The National CollegePossible Worlds
Identity in Online Communication
Linda Marshall
Traditionally, identity has been regarded as a singular, unique entity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as 'being specified person or thing; absolute sameness; individuality'. The Latin root of the word is 'idem', meaning 'the same'. In the physical world, one body corresponds to one particular identity. While the self may be complex and mutable over time and circumstance, the body provides a stabilising anchor. However, electronics mediate most human interactions in contemporary society and significant changes have resulted in how self-identity and collective identity occur.
Types of Online Communication Media
Personal homepages on the World Wide Web provide information on an individual for the purpose of display. Their styles of presentation can be easily likened to non-electronic presentations of self such as a curriculum vitae, a family photo album, an advertisement for a service one can provide or an introductory letter to a pen pal. Now it is easier than ever to put your own page on the web. Many Internet service providers enable people to construct their own websites based on preformatted models. The sheer number and range of personal websites is a testament to the fact that people feel a desire to establish themselves on the Internet. Most homepages include links to other sites that interest the individual, and most provide an e-mail address inviting comment. The personal homepage provides a locus for the electronic self.
Multi-user Dungeons or 'MUDs' are derived from the face-to-face role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, which emerged in the 1970s. The term 'dungeon' persists in high-tech culture to connote a virtual space. Like Internet relay chat, users communicate synchronously via typed text. Each player logs on under a fictional identity and players interact through descriptive phrases and improvised dialogue. One can interact and play in real time within another's imaginary world. This type of online community incorporates aspects of role-playing games, interactive theatre and improvisational comedy. Julian Dibbell describes MUDs as 'semifictional digital otherworlds' (Dibbell, 1998, p. 1).
There is also a visual dimension to online communication. An 'avatar 'is a graphical representation of oneself. 'Emoticons' or 'smileys'are simple avatars based on the ASCII smileys (fig. 1). They are used in chatrooms and text-based MUDs. These faces display basic human emotions and behavioural signals - happy, sad, angry sleeping, bored, blushing, head nodding, head-shaking etc. Users can change the colour of the face and add one or more props such as a hat, a halo or devil horns, providing an almost infinite array of combinations to express oneself.
:) smile
:>) big smile
:D smile/laughing/big grin
:* kiss
;) wink
:X my lips are sealed
:P sticking out tongue
:( frown
:'( crying
O:) angel
}:> devil
{} a hug
fig. 1: Some of the most popular ASCII smiley symbols.
In MUDs with a visual element, the avatar that users choose can be a picture, a drawing or an icon. Users sometimes assemble these virtual selves from menus of body parts. Often these avatars are ungendered, inanimate objects such as teapots, squirrels or clowns taking on human characteristics and special powers that are only limited by their creator's imagination. Like characters in a comic strip, one communicates with others via typed text, which appears in balloons that pop out from the chosen avatar. An avatar is essentially a mask, a costume in addition to a name.
Creativity and Control
Personal homepages and MUDs are two very different online communication media, allowing varying degrees of creativity in the presentation of self. Although personal websites are assumed to be non-fictional, there is still much scope for creativity in the presentation of self. The omission of selected facts and minor alteration of others can result in an altogether different persona, compared to the real life one. Nevertheless, it is still reasonably possible to present yourself, as you would wish to be perceived.We are all acutely aware of what we exclude by naming and describing.
In one sense, it is easy to assume a fictional identity in a MUD or chatroom. Indeed, it is possible to assume any number of identities. But because of the spontaneous and improvisational nature of chat, keeping up pretence can prove challenging. At times it is difficult to maintain the fiction and retain one's anonymity.
People differ in the level of conscious awareness and control they possess over their online personae. How we choose to present ourselves is not always a conscious choice. Covert wishes and inclinations may become apparent in roundabout or disguised ways, without our even knowing it. Much information about the self is communicated in ways incidental to the main purpose of the encounter and some information is communicated involuntarily. Erving Goffman, in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life distinguished between the 'expressions given' (how one wishes to be perceived, information managed in some way) and the 'expressions given off ' (subtle, unintentional communication via action and nuance which is much harder to control) (quoted in Miller, 1995, p. 1).
Because e-mail and the creation of personal homepages are asynchronous forms of communication, the user can be more thoughtful about the presentation of self. It is less likely that something is made known by accident as each e-mail is thoughtfully written and each page is thoughtfully constructed. Websites are all about display and presenting the best self possible, as one would when preparing a curriculum vitae. There is more possibility for misrepresentation than in chatrooms or MUDs, because websites are carefully set up before presentation to the world and are only slightly interactive. Many homepages are little more than a collection of the authors' favourite links. Although some may not give any personal details about the person, there is an inference of self and an 'expression given off ': 'Show me what your links are and I'll tell you what kind of person you are' (Miller, 1995, p. 3).
Because of the spontaneity and speed of feedback in chatrooms and MUDs, each sentence may not be as carefully constructed and it is more likely that unconscious thoughts will surface in the dialogue. A person may select a username or an avatar on a whim, without fully understanding the deeper symbolic meanings of that choice. A person may join an online group, failing to realise the motives concealed in that decision. MUDs can be used to develop new, positive characteristics, in a process of 'self-actualisation'. The 'fictional' character created for a MUD may possess the qualities one would wish to have in real life. Striving to be a 'better person' in cyberspace requires some conscious awareness - a premeditated vision of where one is headed. People differ in how much their unconscious needs and emotions surface in their online identities, and the amount of control you have over the identity you project online can depend on the medium you choose.
Multiple Selves
One of the most important factors in the construction of online identities is the level of dissociation and integration. Social scientists since James and Mead have wrestled with the idea of 'multiple selves [and whether a] master consciousness' (quoted in Smith and Kollock, 1999, p. 82) organises these many experiential fragments of identity into a single core self. A single person's identity has many components. Online communication facilitates the enhancement, dissociation and integration of the multiple aspects of one's identity. Equally, one can 'lurk' (be the invisible, silent observer) and remove one's entire personal identity from the observation of others.
Online communication is often understood as self-therapy in American discourse, and a number of technical terms have become metaphors for self-construction. For example, Turkle sees Windows as a metaphor for multiple training rooms, open at the same time on one screen, offering different personalities. According to Turkle, all this can lead to one mature personality (Turkle, 1996, p. 1).While using my computer, I may have four or more Windows open at one time playing music, reading personal e-mail, using a word processing package, and a graphics package. And when I minimise one or more windows to concentrate on one, it may be akin to 'turning pieces of my mind on and off '.
Online Identities and the Post-modern Condition
The discussion of post-modern culture focuses to a great extent on a newly emerging individual identity or subject position, suggesting a fragmentation and dissolution of the self and, by extension, identity. Interestingly, the communication medium that characterises our age, the Internet, allows the self to be not only decentered, but also multiplied without limit. The personalities we project and the characters we encounter online are all composed of information. Information spreads and diffuses. There is no law for the conservation of information. Inhabitants of the virtual world are also diffuse, and free from the body's unifying anchor. Instead of asking, 'who am I?' Sherry Turkle asks, 'who am we?' (Turkle, 1996, p. 1).
Post-modern ideologies challenge our notions of essence and authorship, and they emphasise the dissolution of traditional boundaries. An eclectic range of symbols coexist harmoniously to form the virtual world described in a MUD; 'there are parallel narratives in the different rooms of a MUD […] the cultures of Tolkien, Gibson, and Madonna coexist and interact' (Turkle, 1996, p. 5). Avatars are often constructed using body parts from a diverse range of sources. The old and trusted boundaries of human and machine, self and other, body and mind, and imagination and reality are being dissolved and deconstructed. Heim refers to 'disembodied' consciousness (quoted in Shields, 1996, p. 145), while Haraway refers to the 'cyborg […] a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction' (from A Cyborg Manifesto in Bell, Kennedy, 2000, p. 291). Transgressed boundaries, in fact, define the cyborg.
Furthermore, a MUD is essentially a collaborative piece of writing, permanently in a state of flux. Because each user has the power to create and modify the virtual environment and determine the discourse, the solitary author is displaced and distributed. The fragmentation associated with the post-modern condition is turned into (perverse) pleasure and play. Online communities reference an eclectic range of cultures and ideas. They allow us to create multiple, fluid identities, while they are collaboratively created. In this sense, we may embrace the 'post-modern condition' by participation in online communities.
However, identity often becomes an issue when it is in crisis.While it is traditionally assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable, it is now displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty. Notions of 'altered states of consciousness' were presented in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer. Gibson's fictitious cyberspace is a place of 'consensual hallucination'. An alteration of both the physical and mental self is implied. Mastery over one's environment, a sense of connectivity, identity exploration and eroticism has the potential to contribute to these altered states.
In discussing the cultural aspects of cyberspace and virtual reality technologies, our complex relationship with the physical world is fundamentally underestimated. The physical body is consistently devalued. One of the most elaborate concepts to be encountered is 'uploading', a transfer of the personality and the consciousness from the natural biological brain to synthetic, non-biological machines. This emphasis on self-design reflects a wish to control or avoid the unpredictable and unconscious dimensions of identity. Yet, the body still appears in the form of a text description, a graphic representation such as an avatar, or a symbolic and discursive construction such as a cyborg.
Although an intricate system of signals and behaviours has evolved in the virtual world to aid the establishment of identity, we cannot ignore the significance of our physicality. Our online egos cannot be conveniently separated from our real-life identities. They are linked by the same progenitor. If 'virtuality' is to be taken seriously as a way of life, each individual must ask: who and what am I? What is the relationship between my real and virtual bodies? These questions are equally central for thinking about community: What is the nature of my relationships? Am I responsible for my actions in cyberspace? What kind of societies are we creating online? In today's search for new concepts of identity in online communication, we may therefore reflect on what it means to be human in the virtual world, and what it means to be human in the real world, and ask 'who am we?'
Bibliography
BELL, David and Kennedy, Barbara M. (eds.), The Cybercultures Reader, London: Routledge, 2000.
DIBBELL, Julian. 'My Tiny Life: A Rape in Cyberspace' 1988. http://www.levity.com/Julian/snugle.htm.
MILLER, Hugh, 'The Presentation of Self in Electronic Life: Goffman on the Internet', 1995, http://www.ntu.ac.uk/soc/psych/miller/goffman.htm, 5 January 2001.
SHIELDS, Rob (ed.), Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies, London: Sage, 1996.
SMITH, Mark A. and Peter Kollock (ed.), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge, 1999.
TURKLE, Sherry, 'Who Am We?', 1996, http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/4.01/turkle_pr.html, 30 October 2000.
