quasigraphy

The identities constructed by the creation (not representation) of life narratives are the product of a dialogue between user and media (internet, platform, creative technologies) and are shaped by such; the user maintains control of their input and thus retains agency not only in construction of a life narrative to be liked and shared but also in curation of that input, and (to an extent) the platform’s interpretation of those behaviours. The input of a user is neither static nor necessarily definitive of a user’s offline identities (contextually constructed and not necessarily ‘true’) – impersonation and quasi-anonymity are inherent to the internet as general medium. The user, therefore, still holds dominance over the platform in terms of the delineation of the user’s identity on a given platform, even as the platform shapes the pathways by which that identity is defined. The construction of a digital identity is a dialogic process.

At the moment, the preeminent platform for digital identities is Facebook. Facebook interprets its users by analysis of their input and attempts to anticipate their interests – crystallized in books, movies, music, and pages – based on demographic patterns and the relativity of these interests. Facebook thinks I should like this show and that band, because it believes I’m a 22-year-old male student who likes that show and this band. (It’s right, for the moment, but that’s not always true.) The targeting power of Facebook is incredibly valuable for marketers – you need only try out Graph Search for a demonstration. It even anticipates friendships, telling me who I should know based on shared friends. This is all reliant, however, on the user having input data and exhibited behaviours that reflect their own identity. My life narrative on Facebook adheres to a set of values shaped by Facebook – it’s less professional than my LinkedIn life narrative, and more expansive than my episodic 140-character narrative on Twitter.

I currently work as a researcher and project coordinator for the Digital Tattoo Project here at UBC – our work explores digital citizenship, digital literacies and asks questions about shaping digital identities.

Some worthwhile reading:

Howard Rheingold’s Tools For Thought (MIT Press), available in full at http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/

Douglas Rushkoff’s 2010 book  Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commandments for a Digital Age.

Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility [the 1987 translation, relevant particularly in consideration of the shaping processes applied through media]