Negotiating Id/entity in Internet-Mediated Contexts

Adam D. BohannonMarch 31, 2008abo46n2@gmail.com

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ABSTRACT

People create their identities through their relationships with others.These relationships are necessarily mediated through a variety of media that shapethe structure and practice of these relationships. It holds that a shift in media willhave certain social externalities through their modification of human relationships.The advent of print in fifteenth-century Europe begat certain social externalities— some of which still exist today, albeit in different form—that helped transformEuropean society by modifying relationships between people. Internet-mediated communication, in its ability to compress time and space, modifies relationshipsbetween people by facilitating more horizontal exchanges of information acrosscontexts. As our economies and societies become increasingly networked, and more of our interactions are mediated by the Internet and Internet-related technologies, we will come to see ourselves and others differently. By extension,our new perceptions will modify our cultures as we (re)create ourselves in acontinuous cycle of praxis.

Introduction

As human beings, we create and maintain our identities throughinteractions with others. According to Charles Horton Cooley, we imaginethe ways in which we must present ourselves to others, and we internalizewhat we perceive to be their judgments of our appearance. Thus, we learnto see ourselves as others do. Our webs of relations serve as mirrors fromwhich we may perceive ourselves through the eyes of others (Yeung andMartin 2003). However, the reflections we receive are not constant across

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contexts. Different contexts highlight different webs of relations andtherefore different identity reflections. As a result, our identity may not somuch exist inside ourselves as an internalized abstraction but rather outsideourselves as a multiplicative and fluid concept contingent upon the judgments of others as we interact in multiple situations. Media are criticalin mediating these interactions. Media possess the potential of transforminghuman perception but are intrinsically structured in ways that influence thenature of the information we wish to convey and thus affect our relationshipswith others. Essentially each medium of communication is its own languagethat creates its own symbolic environment (Lum 2006). It follows that achange in media will change the nature of our relationships as well as ourconception of identity. Not only that, changes in media can contribute toresounding macrosocial shifts as well. Eastern Europe experienced changesin the 15

th

century that culminated into a communications revolutionfollowing the advent of the printing press. Today in the 21

st

century we areexperiencing our own communications revolution with the rise of Internet-mediated communication and digital media.Currently, over 100 million people actively construct, maintain, andcommunicate their virtual identities using Facebook and other online socialnetworking services (Chapman 2008). If you think this number issubstantial, you will find it interesting to know this number is growing; anestimated 250,000 new users are registering virtual identities

each day

(Facebook 2008)

.

In addition, last year more than 125 million Americans