negotiating multiple identities on the social web
Post on 18-Oct-2014
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DESCRIPTION
Presentation on the fragmentation of online identities, the inadequacy of the personal branding metaphor and the idea of the multiverse as a new metaphor for thinking about online identity. For a transcript of the keynote, see this blog post: http://academic.stedwards.edu/socialmedia/blog/2011/11/16/negotiating-multiple-identities-on-the-social-web-goffman-fragmentation-and-the-multiverse/TRANSCRIPT
NegotiatingMultiple
ENTITIES
on the SocialWeb
ID
Many voices, one stream
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D @Corinnew
presenting a character to an
audience- Erwin Goffman
actorsWe are
??
????
?
How are we supposed to know we will be performing for?who
In Goffman’s terms, we can now perform different plays to different audiences at the same time.
Are we performing for a or for an audience of search engines?
human audience
Our online identities are fragmented
Our online identities are fragmented
What if an audience could piece all the fragments back
together?
What if an audience could piece all the fragments back
together?
Google Portrait of Marc L.
- MIT, Personas Project
Engines see identity aggregatesWe see identity fragments
- MIT, Personas Project
Engines see identity aggregatesWe see identity fragments
RANDINGPersonal
& strategic self-presentation
RANDINGPersonal
& strategic self-presentation
Personal Brand
Jobs refused to be branded. He was not Apple. He was not Next, or Pixar. He was a unique self, full of contradictions and that’s what humanized him.
Being too concerned with branding restricts the self
The problem is that we think of a brand in the classical way of thinking of the cosmos: it’s either this or that. It can’t be both. It’s all about getting the positioning right.
We used to think of a particle the same way: it is either here or there. It can’t be both places at once. It can only have one position. Or can it? Quantum mechanics suggests it can.
According to the Heisenberg principle, once we observe the particle and try to measure it, we disturb the way it behaves. This in turn changes what we see. Maybe that’s the problem with online identity. If you look in one place you see one aspect of a person’s identity. If you look in another place you find another aspect. What you’re looking for, where you’re looking for it and the instruments you use to do so will determine what you see.
The Internet literally chops our identities into packets and hurls us piecemeal around the globe. Our digital identities, reduced to subatomic particles or electrons, fly at near light speed through semiconductors, wires, and cables strung across the ocean floor. We mount to the air as waves from satellites, cell phone towers, and wi-fi hotspots. We shoot out as streams of photons from our screens, as waves of sound from our speakers, and glide across the surface of our tablets with the brush of a finger.
Crab Nebula
Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its multiplicity of possible universes could somehow inform our concept of identity
Crab Nebula
Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its multiplicity of possible universes could somehow inform our concept of identity
Map of the Internet
Our very identities have become the indeterminate particles and waves of quantum theory. We do in essence exist in millions of places at once, being observed by a million others who interpret us in a myriad different ways. The Internet defies position, embraces fluidity, and fosters multiphrenia.
CREDITSCorinne Weisgerber, Ph.D.Associate Prof. of Communication
St. Edward’s UniversityTwitter: @corinnew