Twitter Identity Performance

Who Do You Think You Are?: The Performance of Identity in MicrobloggingCandidate Number: 62371Supervisor: Leslie HaddonDissertation (MC499) submitted to the Department of Media and Communication,London School of Economics, September 2008, in partial fulfillment of therequirements for the MSc in Global Media and Communication.

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Abstract

This paper examines the performance of identity through short, deliberate messages on the‘microblogging’ website Twitter. Informed by similar research conducted on SocialNetwork Sites (SNS) and Mobile Social Network Sites (MSNS), and drawing upon ErvingGoffman’s study of symbolic interaction and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital,this study engages in a content analysis of microblog messages and attempts to establishwhether and how users employ microblogging as a means of identity performance andimpression management.

Introduction

In the performance of identity, an individual’s choice of references to andassociations with established and recognized cultural goods or ideas play an important rolein demonstrating that identity to an audience that is observing them (Goffman 1959). Thisis true across any number of circumstances and situations, from the creation andmaintenance of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) that supports and sustains ashared identity amongst globally dispersed diasporic groups, to the ‘taste statements’ (Liu,2007) that individuals make in everyday life (eg. their choice of wardrobe or their selectionof a morning newspaper).In the context of computer-mediated communication (CMC), a new landscape of possibility for identity construction has been developing, particularly within the field of social network sites (SNS) which provide users a virtual space to express their interests andtaste to a community of users (normally ‘real life’ friends, but also including onlineacquaintances as well as, often, the general ‘internet public’). SNS use has been growingover the past years according to marketing research (Nielsen, 2006), and this area of studyhas provided rich fields of data for social scientists to examine, which they are doing withincreasing frequency (see boyd & Ellison, 2007, for a broad review of studies in this field).Simultaneously, a parallel set of sites and services are developing that takeadvantage of the increasing power and ubiquity of mobile telephony to provide hyper-local2

and location-based services within the overall context of SNS (Johnson, 2007). So-calledmobile social network sites (MSNS) often combine internet-based profiles and accountcontrols with mobile phone-based communication inputs to allow users to employ theirservices to various ends while away from a computer. These appear to be especially prizedfor their immediacy, a function of the state of ‘perpetual contact’ described by Katz andAakhus (2002), as well as their emphasis on location-based services and ad hoccollaborative functions, such as organizing a meeting between people who are in the samearea (Rheingold, 2002: 193)While studies in this relatively nascent field of research are being published withincreasing rapidity, there remains ample unexplored territory to examine. Considerablework has been done on the performance of taste on profile pages in SNS’s (see, forinstance, Liu 2007, boyd 2006 and Donath & boyd, 2004), but less research has beenpublished on the use of MSNS’s for the same purpose. This study is an effort to introducefurther evidence into the academic record, and it is focused on examining the performanceof identity through the microblogging MSNS Twitter

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.First, an explanation of the field of study will be presented, including definitions of key terms and a brief history of microblogging. Next, a review of key literature in culturalcapital, impression management and taste performance will assess the ways in which thesetheories have been applied to studies of SNS, and will provide important insight intoapplying a similar framework to studying microblog messages. Finally, a content analysisof microblog messages from the Twitter service will be described and analyzed in an effortto answer the following research questions:RQ1: Are users of microblogging services employing them for the purposes of creating and maintaining their public identity?RQ2: If users are employing microblogs for this purpose, how are they doing so?

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Located online at: http://twitter.com3