Essay On Digital Identity

Emergence of digital technologies, introduction of interactive and participative digital environments and mobile devices let people express their identities with different means. Faucault (1988), in his seminar, used a terminology; “technologies of the self”. He defined it as “those which let individuals to transform themselves into new identities in order to attain happiness, wisdom, perfection, etc. by their own means or with the help of others”. O’Regan (2009), in his article on new technologies and social networks, repeated the term. As O’Regan (2009) discusses, with the introduction of new themes of digital technologies, the conventional means of expressing the self is challenged.

To understand it better, consider the offline means of expressing identity: the way we dress, the interests and hobbies that we have, our body language, the

It is defined by Belk (2013, p.485) as “arm’s-length self-photography”. For Sessions (2009; p.2), it is a generic pose, the meme of the self-portrait, originally known as ‘MySpace Angles’. Oxford dictionary defines selfie as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”. As a self-photography, selfies are aimed for oSNSs, and they are visual communication of the self. According to Hess (2015), it is most of the time filtered by the owner, through the digital device. It is a fact that it is not taken by the owner as a memory but for to post in a social network for others to view. At primary level, selfies are “accent the self” (Goffman, 1959). Since they are taken with a device with accompanying software that enables to get the best photo, and are designed to disseminate in a network, they are the signals of performative selves (Goffman, 1959). Hess (2015) interprets selfies as “staged performances” (p.1632), as they are taken and retaken to find the perfect