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Intimacies of Digital Identity

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Book cover Personal Relationships and Intimacy in the Age of Social Media

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Abstract

The main objective of this chapter is to conduct a cross-platform analysis and identify disclosure patterns in three different social media platforms: Badoo, CouchSurfing, and Facebook. Drawing on Hogan’s (2010) exhibitionistic approach, in this chapter, user profiles are analysed as cultural artefacts, which are tools for self-(re)presentation and impression management. The observation of user profiles is combined with the interviews with participants where they explained which topics they disclosed online and considered intimate. After a definition of the concepts of self-disclosure and self-(re)presentation, the topics that participants frequently identified as intimate when interacting through social media (relationship status, sexual orientation, political and religious beliefs, sex, alcohol intake, and feelings) are discussed in depth.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bi-curious: (Of a heterosexual person) interested in having a sexual experience with a person of the same sex (Oxford English Dictionary, 2018a).

  2. 2.

    It is also common practice for couples who live together to create a common CouchSurfing profile because they are both actually hosting other members.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business School, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Cristina Miguel

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  1. Cristina Miguel
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Miguel, C. (2018). Intimacies of Digital Identity. In: Personal Relationships and Intimacy in the Age of Social Media. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02062-0_3

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