An ‘open source’ networked identity - On young people’s construction and co-construction of identity on social network sites Paper presentation at: “Youth 2.0 – Affordances, Uses and Risks of Social Media”, University of Antwerp, March 21th 2013

1. An ‘open source’ networked
identity
- On young people’s construction and co-
construction of identity on social network sites

2. About me and my research
•Assistant Professor, PhD,
Department of Communication,
Aalborg University
•Research area: Social media and
digital youth culture
•MA thesis on Danish SNS
Arto (2005)
•PhD on Danish teens’ use of various
SNS (2007-2010)
•Newest research project: "Intimacy,
social media and
youth”

3. Aim of the paper
• To illustrate how young people’s practices of friendship
maintenance and identity construction on SNS are related
• To analyse how Danish teens co-construct each other’s identity
through the use of emotional communication
•  a quite distinct discourse of Love between close ties (best
friends/’BFF’s’)
• To introduce the term ‘open source’ networked identity as a
metaphor for understanding the collaborative presentation of
identity or identity-through-social-interaction among Danish
youth on SNS

4. Empirical background
• Eight years of qualitative research and participant
observations on various SNS
• Multi-sited connective virtual ethnography
(Marcus, 1995; Strathern, 1996; Hine, 2000)
 Snowballing (Bijker, 1995)

5. Empirical background
• I created profiles (as myself)

6. Empirical background
• I made ’friends’

7. Empirical background
• I wrote field notes
 ”I feel I have a hard time keeping track of my
different friends (who is who – who writes what to
me and who have I written to). Especially, it is
confusing that users can freely change their user
names and profile pictures […]. Based on this, I can
conclude that it is easier to navigate ones’ friends if
you know them IRL.”
(Larsen, 2005, p. 223))

8. Empirical background
• I took (a lot of) screenshots

9. Empirical background
• I had informal conversations online + conducted focus group
interviews

10. Empirical background
•I applied a different (more qualitative) approach to collect
online questionnaire data ( 2400 respondents)

11. Empirical background
• I coded the data using a Grounded Theory inspired approach
(Gibbs, 2002; Welsh, 2002)

12. Overall theoretical and methodological approach
•Nexus analysis (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Scollon, 2001a, 2001b)
•Focusing on central mediated actions carried out by social actors
– rather than focusing solely on discourse
•Actions are always mediated by technologies or cultural artefacts
(mediational means)
•Nexus of practice: ‘a genre of activities’ - the field where humans,
discourses and cultural artefacts intersect
•Danish teens’ use of SNS analysed as a nexus of practice where
communicating emotions are among the most prominent mediated
actions and cycles of discourses

13. The concept of identity
• Inspired by Lemke’s (2008) division of identity-in-practice
and identity across timescales Identity
across
timescales
Identity-in-practice:
• The short timescales of
situated small-group
activity
Identity-in-
Identity across timescales: practice
• Larger institutional scales
and lifespan developments
• Co-existing concepts on SNS
(Larsen, 2007, 2012)

14. The Love discourse among Danish teens
•“Hi my always lovely honey <3 Guess what? (; I love you – SOOO
much, and you know what, actually more than that! You mean the
world to me! You are always so wonderful. So cool, funny, great,
sweet, beautiful, charming, wonderful, loving, great… I could go on,
beautiful. You are EVERYTHING!”
(Message on the front page of a 16-year-old girl’s Arto profile
– written by her best friend)
•Discourse with a capital G:
• ”… socially accepted associations among ways of using
language, of thinking, valuing, acting, and interacting, in the
“right” places and at the “right” times with the “right” objects…”
(Gee, 1999, p. 17)

15. The Love discourse among Danish teens
•In stead of writing about themselves in profile text users
often write about their best friends
•Status updates, blog posts ect.
often mention best friends and
how much they love them
•Usernames will often include
name of ‘BFF’s’:
• “idascarolineforever”
(user name belonging to a
12-year-old girl named Ida
– Caroline is her best friend)

16. The Love discourse among Danish teens
•They “get married” online
•They use tagging creatively
(e.g. “If you are tagged in this
picture, I love you!”)
•The best message:
”I love you”
“Because it makes me warm inside
and makes me feel like someone
everybody loves :D” (15-year-old boy)
“it means a lot to me when someone
says they love me and that I know that
they mean it.” (15-year-old girl)

17. Youthful emotions in public space
•Emotional communication is almost always publicly
accessible within the SNS
•Not one-to-one, but most often one-to-many, asynchronous
(mass) communication
•Frontstage (in stead of backstage)
(Goffman, 1959)
•”… it is nice to know what someone else
thinks of you, and it’s nice that he writes
in public so that others can see how fond
he is of me :D”
(15 year old girl)

18. Friends as mediational means
•Messages from friends become elements
in the individual user’s performance of
identity-in-practice
Messages from the ones that matter!!

19. An ‘open source’ networked identity
•Danish teens are co-constructors of each other’s identities, especially
by communicating youthful emotions in public space on SNS
•Users “help” one another create a desirable online identity
•They often invite each other to fill out profile texts
 thus, leaving ’the source code’ open
•They (strategically) use each other as mediational means
•The users are dependent on a network of close friends as part of their
relational networked identity
•That’s why “I love you” messages are so highly rated among teens
•Good relations to friends and a flattering profile with positive
statements become important elements in the construction of identity
online

20. Thank you :)
http://malenel.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/malenel
http://twitter.com/malenel
AAU profile with publications
malenel@hum.aau.dk

21. References
• Bijker, W. E. (1995). Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: toward a theory of sociotechnical change. Inside
technology. Cambridge: MIT.
• Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge.
• Gibbs, G. R. (2002). Qualitative data analysis: explorations with NVivo. Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Hine, C. (1998). Virtual Ethnography. In IRISS '98: Conference Papers. Retrieved from
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/archive/iriss/papers/paper16.htm.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life (Vol. Reprint). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
• Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography. London: Sage Publications.
• Larsen, M. C. (2005). Ungdom, venskab og identitet - en etnografisk undersøgelse af unges brug af
hjemmesiden Arto. Institut for Kommunikation, Aalborg Universiet
• Larsen, M. C. (2007). Understanding Social Networking: On Young People’s Construction and Co-construction of
Identity Online. In Proceedings from the conference Internet Research 8.0: Let’s Play, Association of Internet
Researchers, Vancouver. Association of Internet Researchers.
• Larsen, M. C. (2009). Sociale netværkssider og digital ungdomskultur: Når unge praktiserer venskab på nettet.
MedieKultur, 47, 45-65.
• Larsen, M.C. (2010). Unge og online sociale netværk – en neksusanalytisk undersøgelse af medierede
handlinger og offentlige diskurser. Ph.d.-afhandling, Institut for Kommunikation, AAU.
• Larsen, M.C. (2011). Ungdommelige følelser i offentlige rum. Tidsskriftet Barn. Nr. 3-4: ”Digitale medier i barn
og unges hverdag”, Norsk Senter for Barneforskning
• Larsen, M. C. (2012). Børn, unge og sociale netværkssider. Hvad ved vi? I Sociale netværkssider som tekst og
kontekst, Systime, 2012

22. References
• Larsen, M. C., & Ryberg, T. (2011). Youth and Online Social Networking: From Local Experiences to Public
Discourses. In E. Dunkels, G.-M. Frånberg, & C. Hällgren (Eds.), Youth Culture and Net Culture: Online Social
Practices. IGI Global.
• Lemke, J. L. (2008). Identity, Development and Desire: Critical Questions. In Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse
and Contested Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Norris, S., & Jones, R. H. (Eds.). (2005). Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis. London:
Routledge.
• Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual
Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
• Ryberg, T., & Larsen, M. C. (2008). Networked Identities: Understanding Relations Between Strong and Weak
Ties in Networked Environments. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 24(2), 103–115.
• Scollon, R. (2001a). Action and Text: Towards an integrated understanding of the place of text in social
(inter)action, mediated discourse analysis and the problem of social action. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.),
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 139-183). London: Sage Publications.
• Scollon, R. (2001b). Mediated discourse: The Nexus of Practice. London; New York: Routledge.
• Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. London; New York:
Routledge.
• Strathern, M. (1996). Cutting the network. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2(3), 517.
• Welsh, E. (2002). Dealing with Data: Using NVivo in the Qualitative Data Analysis Process. Forum: Qualitative
Social Research, Vol. 3 (No. 2).