After You Press "Share": Supporting Identity Management and Identity Reflection through Social Media.

Abstract

My thesis draws on work from sociology and psychology, but mostly on work from human-computer interaction (HCI) to examine the long-term relationship between individuals and their social media data, with a special focus on the role of technology. The first goal of this dissertation is to unpack the identity management work on social media from both the temporal and spatial perspectives. To accomplish this goal, I conducted two qualitative studies with active social media users that reveal tensions and strategies related to how people manage content sharing on social media, across platforms, over time. Results show that identity management work encompasses negotiating with other individuals in the space (e.g. [180]), negotiating with ever-changing self-presentation needs on a single social media platform over time (Study 1), and negotiating different audiences and practices across multiple social media platforms (study 2).

The second goal of my dissertation is to further explore the potential benefit of repurposing one’s social media content for “personal use” – reminiscing and reflection. Study 3 and Study 4 examine the “personal use of social media data.” More specifically: Over time, social media holds a valuable collection of personal content as users carefully select and curate content for their social media profiles; social media is unique in supporting revisiting of past content and offering opportunities for reflection; Besides as a source of positive memory, reflecting on how one shares on social media in relation to other communication traces could potentially support one’s mindfulness of communication, relationship, and life goals, support the coping with psychological stress, and motivate behavioral change.

My work provided empirical evidences that the effort that goes into managing one’s social media identity over time, across platforms, presents unique opportunities for designing tools for identity reflection. My dissertation will contribute to the field’s understanding of how people value and manage their online presence as part of their digital archive, as well as how to advance the design agenda to help people deal with more devices, more types of digital belongings, and more diverse places for storing and encountering personal data.