The Online Projection of the Self between Individuation and Collectivization
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18861/ic.2019.14.1.2886Keywords:
self-representation, digital culture, identity, semiotics, InstagramAbstract
The practices related to the projection of personal identity that are carried out on digital media can and should be conceived as practices of communication and, more widely, signification. From a semiotic approach, such practices could be understood as strategies of enunciation of the self in which individuals, by means of creative acts that imply the manipulation of the dimension of the expression, consciously or unconsciously manage the image they project to the external world with strategic goals, aiming at producing a specific effect of sense in how the others conceive them. The goal of this paper is to present an argument that can help conceiving the identity projection practices that take place online as the result of the employment of a series of semiotic resources and that are based on a dynamic that permanently oscillates between two poles: individuation and collectivization. As it happens with every process of identity construction, the online projection of personal identity reflects this inescapable necessity of the collective dimension in order to affirm what is individual and unique. The theoretical proposal is illustrated by the discussion of some examples of how individuals create their individual personal profiles on Instagram.
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