Performing Identity Through Social Media: A Sociomaterial Perspective

IFIP 8.2, 2016

14 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2018

Date Written: March 5, 2018

Abstract

In this paper we adopt a practice-based lens and explore the role of materiality in everyday practices involving social media use. In particular, we focus on practices that underpin the creation and articulation of online identities. Using qualitative data from extensive fieldwork involving 50 social media users we illustrate a variety of practices where users' enactment of social media shows the emergence of the agentic role of this materiality which enables and constrains identity creation. To this end, we show how performing identity on a particular social media has consequences in terms of further attempts to elaborate personal identity within the same social medium, across social media and "offline". We contribute to the sociomateriality literature which examines social media use seen as an enactment between human and material agency.

Keywords: materiality, identity, social media, multiplexity, agential cut, agential realism

Suggested Citation

Marabelli, Marco and Page, Xinru, Performing Identity Through Social Media: A Sociomaterial Perspective (March 5, 2018). IFIP 8.2, 2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3134979 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3134979

Marco Marabelli (Contact Author)

Bentley University ( email )

175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02145
United States

Xinru Page

Bentley University ( email )

175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02145
United States

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