Dyer (2020). Enmeshing the user and Design.pdf

Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 11 Series Editors: Aaron Koh · Victoria Carrington Harry T. Dyer Designing the Social Unpacking Social Media Design and Identity Harry T. Dyer University of East Anglia Norwich, UK ISSN 2345-7708     ISSN 2345-7716 (electronic) Cultural Stu...

Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 11 Series Editors: Aaron Koh · Victoria Carrington Harry T. Dyer Designing the Social Unpacking Social Media Design and Identity Harry T. Dyer University of East Anglia Norwich, UK ISSN 2345-7708     ISSN 2345-7716 (electronic) Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education ISBN 978-981-15-5715-6    ISBN 978-981-15-5716-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5716-3 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Chapter 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? Abstract This chapter presents a sustained look at data collected from a year-long series of interviews with young people to consider how they framed and understood identity online. The data reveals a number of elements which shape how identity manifests online. First we consider how the design features present in social media shape identity performances online. Adding further complexity to this, we briefly consider the role of third-party apps in augmenting possible experiences of social media, before moving on to explore how a user’s socio-cultural resources and realities might shape their engagements with social media in an ongoing flexible manner. Finally we explore identity performances online as a negotiation between socio-culturally grounded users and specific platform designs. It is suggested that identity performances online emerge from the enmeshing of user and design in an ongoing manner. The data presented in this chapter lays the groundwork for the new theoretical framework through which to understand identity performance online, proposed in Chap. 6 of this book. Keywords Identity · Identity negotiation · Identity theory · Identity performance · Design · Social media · Digital duality 5.1 Introduction In the previous three chapters, we have considered how young people define, use, and access social media and how this shapes their experiences and their interactions online. For the next two chapters, we move on to look more closely at the subject of how best to understand identity performance and presentations in social media. These next two chapters work very much in tandem, with this current chapter presenting data from a year-long series of interviews with young people which serves to problematise what we consider to be identity online and the next chapter presenting the beginnings of a solution to how we can theorise identity online. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 H. T. Dyer, Designing the Social, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5716-3_5 93 94 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? Our experiences online, as we have seen in the previous chapters, are a blend of old and new; extant socio-cultural resources meet new ways of emphasising, defining, and encasing what it means to be social. Rather than ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’, the theoretical framework proposed over the next two chapters builds on previous understandings of identity whilst acknowledging what is unique about how identity manifests is specifically designed spaces with unique and often restrictive ways of expressing and presenting ourselves. What does it mean to present identity in 140 or 280 characters? In 6 s videos? In interactive livestreams? In filtered selfies? Whilst the answers to these issues present a unique understanding of identity in a specific moment in time (e.g. the interviews were conducted before Twitter expanded its character limit to 280 characters), the framework presented over these two chapters allows for a consideration of how identity is negotiated online in an ongoing manner between human, non-human, and inhuman agents. It is also hoped that the framework presented here will allow us to reconsider and reconceptualise how we theorise and consider identity offline. Building upon the discussion in this chapter around how young people are engaging with, on, in, and through social media, the framework detailed in the next chapter helps us better consider identity as an ongoing negotiation between multiple agents. Taken together then, these two chapters build towards an understanding of identity performances as complex ongoing negotiations between socio-culturally grounded users, embedded tools and technologies, and specifically designed spaces and platforms. It should be noted here that we will save a definition of identity for the next chapter, as this is a complex and controversial issue in and of itself. The discussion in this chapter explores how young people understand their identity online. This was built through guided tours of their profiles during interviews, and other methods for unpacking their understandings of their identities, include methods of discussing identity in abstract manner, such as asking participants to imagine their profiles were film scripts (Robards and Bennett 2011). In particular, this chapter will focus attention towards the role that the spaces we interact within (or, if you like, the staging of our identity performances) play in changing, shaping, and mediating how, in this case, young people are performing identity online. This question is of grave concern to many educators, parents, and policy makers thinking about how these ‘brave new realities’ of social media might influence the identities, actions, and interactions of young people. Beyond the moral panics detailed in Chap. 2 of this book, it is clear there is broad ongoing concern for how much social media design is influencing the identities of young people today. Discussions of the rise of alt-right proud boys and cyberbullying trolls abound, alongside concerns around narcissism, anti-social behaviour, and body dysmorphic influences online. Though these fears can often be quite exaggerated and can lack nuance in the media coverage generally, it is clear that in no small part they stem from a concern of just how much social media might influence us, our identities, intentions, actions, and interactions, online and offline. Just how much agency do we have in controlling and shaping our own identity online? Are we restricted to only emphasising some forms of interaction and some manifestations of identity 5.1 Introduction 95 over others? Are social media platforms restricting how we can act and interact? How susceptible are we to the design whims and intentions of social media creators? Does social media push us down certain paths at the demands of advertisers? These questions are inevitably complex, but it is hoped that both the data in this chapter and the new theoretical framework detailed in the next chapter will begin to answer some of these questions that sit at the heart of many of our fears, hopes, and concerns about young people and social media. We will begin by exploring data collected from a year-long series of interviews with young people in order to understand how they see their identities online. The data will consider four different aspects of the relationship between user and design in the complex negotiation of identity performances. First we will look at how design aspects of the various platforms the participants used shaped their identity performances, considering what was lost or restricted by these affordances and what was gained or augmented. We will then consider the use of third-party applications to augment various design aspects and the effect this added layer of complexity had upon identity performances. The third section looks at how the changing socio-­ cultural experiences of the participants over the course of a year affected how and why they used social media platforms, as well as how their understanding of other social media platforms shaped their actions and interactions online. Finally, this chapter will explore how the boundaries of identity performances were negotiated between user and design and how users felt about this negotiation. This will focus upon what sacrifices and compromises were made around identity and how agency was negotiated in an ongoing manner. Before we dive into this data, it is worth recapping what we have considered so far in the previous chapters. It is evident that social media is increasingly important to young people and their daily social lives, though the precise roles it plays are notably varied due to a number of complex factors, making sweeping generational conclusions near impossible and reductive. We can however say that social media is an increasingly centralised aspect of social interaction and an influence upon the development of their social actions and interactions. Importantly, it is clear that the use of social media platforms is diversifying, with young people regularly present across multiple platforms. This range of platforms present a variety of different spaces and modes through which to express and perform identity, with the affordances differing from one platform to the next, providing users with a variety of social uses beyond just networking alone. Further to this, it is apparent that to understand the social media experiences of young people, there is also a need to account for the devices through which they are accessing these spaces. Importantly, their engagement with these spaces does not involve just producing content, but a range of other aspects that also need to be accounted for. Finally, there is also a need to account for the socio-cultural backgrounds, experiences, contexts, and resources that young people bring with them to the platforms, which may change the manner in which they engage with these spaces in myriad ways. Given this, the next two chapters here will consider how young people enmesh with these platforms to produce unique user-specific and platform-bound identity performances. Though there are complex moving elements here, it is hoped that the framework detailed over 96 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? these two chapters can provide some clarity to better understanding this complexity and give shape to the ‘messiness’ of the reality of social media. It is also clear that many different approaches can be taken towards understanding what social media is and that defining social media can be largely problematic due to the ever-changing and disruptive nature of the field. Beyond this, social media can be approached, understood, and experienced in a range of ways by different users. As such, I seek here to offer no fixed definition as to what social media is in terms of specific affordances. These are likely to continue to change and diversify. Neither will I attempt to define social media via its relationship to other online media, as the differences between these categories are increasingly porous. I will also not define social media via the content created on it, as this diminishes other essential roles played by users of social media. Given the broad range of social media platforms, and the growing diversity of social media, this research put the task of defining social media into the hands of the participants. Rather than telling participants what I was looking for in terms of social media usage, I let them tell me how they made sense of social media and their interactions on these platforms. This allowed me to consider on an individual basis what range of spaces they use for social interaction and how they utilise these spaces to perform identity in ways that were attentive to changing relationships and uses of these platforms over the 12 months the interviews were conducted. This was partially an attempt to capture the growing range of diverse and purposefully heterogeneous sites, but also a way to allow participants to show me their own definitions of ‘social media’ usage beyond just networking with offline contacts. As such, through allowing the participants to define social media, this research was able to explore how online design and user enmesh to perform identity on a specific platform-by-platform, user-by-­ user basis. Indeed, it is worth dwelling on the idea that the uses of social media again potentially vary from user to user, and from platform to platform, and that individual approaches need to be taken into account alongside a consideration of how social action online is guided through design elements. Currently, there is a lack of research that attempts to account for and reconcile the various aspects raised in this discussion, or provide a bridge through which we can consider the many facets that shape and form interactivity online accounting for ideas beyond content production. Though attempts have been made to consider the effects of design upon our actions and interactions online, they have focused upon specific aspects of design (Coles and West 2016; Ksiazek et al. 2014) or specific platforms (Duguay 2016) through a comparison of popular websites (Dyer 2015), or specific technology. Though these specific and focused approaches wielded precise and useful results, the aim of the research documented here was to embrace a purposefully messier reality of social media usage that changed, morphed, and bled across various overlapping aspects and in turn attempt to make some sense of this mess. The research detailed here, and the framework in the next chapter, aim to move beyond a focus upon specific aspects, instead relying upon the interpretation of the users as to what social media is to them and how they negotiate this growing range of heterogeneous platforms. As such, a theoretical framework is needed that allows for individual interpretations 5.2 Different Platform, Different Design Features, and Different Social Performances… 97 an understandings of social media whilst also accounting for how the user’s experiences of these platforms and their subsequent actions, interactions, and identity performances are guided and mediated by aspects of platform-specific design. With this in mind, we will begin by exploring how the young people who took part in a series of interviews conducted over the course of a year understood the diversity of platforms and features available to them online. 5.2  ifferent Platform, Different Design Features, D and Different Social Performances of Identity During the interviews a number of the participants discussed how the designs and the specific features present on a range of platforms affected the manner in which they acted and interacted. The interviews highlighted that a range of design choices could guide and affect actions and interactions online, but also highlighted the need to also account for this is a nondeterministic fashion. This meant understanding that the manifestation and actualisation of social interaction and action online were unique to the enmeshing of a particular user with these design features, as different users would interpret and utilise these features differently. In other words, the participants’ actions and interactions were bound to, and emerged from, the specific platforms and their specific designs, but the interactions and actions that emerged from the engagement with these features were realised in unique and individual manner. Brian in particular discussed a range of features that he noted affected his actions and interactions online. He drew attention to the presence of hashtags on Twitter, suggesting that their specific functionality made communicating during and about big events online a lot easier, making him more likely to use Twitter to discuss these events: So Twitter I use for big events, social events, and for (.) so for things like tomorrow, like big political events, is Twitter, and if you want to find (.) and because of the hashtag system, I know Facebook have tried to bring it in, but because of the hashtag system, to find people that care about it, or whatever, then definitely Twitter is the place to go. This was not the only design feature of Twitter that Brian noted as guiding his actions and interactions; he also later discussed the effects of the then 140-character limit on Twitter as an aspect that affected how his actions and interactions were framed and realised. Tellingly, he offered that: I feel the character limit really forces your hand though. It makes you think really carefully about what you want to say, and how you want to say it. You have to nail it quickly as well. Like if something is happening right then you want to be the first to talk about it, so you have to be quick and you have to be funny, and you have to be short. This shows that, for Brian, the particular design choice of 140 characters, along with the consistently active temporal nature of the platform, meant that he framed and approached his actions and interactions in a particular manner, aware that he had to 98 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? rely upon both brevity and speed to interact and display his identity in an effective manner. He further highlighted that Twitter’s specific design also made certain formats and uses harder than others, changing the type and form of the content he chose to post on Twitter: …if I want to share an image I put it on Facebook. Like people won’t look at your images on Twitter because they’re normally either (.) if they’re on their phone it sometimes comes up, it sometimes doesn’t, it’s a bit funny, and also people won’t follow a link to a, a thing. So I’m sharing an image I will definitely share it on Facebook. This was not unique to Brian. In a similar manner, Isabel also noted that she would not use Twitter for photos highlighting that ‘I don’t really see the point in it on Twitter cos it’s gone in a second’. For Brian this further extended to the content posted on each site, with specific content and specific ideas shared on certain platform due in no small part to the design features. For example, Brian noted that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a current trend at the time of the interview that involved sharing videos of someone throwing ice on their head to ostensibly draw attention to ALS and raise money for charity, was often not present on Twitter ‘because it’s a visual. People don’t watch videos on Twitter’. Brian then was aware of a range of design restrictions that resulted in him preferring to engage with the platform around trending topics and current events. His content was curtailed to be brief and temporally relevant and was often presented in a non-pictorial form. Given that the updates he posted were shorter, there was a need to be curt and quick. The identity that Brian presented was guided by design but importantly realised in an individual manner as he chose how to act and interact in an environment that he felt restricted his content in form and style and that encouraged discussion of events as they happened. The notion of user-specific uses of these features can aptly be noted when considering Brandon’s interactions on Twitter. Brandon also noted that the design of Twitter constrained and shaped his interactions and actions, but for Brandon, this manifested itself not in concerns over being curt, current, and witty, but in concerns over the manner in which his updates would be construed by the reader. He noted that he felt he could only discuss certain topics on Twitter because: character limitation does an awful lot to restrict what I would otherwise would have posted about, like the topics I would otherwise post about, because I can’t put context into it. This consideration of features and intent was not restricted to Twitter alone and emerged as a point of discussion across a range of platforms. Brandon, for example, used Instagram as: a kind of stream of consciousness, just from an image point of view, so I don’t ever justify anything on there, I will just put a photo up because I think the photo itself looks cool or, sort of because I think that people will draw their own conclusions. I don’t feel like I need to explain that. Beyond Facebook and Instagram, Brandon suggested in his interviews that he felt Facebook was slightly more ‘interactive’ than other platforms. When we discussed why he felt this might be the case, it became apparent that certain design features 5.2 Different Platform, Different Design Features, and Different Social Performances… 99 made it appear as if there was an ongoing conversation happening around the content on Facebook in particular. Brandon noted: I sort of see lots of posts that friends have liked, or shared, or commented on, because lots of other people as well as them have done it, so I don’t know if it’s the way that it works, but the very popular very very popular posts seems to make their way into everybody’s newsfeed at some point, so I’ve seen a lot of things that are not originated by friends of mine just purely because a few of my friends have commented on it or interacted with it, so therefore it’s kind of keeps coming back up to my attention, and more often or not it will be something that I will have a reaction to again and again (.) It keeps the conversation going by putting it at the top of my feed every time. Facebook’s choice to show users the content that was being commented upon recurrently created a more interactive feel for Brandon and encouraged ongoing interaction around a given piece of content. Brandon expanded upon how this was unique and different to the manner in which he perceived the other platforms he used, noting: I think Facebook is at little more interactive, I think for me at least Instagram seems to be very much a sort of browsing, sort of just simply seeing what other people want to share with the world, rather than reacting to it, to them, and for me Twitter probably similarly actually, just simply it sort of feels like a lot of kind of little snapshot updates about what somebody is doing, sort of at that moment. Again, this was grounded in Brandon’s needs and expectations, but nonetheless these aspects were also of consideration to all participants, though their framing of their interactions through these interactive features varied. This was noted, for example, by Nina, who suggested that the continual re-emergence of content and the general slower pace of Facebook led to her sharing different content and performing identity in a unique manner on different platforms. She noted: The other day I was like ‘oh I have a headache grr’, whereas I wouldn’t put that on Twitter, cos I wouldn’t put a little update like that, because it just gets lost in the time stream on Twitter which is fine, whereas on Facebook, I don’t know. People will be like ‘oh are you okay?’, and that sort of thing. For other participants, different aspects of platform design were highlighted as fostering specific manners of acting and interacting, unique to their given needs and situation. Isabel noted one aspect in particular that she felt changed the way that she was able to discuss subjects on Facebook, highlighting that the groups feature allowed dedicated places for like-minded users to discuss specific topics. In her particular case, this manifested itself in discussions around politics. She suggested: it’s hard to explain really, but the way that umm Facebook is set is kind of segregated into different stuff, isn’t it? So you can literally go to groups and stuff like that, whereas Twitter’s very much a stream of chat. Like individual profiles and then what they do, but all shouting at once in a never ending mess. For Isabel the partitioning off of particular areas to discuss dedicated topics led to different social styles emerging on Facebook than on Twitter. She highlighted that this partitioning fostered a slower feel with dedicated group areas which meant that people could interact around content more easily. She noted: ‘I think Facebook is, 100 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? it’s got groups and sections and stuff so you can post images and videos and they’ll stay there longer for people to talk about’. Other participants noted there were a range of other features that would affect how interactive they perceived the platforms to be. Whilst this was guided by design, it was realised in a unique manner by each participant to their specific needs. Oliver, for example, discussed the fact that Reddit allowed community moderators. By allowing for community self-moderation, Oliver felt that often the level of interaction was variable depending on the quality of moderation, and as such his participation in the sub-Reddit was therefore also variable: when you get a good moderated subReddit, like r/games, sticks to the point, keeps going with it, the mods are fantastic, who keep it on track. And then you get others that are just a chaos and you can’t be bothered with it. For Brian, however, interactivity was bound up in the notion of current topics. In his comparison of the design of Facebook and Twitter, he noted Twitter’s specific design as fostering a greater sense of ongoing temporally bound interactivity: Twitter has so many trends, so many fads that are so quick passing. And I think Twitter’s an important (.) I think people would mind, but I don’t think the world would mourn the loss of Facebook, whereas I think people would mourn the loss of Twitter, because of things like the live-tweeting of things, that you wouldn’t get on Facebook in the same way, because the audience is live and commenting right then and there. However, Willow noted that she felt she was more likely to interact around shared content on Facebook, not Twitter. In comparison to Brian, who suggested the ability to comment upon events as they were happening inspired ongoing interaction on Twitter, Willow noted her engagement with shared content was affected by being able to view a preview of that content on Facebook: If someone shares a link on Twitter and the tweet’s not something I’m particularly interested in I won’t click on it (.) if someone shares a share on Facebook I’ll still have a general idea of what the thing they were sharing was, because there’ll be a little picture and a little bit of blurb and sometimes if I’m really bored I’ll just click on it to see what the hell it’s about, because it’s not just a web link, it’s not just, it’s got a tag line and a photo and a bit of text underneath, it’s not just a web link, a site address, so. I’m more likely to click on it. Sally on the other hand noted aspects of Facebook’s design that she felt hindered the interactivity of the platform: Sally: it’s kind of hard to keep track of what’s going on Facebook, I found. Harry: How come? Sally: Just because their trending system is really bad. It’s kind of like, you get three little items at the top right hand corner of your page and if you don’t look at it you don’t see it, whereas Twitter it’s quite easy to kind of see what people are talking about? Especially because quite a lot of the trending tags there’ll always be someone on the newsfeed talking about it, or commenting on it, or something like that. Given this, it appears that the engagement with platforms and the perception of their interactive merits appears to be individual and aligned to the specific needs of the user, but nonetheless intimately bound up in the design affordances of a given platform. I would suggest from this that it is through the enmeshing of user and design 5.2 Different Platform, Different Design Features, and Different Social Performances… 101 that a given use of the platform emerges. This was succinctly noted by Isabel who highlighted that engagement with the platforms varies from individual to individual. She noted that on ‘Facebook you’ve got a whole variety of people and the way that they behave on there. Like I’ve got friends who only share videos, and some people just text, yeah’. This concept of the enmeshing of user and design can further be highlighted if we reconsider the idea of uses of social media beyond content production. Despite these platforms often being set up explicitly to encourage users to want to produce content, a fact long noted by researchers across a range of platforms (Keenan and Shiri 2009), Molly choose not to fulfil this potential and to engage with them in her own manner for her own social purposes. She noted that she felt no real pressure to create content online, saying ‘with my friends I don’t feel really pressure (.) and I think my friends (.) they know that I’m not (.) posting things about myself online now’. Instead Molly used the platforms in her own manner and for her own purposes. In essence, Molly decided how to engage with the features of these platforms which she used almost exclusively to browse content rather than to produce content. Molly did however report elements of design that aided her particular usage of platforms and encouraged her to sometimes produce content. In particular, Molly noted that her content production increased once she was afforded the ability to set her profiles to private, controlling who saw what information about her. Some platform provided her the ability to be more private than others. For example, in an interview conducted after she started attending university, Molly noted she had started using Snapchat as a messenger system with her sister as it allowed a format that she felt was very controlled and through which she felt any images sent were not permanent. She noted: Everybody uses it and it’s easy to get on. So I thought I’d try it, and I like it. It’s (.) my step-­ sister is at uni in [northern UK town]. She doesn’t like texting really. So it’s my message (.) way of messaging her now, to catch up and check in with each other and have quick chats. I don’t mind sending her a picture of me. She won’t like judge me, and its fun with all the stuff it’s got. We’re family so it feels (.) it’s nice. Molly later also suggested that ‘It’s also less (.) has less (.) it’s not permanent so I feel like I can maybe use it more without worrying’. When given the option to be private, her usage also increased on Instagram: Molly: I guess I post more on Instagram now though. Because I know less people can see it, in terms of who I let see it and follow me. I (.) I rarely post picture of like me alone. More of what I’m doing and who I with but that (.) that’s like (.) I don’t like taking pictures of myself really. But I’m using it more. I’m just, not that sort of person who really wants to, to comment at all like ‘oh you’re so pretty’ because often that (.) they just say things and don’t really mean that, you know? So I don’t see the point of all that. But I’ve started putting up some stuff, especially as I can control who sees it now. It’s fine. Harry: Is there like (.) Is there anyone in particular you really don’t want to see your stuff or is it the public? Molly: umm, like no one particularly I don’t want, you know. It’s more just (.) knowing who’s seeing it and not having to worry about it. 102 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? Here we see that the affordance of privacy as a design feature encouraged interactivity, but only when combined with Molly’s specific needs and situation that produced the given unique identity performance, bound in both the design and the user. When Molly felt she could control the image constructed by other people in regard to her identity, she felt more ready to share content, though still with a degree of care over the content. In this manner then we see design features shaping how we are acting and interacting online to present our identities. It is apparent here that any understanding of identity online needs to understand and consider how design shapes our experiences and expectations online and controls various elements of our identity from one platform to the next. 5.3  he Use of Third-Party Apps to Augment Design T and the Effects of This Upon Social Interaction Whilst the above section highlights a need to consider various design features enmeshing with individuals in order to better conceptualise identity online, it is clear that even this concept can itself be complicated by the complex systems present through which we can access social media platforms. As discussed in Chap. 3, a platform’s presentation can vary from one device to the next. However, it can also be augmented with third-party apps that can change aspects of the platform’s design in an array of manners, affecting how users utilise these platforms. From highlighting certain design features to changing colour scheme, or from restricting access between certain hours for productivity to adding filters for photos, our experiences of platforms are augmented by layers of additional and overlapping technologies, platforms, algorithms, and features. This was discussed by a number of the participants. For example, Brian noted that the control over aspects of design afforded by third-party apps might increase his usage of Twitter. He suggested ‘if I find a really nice app that does Twitter, like tweetdeck used to do but now they started charging, then I would use Twitter more’. Similarly, Kirsty discussed the use of third-party apps that help her engage with social media in a manner specific to her situation: I use Hootsuite at work, in my professional sort of capacity, and again it’s good to a point but even the pro version does have bugs. The analytics on it are crap, mind you, and of course as a marketer it’s quite annoying not being able to analyse the reach you’ve had. She also highlighted another application, named ‘If This Then That’ (IFTTT), that augments the design of the platforms and helped her present identity in specific manners, again informed by her specific situation. She described it as a: Brilliant app, absolutely love it. More useful professionally, than personally to be honest, but I really love. So mine’s automatically linked up to, if I ever remember to do something on Instagram, then it posts it to Twitter as a native picture. 5.3 The Use of Third-Party Apps to Augment Design and the Effects of This Upon… 103 Willow also noted the use of these augmenting applications, highlighting ‘on my phone see I use a custom app which looks very different from the Twitter app’. She detailed the differences and how they helped her change the design of the platform to suit her specific needs: I don’t use the Twitter client on my phone, I use erm a different app and it’ll save where I leave off so I scroll up to most current, whereas on Twitter on desktop, and this is me not having used it in a while, you normally start at the latest stuff and have to scroll down and I prefer scrolling up rather than scrolling down – dunno why, but it just I prefer – I think because otherwise I’m coming in on conversations and discussions that have like started before and I’m seeing the end of, so I prefer to scroll upwards through the conversations and follow the thread of things that are happening, rather than scrolling down and going what on earth is going on and then waiting to get the fiftieth tweet before I understand what’s happening. Sally also pointed out different way of augmenting platform design, noting that on Tumblr she was able to add extensions which changed the design of the platform and altered how she used it. She highlighted one example in particular that allowed her to use the platform in a more streamlined fashion: I have an extension on there that makes it so much more user-friendly. It just makes using it easier. So, without the extension, to reblog a post you have to click on the reblog button, which brings up a pop-up on the page where you can add like a comment or tags, and then you have to click the reblog button again. And depending on the size of the post, it can take a couple of minutes for it to load up and then for it to post to your actual blog. With the extension you just hover over the reblog button and a little pop up comes up. You can add a comment but the most important thing for me is that you can save a set of tags. So once the pop up comes up you can just click on the saved tag and then hit reblog and it’s done. I love it. Here then we can see a range of specific augmentations of platform features to alter the manner of engaging with the platforms specific to the given user’s needs. Given the rise of third-party apps, it appears that it is worth considering that there are tactics and resources the user can employ to actively alter aspects of the design of the platform to suit their given needs and situations. This adds considerable wrinkles to any attempt to consider design features in a uniform manner. It is also worth remembering, when looking at and analysing online content, that not every user will be using the ‘vanilla’ version of the platform and that the specific manifestation of the platform they are using may affect how they choose to share content and generally act and interact. This has large repercussions for researchers, who should be aware that how they see a tweet, post, or update on their device may be very different from how it appeared to the person posting it. This layer of complexity is worth considering in any research that wishes to understand the effects of design on users, as engagement through a social media platform may be mediated and augmented along the way through other platforms and apps with their own range of features, designs, and options. 104 5.4 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online?  ccounting for the Offline in Online A Identity Performances Whilst this chapter so far has looked at design features and their possible role in guiding our actions and interactions online, it is evident that any identity performance online is intimately bound to the user’s socio-cultural situation. I suggest that online identity presentation emerges from the enmeshing of an individual user with a platform design. The resulting identity performance is informed by the design of the platform, which guides and shapes how the user is able to present social identity. However, the identity performance is equally realised in a unique manner as each user draws on their socio-cultural experiences and resources to complete their specific narrative, which they bring to bear upon the juxtaposed design elements. During the interviews a number of extant social factors were discussed with the participants which effected how they felt their identities manifested on specific platforms. Brian brought up his awareness that specific users would engage with the platform in a variety of manners, informed by their socio-cultural situations. When asked about the consistency of identity presentation across social media platforms, he noted: for people, every day people like judges, teachers, anybody, has to draw that line between people they have in the office and people that are their friend. You can’t have (.) umm professional (.) like there has to be a cut off, you can’t share everything with your employers or your employees, and you certainly can’t share it with people that work for you or that you’re involved with work, like social workers, or teachers, or anything. Brian later revealed how his own socio-cultural situation, specifically his homosexuality, could lead to unique engagements with social media features: I know particularly in the LGBT community, that is a genuine problem for a lot of people who aren’t out or aren’t comfortable (.) portraying themselves in a certain way around certain members. You almost have to have a split identity. And even with work life balance, but even just in your personal life. And a lot of people don’t feel comfortable in being themselves. Kirsty similarly revealed during the interviews that her approach towards social media was largely influenced by her specific situation and the social knowledge she bought to the platforms. As she worked in online communication, she noted that her identity was ‘semi-formed by sort of professional concerns as well’ and noted that her job largely effected how she understood and engaged with social media. She provided a particular example of this: Yeah, and actually again from a sort of professional that works with social media on a daily basis, my boss regularly has said that he expects me to use my personal social media to promote the charity and the work that we do, and he has a real problem with me having separate work and personal Twitter feeds, for instance, or Facebook feeds. I put my foot down on it because I wasn’t comfortable, but there is a question I think about authenticity and umm also, yeah, I dunno I guess you can’t insist on it because of employment law and the rest of it, but umm, that’s a dilemma that I face fairly regularly. 5.4 Accounting for the Offline in Online Identity Performances 105 Kirsty later noted that she had adopted a single Twitter account, which changed how she approached interacting on Twitter. She suggested ‘my Twitter feed is shared, I tend to use it slightly more professionally than personally umm, so I only have one Twitter’, specifically noting that ‘I tend to use it a bit more to signpost stuff that sort of shows I’m interested in the right things for my work’. She later details an example of this, noting ‘I do a lot of live-tweeting on it at the moment’ for big events at work. Kirsty also noted other effects of her particular situation in regard to employment, discussing her attitude towards profile images: Facebook tends to change a lot more, but at the moment (.) I think again because the other two are professional facing, or professional focused, I don’t like to have my partner in my pictures on them, because actually I think there’s a huge thing about being seen to a woman with a partner and suddenly you lose a lot of professional influence. So whereas my Facebook photo quite often has me and my partner in them, I would never do that for Twitter and LinkedIn. It is evident then that Kirsty’s specific engagements with features, and in turn her interactions and identity presentations, were informed by her specific social resources. Another pertinent discussion of a specific situation affecting the participant’s approach and attitude towards social media was found with Willow. She detailed her specific situation noting: I’ve got some mental illness, so I think I probably pay a huge amount of attention (.) because I pay a huge amount of attention to how I present myself in real life all the time ever (.) and I know I’m not necessarily the typical experience, because I’ve seen an awful lot of people with various mental illness have said that actually interacting online is a lot easier, whereas for me it carries exactly the same level of stress, apart from the fact that I can’t see how a person is reacting. So it actually carries an added level of stress for me. I can’t see how they react, I can see how they choose to react to it, but I can’t see how they immediately react. So I don’t like that as much. So I don’t tend to put much up, basically, it’s why I tend to sort of stay away. Willow’s specific situation shaped how she interacted on the platform and engaged with the design features. She noted that she would ‘struggle with the idea that I have anything worth saying’ and expanded this, noting: so I tend to stay away from, like, Facebook and Twitter, both feel like they need to be (.) I know a lot of people don’t feel the same way, but they feel more important. It feels like there’s more weight. By holding interviews with the participants regularly over the course of a 12-month period, I was able to track and account for changes in the participant’s socio-cultural situations and how this shaped their engagements with the platforms. Over the course of the research period, I was able to track major life events like starting university, leaving home, and starting a first job. Some participants highlighted that shifts in their offline lives could lead to changes in how they engaged with online design features to present identity. Brandon, for example, noted: I’ve definitely noticed that in some workplaces that I’ve had it’s been very much keep people separate from work…However, in my current office there’s maybe 12 or 13 people who wouldn’t often socialise outside work, but that all have each other as contacts on Facebook 106 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? and very regularly make open comments about what somebody has posted up about last night. Nina also discussed how changes in her offline situation led to changes in how she performed identity and how she approached the platforms as social spaces, noting of previous work colleagues: They’re on my Twitter because they followed from the day of my interview, like [the company] themselves, and then I had to be really careful with what I said for the year and a bit I worked there, I wouldn’t say anything controversial, in fact I stopped using I stopped really using it as much because they were following me and I knew if I blocked them it was really suspicious because um they even asked me to stalk other people that had blocked them, even though I’ve left the company, which I have done on one occasion because she was slagging off a customer. Sally also detailed how changes in her life impacted how she approached and used social media. As a university student, Sally noted that social media provided a way to study efficiently. She highlighted Facebook, suggesting: it’s kind of also an easy way to share documents from lectures from my uni mates, and you know, ask general questions for groups, like the anthropology group or my course group. So it’s just an easier way to keep in contact with them because I don’t have all their numbers. However, Sally noted that her engagement with the platforms changed after leaving university and beginning to work at an office: One of the guys I work with, we don’t have each other’s phone numbers, but we message a fair bit outside of work (h) and at work too (h) over Facebook messenger. It’s useful like that because sometimes he gives me a lift home or if one of us is on holiday and we need to get in contact we can, or if I’m ill I can message him and ask him to tell my boss I’m not in. I think (.) it’s interesting that we’ve been working together for almost a year now and we only talk over Facebook Messenger, like we don’t use our phones as phones with text messages or calls. Sally noted changes in both her content and her attitudes towards social media after leaving university to start her first job. She highlighted that: Tumblr I used to go on every day, I’d check it as soon as I got in and just kept scrolling down until I caught up with the previous night. But I just don’t have the time anymore now I’m at work, it’s a lot to keep it going so if I have a spare fifteen or twenty minutes I’ll load it up and scroll until I give up and then I’ll move onto something else. I used to religiously refresh Tumblr every ten minutes because I followed so many people there would be loads of new posts, but yeah, now I just check it once a week or once every two weeks. This would suggest that an understanding of identity online should not only be attentive to how users bring socio-cultural resources with them to online spaces but also that identity presentation is an ongoing and malleable issue that adapts with the user, relevant to their given situation and concerns at any given time. Another case of changes in offline situation affecting engagement with social media was apparent with Molly. Before going to university, Molly noted that her main contact on Twitter was with ‘people who I know already, who I’ve like met face to face’ and that: 5.4 Accounting for the Offline in Online Identity Performances 107 To be honest, because, like, I mainly use it for friends and people I already know there’s not really any need to put anything up there. Like who am I putting it up for? I’ll tell the people who I tell in person, it doesn’t have to be there forever, because it’s not really important enough to be anywhere forever. It’s just (.) stuff. However, upon moving to university, Molly began to follow different kinds of users beyond just known offline friends: Molly: I use Twitter a lot more now. A lot (.) A lot more as a like a professional place. I pretty much only follow researchers and like government groups. Or people to do with education, primary education. Harry: That’s cool Molly: Yeah, it helps. Like, I feel it’s really helpful. I get the most up to date stuff, lots of knowledge about everything. It’s really great. I think I follow like 5 other people who aren’t professional. People I know already. I keep it separate I guess, cos they’re all on Facebook. Molly also noted that the change in context affected her concerns about social media and, therefore, her engagement with the platforms and their specific features. She noted that she felt she had to be wary about who was viewing her content: we had a lecture. They said other students had been kicked of their placements and NQT stuff for not being (.) professional on Facebook and stuff. So I feel like I have to be careful online about it all. It is important to highlight however that though the context through which Molly engaged with Twitter as a social platform did shift to accommodate her growing professional concerns, her usage largely remained the same. She noted, ‘I still haven’t tweeted anything. Not myself. I retweet and follow, it’s a way of reading and being professional for me. It’s like my professional space, that side of me’. This shift in context for Molly did bring about a change in the manner through which she approached Twitter as a platform. However, given that her usage did not largely alter from one context to the next, it appears that a consideration of identity online must be careful to highlight a consideration of more than just produced tangible content, as discussed in detail in the previous chapter. Though she was still not producing content on the platform, Twitter served largely different purposes for Molly before and after joining university. Put simply, Molly’s social situation changed her engagement with, and contextualisation of, social media, but did not significantly alter her content output. The notion of social situations impacting our online engagements and experiences in a variety of ways in an ongoing manner, as seen above, highlights the need to reconsider the notion of a clean and clear online/offline divide and emphasises the need to contextualise social media usage (Jurgenson 2012). The participants’ specific offline contexts clearly produced unique engagement with social media. Though, depending on the user, this did not always change the content created, it was evident that this did change their engagement with the platforms in line with their given concerns and interests. Whilst this research is keen to question easy online-offline divides, it is worth noting therefore that the translation of offline reality into the online realm is not a direct and perfect translation, but instead it is a specific translation that has the effect of emphasising certain aspects and 108 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? minimising the importance of others. As such, though it is clear that the offline is translated online, future research should consider unpacking what aspects of the offline are overtly emphasised and which aspects are minimised, with a consideration of what the effects of this may be. It should not be assumed that offline reality is presented neutrally online. The Internet is always and purposefully curated, and an awareness of this must be held, particularly when tying the emergence of audience to the design of platform, given that, through design, certain communities may be minimised or silenced on specific platforms. 5.5 I dentity Boundary Negotiation Between User and Design: Tactics, Trade-Off, and Compromises So far in this chapter, we have seen that our actions and interactions online can be understood through an attention to design and an attention to socio-cultural resources and experiences. For the remainder of this chapter, I want to focus more specifically at the interplay between these elements, the negotiation of the boundaries of identity performance between user and design. We will theorise this concept more fully in the next chapter, but for now, the focus remains on exploring the participants’ understandings of their identities online. The interviews highlighted that the participants’ identity performances were negotiated in a user-specific and platform-specific manner, as individual users enmeshed with the specific design features to negotiate what was included in a materially heterogeneous identity performances and what was excluded. For the participants, much of this manifested itself in concerns over the audiences online and who was able to view content and profiles. Because of Twitter’s open and public design, Brian felt that he had to actively alter how he presented his identity, controlling and tapering the content of his messages. He noted: ‘Facebook is there for me to, to socialise with my friends, I suppose, to put my opinions. I wouldn’t dare put my opinions on Twitter, because you can’t restrict it’. Interestingly, the idea that ‘you can’t restrict’ audience on Twitter is not entirely true as users are able to set their profile to private and choose who views their content. When I question him on this specifically, he replied: oh sure, yeah, you can (.) but it’s a catch-22 sort of thing. If you want to get everything out of Twitter you have to accept that it’s going to have to be public. You just have to restrict what you say. You play the game and change what you say. Brian later expanded on this to note when asked about audience control on Twitter: It’s not something you can do on Twitter if you want to go online. You kinda want attention, you just don’t get to decide what attention, so you have to be more (.) careful with what you say. You have to hold yourself back and think ‘what would someone think about this?’. This is rather telling in regard to the notion of identity online. Despite being offered the option through design to protect his content, Brian seemed to think this was 5.5 Identity Boundary Negotiation Between User and Design: Tactics, Trade-Off,… 109 simply not an option if he wanted to use Twitter ‘properly’. He felt therefore that he had no control of the public nature of the platform and that this was bound up in the design of the platform. Instead, for Brian, the boundaries of his identity performance had to be negotiated by altering his content rather than by negotiating with design. Brian later expanded upon this notion and discussed that platform specificity of this boundaried negotiation: But I think in a way Facebook does have more permanence, but you can doctor that permanence to people you trust easier, whereas Twitter you either get all public or all private, there’s no in-between. In this manner, it is clear that Brian’s negotiation of the boundaries of his materially heterogeneous identity presentation was bound to a negotiation and trade-off between himself and the specific platform he was using. Brian was not the only participant to grapple with the need to be public on Twitter. Brandon also felt that the control of privacy was non-negotiable on Twitter, and therefore he felt he had to accept that this aspect was out of his control and instead alter his content: Twitter I feel I have no real control at all, because I know fully that everything I put on there is available to everyone, umm, which probably limits my use of it a bit. He later expanded up this, suggesting that this negotiation of the boundaries of his identity was not only platform specific, but also shaped his subsequent interactions and expectations: I share more specific info, like what I’m doing and where I am on Facebook as well, because its, to me, it’s safe and I trust the people I let follow me. On Twitter or Instagram, because I don’t know who’s going to see it, all the stuff I share is vague and kinda loose. In a similar sense, and again driven by the specific controls afforded to her by each platform, Nina noted that she too felt she had to accept trade-offs in her performance and alter her actions: the other day I posted a post up, I can’t remember what it was, and I wrote the word, definitely, and I spelt definitely wrong, and I got all these tweets back about how I spelt, and they were like you definitely should learn how to spell definitely, and so I deleted the tweet in the end, and now I’ve decided never to type the word definitely, because I can’t spell really well. So yeah, I think I do change for the audience, cos with Twitter anyone can read it…whereas on Facebook it’s my friends, so if there’s a spelling mistake they’d let it slip, so I’m not really, I’m just sort of more, relaxed with what I say on Facebook. For these participants, their usage of Twitter as a platform was largely informed by the audience, but also importantly was tied to the public-first design of the platform and their lack of willingness to engage with the design affordances to police this publicness. As such, they felt the only option they had to control the identity performance was through the content they placed on the platform. If we consider the implications for a consideration of identity performances, this in essence means that the boundaries of what was included in the materially heterogeneous identity performances were felt to be non-negotiable in terms of privacy, so despite being 110 5 Enmeshing the User and Design: How Is Identity Managed Online? afforded the ability to enact some control, a trade-off in content was made to be able to partici