Culture, Society and Identity

“..values are the primary motivational construct that influences almost every aspect of human life, guiding us to consider what is desirable then energising and directing behaviour towards attaining these goals..” (Suke, 2009)

I wanted to explore further the ideas around cultural identity and ethics, as this linked to my project premise about taking a values-based approach to digital inclusion. My assumption was that many of the discussions about identity, trust and safety are, and will continue to happen, but what we need to do is find the right ‘conversational frameworks’ with which to have these discussion. Originally I thought that I could just point people in the right direction and give them some top tips. But it has become clearer the more I have researched, that these are decisions that people have to make for themselves, but you can help them to have these conversations.

Suke (2009) paper was an interesting look at male cultural identity with students in china, and how the digital world might be changing their cultural values. Chen describes values as objects, conditions or characteristics that members of that society consider important. This is interesting in a Chinese context, as cultural values were formed from the traditional culture of china and the increasing globalised culture of the online world. Therefore these young men were interacting in two potentially different social environments and so it would be expected that this might alter their culture values.

The idea of cultural identity is also pick up in a paper by Cullen (2009), researching ideas of identity and information privacy in the context of New Zealand. Cullen notes that the concerns about privacy are different for different groups and reflect the cultural values and concepts of personal identity that people have. This difference in privacy concerns is also the basis for Lorenzen-Huber et al’s (2010) research on privacy and older aged adults. Their motivation was understanding whether privacy frameworks should be different for older aged adults, as their perceptions will be influenced by different psychosocial motivations.  They say that studies suggest that older adults are unconcerned about privacy related to data-collection and sharing and that their perceived risk is lower than the actual risk. They explored a five part privacy framework using a variety of practical experiments with older people.

• Seclusion (right to be left alone)
• Autonomy (right to self-determination)
• Property (right to determine use and dissemination of personal data)
• Spatial construct (physical and virtual boundaries)
• Data protection

They found that older adults were more concerned with emotional connections to family and friends, but particularly focused on independence and autonomy. Therefore they balanced privacy preferences against their desire for independent living, personal autonomy and satisfying relationships, and had little concern around the five areas of privacy. If devices were perceived as useful then they generally viewed them as acceptable, but they wanted to control the decision making.

What this starts to show us is that we need to understand identity and privacy as not universal. The concerns and approaches are not only different according to culture, but also to age. Therefore discussions and work with volunteers might need to be approached differently. One size won’t fit all, and the risks to one group may be different to those of another because of their perceptions.

The digital world and youth culture.

Discussions about the fragmented self are scattered around literature about the digital world and culture. Besley (2011) reminds us of Foucault’s view that our identities are not fixed but fluid. They change and develop over time in a fluid, dynamic and creative process. As Besley is reflecting on creative media and how this contributes to the wider ‘knowledge’ economy, the paper naturally explores identity with a personal and public dimension, and how the public dimension shapes our behaviour. Besleys notes that the digital identity can be more fragmented and more temporal, so we need to manage it more, although we tend to put our best side forward. Youth culture is often situated within the online world of content creation and participatory culture (affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving and circulations), and much of this makes us ‘media producers’.

KImmon’s (2014) focuses in on new media and the literacies that ensue. We need to have an understanding of the relationship between online participation and identity and also how the structure of social media spaces influence and shape identity. Gradinaru talked about ‘context collapse’ in the sense that it is hard for us to figure out what context we are in, but as Belk pointed out, social media context afford certain characteristics, like more self-disclosure. Therefore, according to Kimmons social networking sites have their own cultures and norms that force us to behave in certain ways, making it difficult to express ‘authentic’ identity. It is also easier to misinterpret identity through online information as it often doesn’t go deeper into the whys and whats of what we are expressing. Therefore (back to Foucault), identity is fluid and shaped by the context of the media we participate in. Which is not a new idea, as we behave differently at work, as we might at home, and so forth.

“…we need to empower learners to participate in SNS in ways that are meaningful and truthful for them, but do not reduce identity to the strict confines of the medium”. (Kimmons, 2014)

Besley, T. (2011). Digitised youth: Constructing identities in the creative knowledge economy. Annals Of Spiru Haret University, Journalism Studies, 12(1), 9-22.

Cullen (2009) Culture, identity and information privacy in the age of digital government.  Online Information Review, 33(3), 405-421.

Lorenzen-Huber, L., Boutain, M., Camp, L. J., Shankar, K., & Connelly, K. H. (2011). Privacy, Technology, and Aging: A Proposed Framework. Ageing International, 36(2).

Kimmons, R. (2014). Social Networking Sites, Literacy, and the Authentic Identity Problem. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 58(2), 93-98.

Suke, C. (2009). College Male Students' Cultural Value Identity in the New Media World. China Media Research, 5(4), 41-46.

Exploring online identity - convergence of self

From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Study of online Identity (Gradinaru, 2013)

This paper attempts to explore the changes in our understanding of identity, and how ‘technological domestication’ (the fact that the internet is a functional part of our everyday lives), has meant a convergence in the online/offline identity. Today our online identities are similar to our offline, as people want to be honest and direct, and because it would be incredibly difficult to manage multi-personalities now that it is easier for us to find ways of verifying people’s identities and that we have less control, sometimes, as a user. The information about us needs to fit together.

I remember reading a number of articles when I first started my Masters in Online and Distance Education about anonymity and identity and how the internet is changing behaviour. So this article, despite it being a difficult read, really spoke about the ways that technology use has changed and that for most people, honesty and ‘realistic’ portrayals of self are more important, especially in a networked age. Gradinaru takes us back to the early internet of the 1990s and how the multitude of possibilities and anonymity spoke to us of the freedom and liberty that the internet affords, and links in with postmodern ideas and multiple personalities.  ‘Self’ could be distributed and so we could have a portfolio of personalities and play different roles at the same time. Being able to explore numerous aspects of ourselves potentially led to tensions between our online and offline identities.

However the way we use the internet and technology itself has changed, especially with the advent of social media tools and platforms, meaning that the difficulty is now knowing which identity to us in which context (Rodogno, 2011). Or in fact knowing what context we are in. Rodogno introduces the idea of ‘content collapse’ in sense that the complexity of the platforms and services available to us make it difficult for us to determine which identity we are in, and so multiple audiences are suddenly in the same context.  Therefore as users it’s not surprising that we have started adopting a ‘imagined audience’ and lean towards shaping our online identity to that of our offline. Otherwise we have a great deal of work to do in ‘archiving’ and protecting our different personalities.

Online identity then, is about how we present ourselves to others, but also about how we perceive ourselves through our interaction with others. This the way we present ourselves online becomes a process of managing and constructing impressions, so that we can control how other perceives us. Therefore the internet is no longer a playground with which to construct different identities (although we still use the internet to explore different facets of identity), it becomes a way of ‘customising’ our identities, with symbolic markers that link back to the ‘real’.

How is this relevant to my project?

Many of our volunteers will be of a generation who lived through these debates in the 1990s, and may see the internet still as this ‘other’ place where people go to play and be someone or something they are not. The article reminds us that the way we use technology has changed. The more embedded it has become, the more people use it as a part of their everyday lives, and so their online identities will mirror the offline. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who create completing anonymous identities, and we know that some of the fears about safety come from the fear of not knowing who you are talking to. But it has become easier to verify identity. Because people are being ‘real’.

Thus if we want to help our volunteers with their trust issues, we can once again draw on our values. The way we behave and act offline should be the same as the way we behave online. The way we interact with strangers, should be the same. Just as we might be wary of the stranger on the bus, we should also be wary of the stranger wanting to be our friend on Facebook. Being ‘real’ about our identity makes it easier to manage our identity.

Gradinaru, C. (2013). From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Study of Online Identity. Argumentum: Journal The Seminar Of Discursive Logic, Argumentation Theory & Rhetoric, 11(2), 95-108.

Rodogno, R. (2011). “Personal Identity Online”. Philosophy and Technology 25 (3): 309-328.