Online identities and interactions: emergent and contingent constructions of the 'self' and 'other'

A persistent question for individuals, social scientists, and organizations is whether we are ‘ourselves’ online as we are in settings that are not fully online. Unsurprisingly, several attempts to resolve this question indicate that it is complex. Instead, much scholarly attention has increasingly attended to the various practices by which we construct, claim, and negotiate our and others’ identities. Recent social scientific thrust on examining identities fully embraces the public, performative, and contextually salient aspects of identities. Over the years, there have been several collections of papers and book sections devoted to examining and theorizing the ways that our ‘selves’, identities, and group memberships are presented, constructed, and negotiated (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Benwell, 2006; McKinlay & McVittie, 2011). This is in distinction to treating identities as stable, essential, cognitive, and socialized aspects of individuals. The focus on examining identities on the above approaches, is less concerned with a better understanding of who the ‘real’ person is but with examining what is being accomplished in claiming, rejecting, and negotiating various forms of identities.