Mixed Self: Theoretical Approach to the Online Self

7 Pages Posted: 16 Oct 2010

Date Written: October 15, 2010

Abstract

The present paper presents a theoretical framework to the study of personal identities gathering structural and interactionist approaches to offline and online selves. My intention is to demonstrate the adequacy of Goffman’s symbolic interactionism in the definition of a mixed self in cyberspace. This mixed self has elements of a surrogate and of a complement to offline self-presentations. So it can be stable and fragmented, grounded and constructed, real and simulated. If it seems consensual that Internet has changed cultural processes and the basis of social identity with the displacement of grounded interaction to a virtual space, doubts remain in considering that it allows the separate existence of multiple aspects of the self that otherwise wouldn’t be expressed, in an infinite possibility of programming multiple selves. I agree that identity is a social construct (Hall, 1992 and 1996; Giddens, 1991; Jenkins, 1996) and it is saturated with social aspects and struggles existing both in online and offline spaces.

In this work, I determine that there is no such thing as: “one person – one identity,” because, even in embodied life, people have “many identities” according with the social role they have to play in a determinant context (Levy, 2000; Lahire, 2001). The multiple identities usually linked to cyberself do exist, but must be tied to post-modern times, schizophrenic identity or mixed selves, since: the perturbation and crisis in the social world and the emergency of a new sociocultural level – global – characterized by fast-moving changes and content overload; lead to identity fragmentation and to a self made of patchwork elements.

Keywords: Identity, Social Construct, Cyberspace, Mixed Self

Suggested Citation

Sebastião, Sónia Pedro, Mixed Self: Theoretical Approach to the Online Self (October 15, 2010). ESA Research Network Sociology of Culture Midterm Conference: Culture and the Making of Worlds, October 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1692806

Sónia Pedro Sebastião (Contact Author)

CAPP - ISCSP (Universidade de Lisboa) ( email )

ISCSP, Universidade de Lisboa
Rua Almerindo Lessa - CACIFO 203
Lisbon, 1300-663
Portugal

HOME PAGE: http://soniapsebastiao.weebly.com

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