8. Social Media and Identity Flashcards
Why is social media so hard to study
- constantly changing
- bidirectional
- Longitudinal studies don’t work well for individual platforms (BeReal might disappear before study is done, etc.)
how can we improve studying social media?
focus on nature of different platforms, and AFFORDANCES
AFFORDANCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ?? what does this mean
Affordance = what does it allow you to do / gets you?
- Can be unintended = standing on chair to change a lightbulb
💡 Different platforms have different affordances
A really long table doesn’t offer the same affordance for social connection as would a small round table
Affordances of Social Media (7)
-
Asynchronicity → engage when it suits you
- Different from face-to-face or social relationships prior to social media
- Option to reply to DM vs. when someone calls you on the phone -
Identifiability → decide how anonymous
- May be fully anon or not
- Different abilities to engage in different sorts of social relationships -
Cues Management → can control how you present yourself
- Craft emotion of text or image when posting -
Permanence → information can be stored and found later
- Can be retrieved easily -
Publicness → information can be shared easily with larger groups
- Can be intentional or unintentional -
Availability → easy to locate information and people
- Previously, meeting someone at summer camp means you will never see them again -
Quantifiability → numerical social metrics
- Liking, commenting, etc.
in adolescence: two main conflicts are (tasks of adolescence)
- Identity: secure feeling of who you are
- Intimacy: the abilities to form and maintain close relationships with others
- Friendship formation
- Quality of existing friendships
how are these tasks improved with social media
“Traditionally,” adolescents would learn and practice these tasks face-to-face (these are not new tasks!)…
- But recent evidence suggests this is increasingly happening online
Maybe due to affordances of social media?
- Anonymity, asychronicity, etc.
- Make for really good context for identity and intimacy conflicts
identity definition
A sense of who you are, what you will become, and how you fit into the world…
what happens when your identity is resolved? when it ISNT resolved?
Identity stability/cohesion
Identity confusion (This impacts your later life and relationships)
- components of identity
- exploration
- trying out different identities
Exploration → crucial for healthy identity - commitment
- committing to identity
Achievement?
explored and committed
Foreclosure
decided who you are with no exploration (high commitment, low exploration)
Moratorium
high exploration but undecided (low commitment)
Diffusion
no exploration or commitment
online contexts that offer the opportunity to construct and display an identity (6)
- Usernames
- Can detect gender, sexual identity/interest in sexuality from username
- Codes
- ASL code
- Reddit groups
- Avatars
- Shaped to parts of identity
- Self-descriptions
- **About me**** section where you, quite literally, write in your identity
- Sexuality
- Photos/videos
Online identity experiments
tendency to pretend to be someone else when online
pros of being Online?
Offers the opportunity to explore identity,
Cue management and asynchronicity → choose what and how to present your identity in a way that is different from face-to-face
Self-Concept Clarity ?
Degree to which our beliefs about our identity are clearly defined and stable
“my beliefs about myself often conflict, change frequently, spend a lot of time wondering about what kind of person I really am, etc.”
benefits of clarity (5)
- Well-being
- Adaptation to stress
- Better body image
- Self-esteem
Clarity = good for psychological development
things that can impact self-concept clarity:
- ANONYMITY
- Online identity experiments: pretending to be someone else online - PUBLICNESS
- Feedback from others, comparisons to others - ## AVAILABILITY & ACCESSIBILITY
things that can impact self-concept clarity:
- ANONYMITY
- Online identity experiments: pretending to be someone else online - PUBLICNESS
- Feedback from others, comparisons to others - AVAILABILITY & ACCESSIBILITY
-Interact with a wider range of individuals