoever they want to be. The fluid nature of the internet allows them to not only easily change their ‘identity’ whenever they feel like it, but to also perform it in an environment that allows them to do so anonymously if they wish. The anonymity gives them the opportunity to try out different identities that may not be deemed socially acceptable amongst their immediate peers. As Valentine and Holloway explain, teens “find it easier to take risks with their self-presentation on-line because of the anonymity and privacy afforded by ICT (“no one knows who you really are…)” and also that “ICT gives [them] more control over their identities than do spontaneous face-to-face encounters because they have time to think about what they want to say and how they want to represent themselves” (Valentine & Holloway, 2002: 308). It is these aspects of the internet and social networking sites that assist teens through their identity crises.

However, an article by the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggests that "it may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities" ('Facebook Generation' Faces Identity Crisis, 2008), which can, so they say, have implications for their well-being. In response to this, it is important to point out that many of the people teens connect with through social networking sites such as MySpace are people they know primarily off-line, and so whatever their online identity may be, it will always be an extension of their offline identity, and very few teens will sever the ties between the two.

The problem of identity has always been around for teenage girls, it’s only their use of the internet to try and solve it that is new. The capabilities of the internet make identity construction and experimentation easier than ever before, and arguably provide teenagers with a powerful and useful tool for overcoming the identity crisis they face in their teenage years.

References:

Erikson, E (1951), Childhood and Society, Imago Publishing: London.

Erikson, E (1971), Identity: Youth and Crisis, Faber & Faber: London.

Gross, E (2004), 'Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report', Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 25, pp. 633-649.

'Facebook Generation' Faces Identity Crisis, Royal College of Psychiatrists (2008), accessed October 16th, 2009.

Valentine, G & Holloway, S (2002), 'Cyberkids? Exploring Children's Identities and Social Networks in On-line and Off-line Worlds', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp. 302-319.

"Your profile background is sooo five minutes ago!"

Last week, Goffman’s presentation of the self was explored and applied to teenage girls. This week, I will be looking at Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity, and how this concept and its connected ideas can be related to teenage girls’ online identities.


Bauman’s work is fascinating. He uses the metaphor of liquids to describe modern society. According to Bauman, liquids “do not keep to any shape for long and are constantly ready (and prone) to change” (2000: 2), and as such, life in liquid modernity is lived the same way. In Liquid Life, he explains that liquid modernity is “a society is which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines” (2005: 1) and that “liquid life is a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty” (2005: 2). Throughout his work on liquid modernity, the emphasis is on this idea of precarious uncertainty, and the need for the individual to keep up with the constantly changing world – or perish. Bauman also suggests liquid modernity is a society of consumers, and that everything, including identity and relationships, is commodified and treated as something to be consumed.


The teenage girls of today’s society have grown up surrounded by some degree of liquidity. This can especially be seen in the omnipresent technology that they could not bear to live without – almost the moment something is bought it becomes outdated and superseded by something bigger (or smaller) and better. The nature of the Web 2.0 technologies that are a large part of their everyday lives emanate liquidity – content can be, and is, constantly changing, and if you do not keep up with it you will undoubtedly fall behind with no hope of catching up.


Mallan and Giardina (2009) introduce the idea of ‘wikidentities’ to refer to the collaborative nature of identity creation in teens that goes on in online environments such as MySpace, comparing it to much of the content created on Web 2.0 platforms such as wikis.

A concomitant feature of Web 2.0’s ability for connectivity is its enabling approach to identity construction that extends notions of how identity is constructed within language and discourse. The collaborative approach to identity construction undertaken in SNS provides a space whereby an identity is “assembled” by drawing on a diverse set of materials and tools. When an individual or a group constructs an online profile, the resultant “identity” gives a particular interpretation or representation. Consequently, this “wikidentity” becomes a particular, collaborative process that changes according to purpose, context, and form. (Mallan & Giardina, 2009: 2-3)

This approach to understanding identity online assists explanations as to why and how teenage girls are “changing identities as often as they change clothes” (Chandler, 2007: 4). Mallan and Giardina go on to note that the content on girls’ profiles “offer temporary, contextualised accounts of the students at a moment in time. The ephemeral nature of their profiles, which [are] apt to change regularly or be disbanded, is in step with the nature of a wiki which can be changed, edited, culled or replaced” (2009: 5). Teenage girls’ identities online become liquid, temporary presentations, which can be changed, or even deleted, with the click of a button. In her article, Chandler spoke to teenage girls who reflected on their profiles. One stated it “reflects how I feel at a time”, and it was noted that another “changes her profile maybe once a month. It varies with her mood – colourful one minute, starkly monochrome the next” (2007: 6-7). A lot of this change also occurs as a result of changing attitudes and preferences amongst their peer group, which also fit the notion of liquidity.



In a guide for parents, MySpace Unraveled suggests that the profiles of teenage girls “present a self defined in relation to others” (Magid & Collier, 2007: 15) and also a self that is composed partly of who or what they want to be identified with (Mazzarella, 2005). With the proneness to change inherent in the many fashions that apply to the life of a teenage girl, they seek validation from their peers in order to ensure their profile does not ‘fall behind’. The instantaneous nature of the internet grants them greater control over these aspects of their identity. The precarious nature of liquid life that Bauman talks about also applies to teenage girls’ sense of self online. If something on their MySpace profile goes out of fashion, they can, and must, change it immediately, in order to ‘keep up’ with everyone else.

Fashions come and go with mind-boggling speed, all objects if desire become obsolete, off-putting and even distasteful before they have time to be fully enjoyed. Styles of life which are ‘chic’ today will tomorrow become targets of ridicule (Bauman, 2005: 162).

The consuming nature of liquid life not only means that everything is treated as something to be consumed that has a limited useful life, but also that people’s identities are also determined by their consumption. Due to the truly liquid nature of the internet, teenage girls are more able to maintain an acceptable identity online than would be possibly in ‘reality’ - a liquid identity that is temporary are prone to change. This aspect will be discussed further in my post next week, which will examine the notion of teenage girls’ identities online in relation to both Bauman and Goffman’s ideas in order to come up with a more rounded idea of the nature of these identities.

References:
Bauman, Z (2000), Liquid Modernity, Polity: Cambridge.

Bauman, Z (2005), Liquid Life, Polity: Cambridge.

Chandler, J (2007), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, 14 August, 2007, accessed on 13/9/09.

Magid, L & Collier, A (2007), MySpace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking, Peachpit Press: Berkeley.

Mallan, K & Giardina, N (2009), 'Wikidentities: Young people collaborating on virtual identities in social network sites', First Monday, Vol. 14, No. 6, 1 June 2009.

Mazzarella, S (Ed) (2005), 'Claiming a space: The cultural economy of teen girl fandom on the web', in Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity, Peter Lang: New York.

"You look soooo totally hot in your profile pic!" "I know, right!"

“All the World Wide Web's a stage" (Pearson, 2009) - a modern twist to Shakespeare's classic line from As You Like It. One that encompasses both aspects of my topic that I wish to explore with today's post; Erving Goffman's presentation of the self, and how this is achieved by teenage girls on their MySpace profiles. In her wonderfully useful article,
Pearson (2009: 1) highlights the following:

Online, users can claim to be whoever they wish. Like actors playing a role, they can deliberately choose to put forth identity cues or claims of self that can closely resemble or wildly differ from reality. With the rise of Web 2.0 and the growth of social networking sites, the virtual spaces for these portrayals of alternate identities seems near endless.

She also suggests:

That individuals perform their identity is not a radical concept. Developed by Goffman (1959), identity-as-performance is seen as part of the flow of social interaction as individuals construct identity performances fitting their milieu. With a heightened self-consciousness (Chan, 2000), online environments take his construction of performance to another level (boyd and Heer, 2006). SNS platforms provide areas which are disembodied, mediated and controllable, and through which alternate performances can be displayed to others (boyd, 2006).

I would firstly like to begin by giving a brief overview of Erving Goffman's ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and then focus more specifically on the aspects that are relevant to how teenage girls present their identities on MySpace.


The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life centres on dramaturgical principles such as impression management to discuss the context of human behaviour and identity construction. Goffman posits that individuals employ dramatic techniques in order to present themselves to others, and also to control the impressions that are both given and given off during such performances. Despite these efforts, Goffman suggests that “the ‘true’ or ‘real’ attitudes, beliefs, and emotions of the individual can be ascertained only indirectly, through his (sic) avowals or through what appears to be involuntary expressive behaviour” (1991: 13-14). I will return to this point later regarding its relevance to online
interactions. Goffman also notes that “a ‘performance’ may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants” (1991: 26). Performances are then broken down into 'front' and 'back' regions; the place where the performance is presented, and where it is prepared,
respectively (1991). I would like to quote Goffman again, as I continually find there is no better way to explain what he is putting across than in his own words;

It was suggested earlier that when one's activity occurs in the presence of other persons, some aspects of the activity are expressively accentuated and other aspects, which might discredit the fostered impression, are suppressed. It is clear that accentuated facts make their appearance in what I have called a front region; it should be just as clear that there may be another region - a 'back region' or 'backstage' - where the suppressed facts make an appearance.

A back region or backstage may be defined as a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course. There are, of course, many characteristic functions of such places. It is here that the capacity of a performance to express something beyond itself may be painstakingly fabricated; it is here that illusions and impressions are openly constructed...Here the performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character (1991: pp 14-15).

With Goffman’s basic ideas about self-presentation outlined, it is now possible to explore how they can be applied to teenage girls and their use of MySpace to create online identities.


MySpace serves as the stage upon which teenage girls act out, or perform their identities for others. It becomes the ultimate performance, making impression management a relatively simple task. They seek to define the online situation through personalising their profiles with backgrounds, pictures, information and music that they wish to be identified with, which allows others to form impressions of what type of person they are. They manage these impressions by first gauging or having an understanding of what is 'cool' amongst their peers and others online by looking at others' profiles (boyd, 2007) and then deciding how they can portray an image of themselves to others through the use of the different tools available. From this, the impression that is 'given' is made up of these conscious decisions about what will appear on their profile, and as a result, very little is 'given off'. As boyd states, "people have more control online - they are able to carefully choose what information to put forward, thereby eliminating visceral reactions that might have seeped out in everyday communication" (2007: 129). In terms of Goffman's ideas about impression management, this would indicate that as a result of almost no unintentional activity on MySpace, the 'true' or 'real' aspects of these girls' identities may be very difficult to discover.

In terms of the front stage/back stage dichotomy, it would appear that the 'self' or role being played out online through the MySpace profile is the front region, and the back region is made up of primarily the girl sitting behind the computer screen, and everything that she has omitted from her profile that is a part of 'who she is', but contradicts the
image of herself she is presenting online. Goffman states;

Given the fact that the individual effectively projects a definition of the situation when he enters the presence of others, we can assume that events may occur within the interaction which contradict or otherwise throw doubt upon this projection (1991: 23).

This can create problems if someone who only knows the girl from her MySpace profile meets her offline; if it is found that she was deceitful about one aspect of her online persona in comparison to her 'real life' identity, it can bring into question everything she has posted on her profile. The most common way this occurs is with the photos that girls
post to their profiles.

Both girls and boys say they enjoy recording and preserving the images and  sounds of their teenage lives as they happen. They are a surprisingly nostalgic tribe, anxious to archive their youthful memories before they have even slept on them. Georgia has 16 files full of photos of her and her mates stored on her computer. She loves watching them randomly flash across her screen in the odd moments when the keyboard is dormant. Her mum, says an appalled Georgia, doesn’t have any pictures of her and her teenage friends. (Chandler, 2007: 6).

The modern teenage girl’s obsession with taking photographs of herself, with or without friends, is evident on their MySpace pages. The aspect of this that comes into play  regarding self presentation is their selection of the photos that make it to her profile, in contrast to the ones that stay unpublished on her computer, and further contrasted from the ones that were deleted as soon as they were taken. No teenage girl is going to share photos of herself with others that show her in a ‘bad’ light, or do not align with the impression of herself she is trying to give others. This often results in girls taking what is known as a ‘MySpace Angle’ photo. Examples of profiles with these can be seen here, here and here. (links coming soon!) The following video explains what a MySpace angle is about, and some of the different types.

This video highlights what can happen when ‘misleading’ photos are posted on MySpace, and, as also highlighted in Sessions’ article (2009), how the use of MySpace angles is often criticised, yet they are still widely used. This issue of deceptive self presentation online can be linked to Goffman’s discussion of audiences, and how performances can be discredited if someone views a performance that was not meant for them, or if they happen to view backstage work. 

The issue of audience on MySpace can impact on how girls arrange their online presentation of their ‘self’. They must take into consideration both the desire and ability to present themselves however they like on MySpace, and also the fact that a majority of the people who will be viewing their profile know them offline also. All of these social environment factors play a part in how teenage girls construct their identities online.

Next week, I will be examining how these same social factors play a role in the fluid nature of online identities in relation to Zygmunt Bauman’s work on liquid modernity. :)

References:
boyd, d (2007), 'Why Youth [heart] Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life', MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chandler, J (2007), 'The Virtual Generation', The Age, 14 August, 2007, accessed on 13/9/09.

Goffman, E (1991), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin: London.

Pearson, E (2009), 'All the World Wide Web's a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks', First Monday, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2 March 2009.

Sessions, L (2009), '"You looked better on MySpace" Deception and authenticity on Web 2.0', First Monday, Vol. 14, No. 7, 6 July 2009.