The photographic object as the constructive material of the online persona.

Summary
In the following research, I am referring to the different ways that the self could be formed in the internet through photography. I am beginning with a literature review in the theories of the social psychology, which explores the way the identity is constructed in general and the way it is transformed through the different cultural contexts. Later, I focus on the identity construction in the internet and consequently I am talking about the way we use photographic objects as self-constructive material in the cyberspace.

Introduction
In the literature review it is accepted in general that the media we upload are being used as the structural elements of our self, inside the cyberspace: in other words media uploads are the only way to create a self and a social understanding of ourselves in the internet. Apart from this assumption arises the question if this self-projection in the digital space is in accordance with our physical, external-world identity, or if it is just a new independent identity that resembles another part of our psyche. In the following research I perceive as the main factor that contributes to the formation of the internet persona, the social network of friends. Generally, I suspect two main outcomes of identity that are dependent on the social network of friends. On the one hand, we have a digital network of friends strongly related to the physical network of friends and on the other hand we have a digital network of friends without any significant relationship with that of the physical world. On the first condition, we could suspect that the friends network would act as the link between the digital persona of the user and his/her physical one, and on the other condition we could suspect that the digital persona would be more close to the users phantasy about his/her self.

Literature review
Identity and the Self through Social and Developmental Psychology
It is no longer disputable the fact that self and identity development are interwoven with the social and cultural environment with which the person interacts. In fact, if we imagine ourselves apart from any social and cultural constructs we would end up without any identity, social understanding and any sense of who we are. Generally, our sense of self is constituted into two main parts: a self that is constituted by all of our internal urges, beliefs

and emotions that are deeply subjective and an external self, constituted by all our social/cultural understanding about these personal subjective beliefs and feelings. Social constructs are partly a way of externalizing our inner originality through social means in which they could be understood and gain a social meaning. This social meaning is then used as the mirror through which we reflect ourselves in order to understand our position in society (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). In simpler words, the social self is emerged from the reflection of our subjective, internal self to the external cultural objects that we have internalized (Kozulin et. al, 2003). By adopting these objects as reflectors of our subjective selves, we construct a social, objectified version of our self that is bound to social and cultural understanding. This objectified, cultural self is what is being used as a benchmark between us and the social others, something that enables us to perceive our position in the social reality (Howarth, 2011). In other worlds we objectify our subjective selves through a social construct, and through that we gain understanding of ourselves and of others. Such cultural objects could be electronic media, books, photographs, social stereotypes, the words of the language itself or completely arbitrary social codes such as wearing black in a funeral and costume in a wedding. Nevertheless in our physical society this cultural objectification of ourselves is inevitably partly tied to our physicality. For example, one cannot ignore the physical reality and constrains of his own body, when he/she is fat, thin, and tall, woman or a man etc. When it comes to the internet on the other hand, this objectification is totally arbitrary and disconnected from our physicality (Turkle, 1999). One could be representing himself/herself as tall, short, woman or man on the internet without us ever being sure if the person behind the screen is the same as the person described online.

Psychological Transition in the Digital Space

According to social psychologists (Kadianaki, 2010), a rupture occurs when the self is moved to a different cultural and social environment. Because we are constantly striving to preserve our stable sense of self, and because this sense of self is based on cultural elements that their meaning is arbitrarily attributed, inevitably when we move to a foreign cultural environment, our sense of self collapses because it cannot be adequately objectified with the foreign semiotic cultural elements. Because social context is something constructed based on arbitrary cultural objects, when that context change, our sense of self doesnt make anymore sense, because as we have seen, this sense of self is depended on the use and the management of these cultural objects. In order to preserve our sense of self we have to re-build our self, according to the semiotic background of the foreign culture we interact with (Zittun et al., 2003), or use different techniques to validate our self-preseption (Kadianaki, 2010). Another similar situation in where we experience such rupture with our sense of self is during the different developmental stages of our lives. For example, the transitioning from childhood to adulthood that takes place in adolescence creates a similar sense of lost self, in where the adolescent is trying to reestablish the way he perceives the world and himself among this world. So for example, the creative child and the sense of self he holds about being creative is later reestablished and translated through his cultural preferences and the ideas he hold as adolescent. Similarly, young adulthood creates a similar condition of a lost sense of self, when the young adult comes in contact with the harsh

reality, and feeling that the ideas held from adolescence are for the most part no longer valid in the real social environment the young adult is forced to live. The abovementioned stages are referred in the bibliography as forms of identity crises (Erikson, 1968), something that maybe validate the idea that the self, moving into a different frames or contexts of social reality, it collapses because the meaning-attributed objects of each context no longer support the self-concept, and thus the person feels lost. Nevertheless, the person re-adjusts himself to the new cultural environment by translating and adjusting his sense of self to the new semantic objects.

In the case of the internet, I believe that such collapse and re-establishment of the self exists with our interaction within the digital world. The digital space is a different cultural environment with different social possibilities and constrains. Because any meaning about ourselves in this world is derived solely through the vast pool of multimedia objects that exist in this space and because this space is not a singular space -such as in the case of the physical reality- but rather it consists of different and multiple realities, we could assume that the sense of self in this space could not be static and singular but rather it has to be pluralistic, fragmented sense of self is that is expressed through multiple different subspaces of the digital space, but nevertheless, strives to preserve the self-understanding from rupture, as in the case of moving into different cultural contexts in the physical reality. So any self-disclosure in the internet, in my opinion is bound to keep the self-understanding from falling apart. So, in accordance with the above statement, any textual or multimedia objects we use while interacting in the cyberspace, I believe that are being used as referential objects to the sense of self we hold from the physical reality. Thus, our self on the internet could reflect a translation of our sense of self from its objective reality from the physical world to the objective reality and the objects that exist in these electronic environments. In other words our digital persona is a validation of our subjective sense of self through the digital objects of that space.

The Digital Self

Through the literature review I can perceive generally three main ways in which this transition takes place in the digital world. Firstly, a self-construction could exist through language (text), in which the person is communicating himself through text; such cases were the mainstream during the web 1.0 environments of MUDs and IRC. Another way, is through

the virtual worlds and games, in where, although a virtual objective environment exist this objective environment is fundamentally different from the physical reality of the user. A third way the self could be transitioned in the digital space could be through multimedia uploads, such as photographs and video clips that refer to the physical reality. Generally, as mentioned, because our sense of self is validated through cultural objects existing in the social/cultural reality, we could expect that our digital persona would be constructed through the abovementioned digital objects found in the internet (text, virtual reality objects and media uploads) and reflect our subjective sense of self.

Text
"Your appearance now is what we call residual self-image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.- Morpheus (The Matrix, 1999). Firstly, in the case of the text, online textual environment existed mainly through the 1980s and early 1990s as part of the MUD (Multi-Domain Dungeons), online games that the player was describing his role and his actions in a story-based game through the use of text. In such linguistic environments the self, constructed through language, it meant that the users online persona was totally disconnected from his physical reality. The only objects that the person could use in order to construct himself in this environment were words, that their meaning was attributed from the narrative and the script of the story of the MUD. In simpler terms, the words (objects) derived their meaning through the texts narrative (the story of the MUD), thus the person, because he was constrained to validate his sense of self in this textual environment only by the use of words, that meant that his persona had to be embedded in, and revealed through the narrative of the story. The person was using the words as objects to construct and transition his sense of self, but the words he was using were deriving their meaning from the narrative of the story. So, because the social self of the user is immersed into that environment, its meaning becomes identified with the narrative of the objective environment the user is interacting with: in that case, the story. That means that, the users sense of self in this linguistic role-play environment could be revealed through the role he adopts and describes in the story through text. The role of the user in the story becomes the transitional object into the new environment, so the user strives to fulfill that role he impersonates, in order to preserve his sense of self that is constituted by the role. That means that the digital persona or self is constructed as a mental projection, an image that represents your subjective sense of self in that space, and revealed through the media of the digital space itself. In simpler words, the narrative of the MUDs story is the cultural

environment and the role the player portrays is the validating object of his subjective sense of self. So the users sense of self is transferred and objectified as part of the story.

Multimedia Environment: the web 2.0

As we have seen above, the self in the internet is emerged from the context of the medium, just like a character emerges in a story. That self, being constructed through the objects of the space, it means that it is inherently bound to the semiotic assumptions of these objects that derive their meanings through the narrative of their space. So, the users self is projected and constructed as a part of the narrative of the space, in the case of the MUDs, as a character of the story. But that happens when the social environment is constructed through text a medium that is disconnected from physical reality - in the cyberspace. So, what happens in the case where we upload material from the physical reality into our online profile, such as photographs or video clips? In that case the representation of the physical reality bounds our digital persona to our physical representation of our selves. When we upload media material into the cyberspace to construct our self in our digital profile, I believe that there exist two separate ways in which our online self would be emerged. Firstly, we might use our online persona as an extension of our physical persona, in where our physical assumptions about ourselves are preserved and transferred on our online profile through the multimedia we upload about our physical reality. But that wouldnt explain all the experimenting with our persona that exists in the digital world (Kafai, Fields & Cook, 2007). I believe that the experimentation of ones self in the cyberspace is an expression of an alternative self-perception about his/her self that in other cases that expression could be socially discouraged. One difference that exists between textual disclosure of our self and our multimedia-filled online profile is that multimedia is directly referring to our physical reality through their realistic representation. So in that case, our subjective sense of self is no longer disclosed through the narrative of the story, but it is disclosed through the use of an actual reference to their physicality. If we take for example the case of photography, photography is a naturalistic medium that captures the physical world and represents it online. So, we should expect that in that case our online persona would be bound to physical reality and because of that our online profile should reflect our offline persona. In many studies, that was proven wrong. Many studies suggest that people through their online profiles are projecting a different self that is either a positive or a negative aspect of themselves. Because positive and negative are arbitrary descriptions, I define as positive self as the self that is a socially idealized and as a negative self as the self that tends to be counter-cultural (alcohol/drug use etc.). The negative and the positive persona, as well as the tendency to use our online persona as an extension of our physical self in the digital space, I suggest that they are relevant to a users friend network online.

Online network of Friends different from the offline network of friends: Expression of an alternative version of the self
In the case that the online network of friends is different from the offline, the online friends would be of different cultural contexts and places (they could be from anywhere in the world) and as such, the digital persona would be probably disconnected from the physical environment of the user. Thus we should expect a freedom regarding selfexpression of ones self online, so we are free to suggest that their online persona in that case must be different that their offline persona. In researches (Rosen, 2006) it has been suggested that users of the internet use the online space to construct an experimental identity that they could use in order to test the reaction of the social network towards that identity before adopting it in the physical world. Moreover, other studies (Kafai, Fields & Cook, 2007) has shown that teenaged users of the online space has been using their online profile construction to identify with a social group or a social idea, that they could not identify with while in the offline world due to social constrains. Also, as has been studied by Taylor (2006), users in the Second Life were constructing their online persona that is much different from their offline persona, not only in appearance, but also in behaviors. The above studies confirm that the online world is a playground of experimenting with identity, something that Sherry Turkle (1984, 1995) has observed in the MUDs. This identity experimentation might be relevant to identity experimentation during adolescence as Erik Erikson describes it (1968). It is no coincidence that people who were using the online space sometimes they feel a sense of fragmentation of themselves, or other times a sense of freedom, or even sometimes a sense of fear of what the space might reveal about their selves (Hockley, 2007). But in the case of Social Network Site profiles like in the case of Facebook or MySpace for example, projecting an alternative version of you through photography might be a paradox, regarding the photographs realism. Although the photographic medium seems as an analogue of reality (Moholy-Nagy, 1967), the decisive moment (Cartier-Bresson, 1952) of the photographer is governed by strongly subjective forces, that come from A dynamic interplay of objective fact with subjective interpretation that arouses meaning and emotion about the human condition (Suler, 2012). Thus, what that means is that the photograph even if it seems to portray an objective reality, instead it portrays the subjective reality of the photographer. That suggests that, the photograph uploaded in the cyberspace is filtered through the users reality, so it is inherently an aspect of his/her, self. Secondly, a photograph uploaded in the internet, is being consciously filtered according to what the user wants to show about himself, the same way a person, while in a face-to-face communication is trying to establish his identity by censoring some aspects of himself (Goffman, 1974), but in the case of the internet in an even more effective way than the offline FtF communication because of the asynchronous internet communication. So interestingly enough, a persons persona, even if it is expressed through naturalistic media (photography) it is nevertheless an idealized version of his/her self. Another aspect of ones self that could be disclosed in the cyber-self is that of a projective self. In my personal opinion, the anonymity of cyberspace could be used as a motive to express dark areas of ones self, which one might want to express outwardly or even expel from his self. Such areas could be

taboo ideas, about socially unaccepted behavior such as drug use, sexuality, or other taboo ideas, that through their public expression in a social network site, they become normal. In other words, the online self in the case of an anonymous profile, could be used as a dumping persona of a dark aspect of ones self, as a kind of defense mechanism that through public expression it normalizes the reasons of ones feelings of guilt or shame. That, along with the experimentation about ones self could explain the reason of all the negative personas in the online world. Photography in that case could not be used as a material of reference to the physical reality, because physical reality could be different among the users of the network. In that case photography shall depict the person in a close frame, because the physical environment of the users is not of significant relevance to the network. In that case the cultural object would be the photograph itself in its twodimensional nature. The self would use semiotic references to be constructed, embedded on the photographic material itself. So in that case we shall expect, photographs with heavy manipulation (black and white, MySpace angles etc.) being used as the components of the online self.

Online network of Friends relative to the offline network of friends: Online persona as an extension of the physical.
Although that might be true in the case where the online network of friends differs from the offline, in the opposite case where the network of friends is for the most part the same as in the physical reality, we should expect that the measure in which one expresses his/her self is no longer his idealized self-view, but it is a view based on the impression already made by the offline friends in physical reality. As such, if the online network of the friends is mostly the same as the network of friends outside the internet, then we could hypothesize that the online self would be constructed as the extension of our offline self into the cyberspace. Given that the offline network of friends has already made an assumption about me, it is difficult to escape from that assumption and create a different image of me on the internet. Thus my online persona is inevitably tied to my physical. Moreover, according to studies, the online communication is based on the mutual trust between the two communicators and the information they exchange (Donath, 2010). Because of that, any false or distorted information about the self in the cyberspace would be criticized by the network of friends and the trust among them will collapse. Thus the communicating persons are bound to disclose information about their self that corresponds to their real-life self. Also, because in that case, physical reality is a common ground of reference for the friends network, I believe that the photography taken will be referential to the physical reality of the person and will be used as a referential material to persons self, thus forming a constructive object of ones self. The surrounding places, the objects that surround the user in the photograph and the people in the photograph would be the constitutive materials of a persons self in that case. The photograph in that case should be seen in a three-dimensional way, and the objects depicted should be regarded as the cultural objects transitioning the self in the digital world.

Research
Apart from the medium in which one expresses his/her self, theoretically the network of friends must be playing a big role in the way one constructs his/her persona on the digital space. To explore that relationship between the expression of ones self on the internet and the relationship to the network of his/her friends, I will use a qualitative research in which I will use content analysis to see how the photographic medium is being used -in each case- as a cultural object that constructs the persona of a user. As seen through the literature review I would expect that the friends network would play a role not only in the way one expresses his/her self on the internet and the way he/she uses the photographic medium, but also in the aspect of self he expresses in each case.

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