“You have to be somebody before you can share yourself” – (Jaron Lanier, “You Are Not a Gadget.”)

For my MA this week I read some articles on the idea of online identity. It was interesting to see how the theory within these articles related to the antics at Just Ten Things HQ.

This weekend Team Just Ten Things embarked on a journey into ‘impression management’ After reading David Buckingham’s article ‘Introducing Identity’ I was struck by his explanation of the work of Erving Goffman. In Goffman’s book ‘The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life’ He describes the process of ‘Impression Management’ This is the idea that every social interaction we have is a form of knowing performance. He describes a ‘front-stage’ and a ‘back-stage’ persona. The suggestion he makes is that the ‘back-stage’ persona is a more honest and true reflection of who we are whilst the ‘front-stage’ can be characterised by a level of inauthenticity and manipulation. This was a tension we faced in setting up the blog and preparing to release the podcast. We were aware that we had to create in essence a brand for the ‘Just Ten Things’ idea. The first part of this was taking the pictures that would represent Just Ten Things on social media. We headed out to into the Olympic Village in search of the perfect back drop and proceeded to take pictures of ourselves. We were conscious when taking the pictures of what exactly we wanted them to say. However, I disagree with the idea that my awareness of creating a narrative around my identity some how makes it less truthful.

There can be a conflict at times between our anchored identity which is comprised of elements such as race, gender, nationality and our transient identities, which is formed in part by what we consume and how we choose to present ourselves to the outside world.

Richard Jenkins talks about how what you choose to consume is a marker of your place in the world. He describes social identity as not being ‘a fixed possession, but as a social process, in which the individual and the social are inextricably linked’ I could see this clearly in the process of setting up this blog. There was an acute awareness on my part of who might be reading the blog or listening to the podcast and how we would be perceived. This anxiety is created wholly by the assumption of an audience. These considerations were far greater because of the fact that we were producing online content. The internet has this feeling of permanence. That even though times and trends may change, when you choose to create an online identity and exist on the internet there is the terrifying possibility that this identity you create will become etched into your fixed identity.

In order to mitigate some of that concern this blog, the podcast and even the accompanying twitter account have become an exercise in closely managing our transient identities and engaging in Giddens’ idea of storying the self. That our life is a narrative in which we have to work at to keep going.

If these identities might last forever, we want to maintain a level of control over them. Even if that is just choosing the most flattering angle in a photograph.

Buckingham, David. (2008), “Introducing Identity.” in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 1–24

Merchant, Guy, (2006), ‘Identity, Social Networks and Online Communication’, in E–Learning, Volume 3, Number 2, 2006

-Afua