The Digital Self - Week 13

The Digital Self - Week 13

• The digital self, also known as online identity, is a person's representation of themselves online.
• Individuals create a controlled projection of themselves across social media platforms, affecting how others perceive them.
• Key characteristics of the digital self include being oriented inward, narrative in nature, retractable, and multipliable.
• How other people perceive a person defines the social self. A person often creates a social identity to belong to a group and based on other people's validation.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Analyze the dynamics of online interactions, including social media, virtual communities, and digital communication tools.
• Understand how these interactions impact the formation of digital identity.
• Understand the significance of self-expression, creativity, and digital content creation in shaping digital identity.
• Explore how individuals present themselves online.
• Analyze how digital media (filters, photo editing, etc.) influence perceptions of beauty, body image, and self-worth.

The Social World

• Traditional social worlds are typically structured with three domains: family, school, and neighborhood.
• The internet created a fourth domain: online life.

Definition and Characteristics of the Digital Self

• The digital self is a representation of a person's self on the internet constructed by the person.
• The individual's efforts to control and modify their online image are motivated by the desire to gain rewards and increase self-esteem.
• These efforts are referred to as self-presentation and impression management techniques.

What is Self-Presentation?

• Self-presentation behavior involves conscious or unconscious actions to create, modify, or maintain the impression of oneself in the minds of others.

Reasons for Engaging in Self-Presentation

• Helps facilitate social interaction
• Enables individuals to attain material and social rewards
• Allows people to privately construct desired identities

What is Impression Management?

• Controlling or influencing how others perceive a person.
• It commonly involves strategic choices in clothing, grooming, body language, and verbal communication.

Impression Management Motives

• Instrumental - to gain rewards and increase self-esteem
• Expressive - attempts to be in control of personal behavior and identity

Impression Management Strategies

• Self-Promotion - Person actively showcases competence.
• Ingratiation - trying to gain approval and acceptance from others.
• Exemplification - strategic self-sacrifice
• Intimidation - showing off power or authority.
• Supplication - a person exploits weaknesses to gain help or benefit.

Impacts of Social Interactions to the Self

• In the digital age, social media can heavily shape how teenagers form their identities.
• There is reliance on outside affirmation from friends and strangers through different social media platforms.
• The internet can heighten a feeling of invisibility, influencing how individuals perceive themselves.

The Current Generation and Online Identity

• The current generation struggles to differentiate their real-time and online identities.
• Technology, specifically the internet, creates more versions of the "self," making identity formation more complex.

Digiphrenia

• Digiphrenia is the experience of existing online (through multiple social media accounts, email, etc) and being present in real-life. - The simultaneous use of multiple social media platforms as different online incarnations of oneself is not easy, for most human beings.

App-Dependent Behavior

• App-dependent behavior heavily relies on digital applications for communication, productivity, entertainment, and other functionalities.

What Makes People So Addicted to the Internet?

• Social networks break down distance and time barriers enabling communication at any time and location,
• This expands opportunities to share and portray identities.

Boundaries of the Online Self

• Includes the distinction between private and public aspects of the self.
• Private self encompasses personal thoughts and experiences that are not shared with the public.
• Public self is about presenting oneself in a way that aligns with an individual's goals and self-characterization, even if that is not the true form.

What are Social Profiles?

• Social profiles present digital representations of an individual across various online platforms.
• These show aspects of identity, interests, and activities.
• Profiles provide a space for sharing information about themselves and interacting with others.

Possible Advantages of a Public Online Profile

• Facilitates open communication
• Aids in widening business contacts.
• Enables targeting of wide audiences
• Improves business reputation
• Market research
• Implement advertising campaigns and delivers targeted messages.

Possible Risks of a Public Online Profile

• Increases possibility of fraud, spam, virus attacks
• Increased risk of falling prey to online scams
• Possible negative comments and bashing

Advantages of a Private Online Profile

• Control over viewers
• Protected from scammers and bashers

Disadvantages of a Private Online Profile

• Very limited network
• Very low interaction rate
• Does not give opportunities to meet interesting people
• Doesn't facilitate or grow a business

Individual Identity and Social Identity

• Individual Identity: Emerges over time, incorporating personal experiences, factors that cannot be controlled. Emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, and is developed across personal characteristics.
• Social Identity: Tied to group membership. Groups are sources of pride and self-esteem. Involves similarities to other group members.

Gender and Sexuality Online

• Sex is biological (male or female)
• Gender is understood, socially constructed, and influenced by discussion, interactions and social processes.
• Online, the 'disembodiment hypothesis' suggests that individuals freely express their gender identities because body is not directly present. However, stereotypes persist, such as the perception that women are less capable in tech fields.

Sexuality Online

• Sexuality includes feelings, attractions, behaviors, and orientations related to emotional, romantic experiences.

Factors Affecting Adolescent Sexuality

• Hormones
• Personality and temperament
• Social and environmental factors
• Media and the internet

Explore the concept of the digital self and how individuals shape their online identities. This quiz delves into the dynamics of online interactions, the role of social media, and the impact of self-expression in forming a digital persona. Understand how these elements influence perceptions and social identity in the digital age.