Abstract
Since their inception in the early and middle Nineties, the issue of online identity formation and online sociality has received great attention within Internet Studies. However, this line of research has witnessed a relevant shift from an initial emphasis on the cluster of “disembodied/multiplicity/fantasy” to the contrasting interest on the cluster of “embodied/authenticity/reality” (Baym 2006: 41). This conceptual shift is embedded in at times radically different views of the internet, its relationship with the offline and, more in general, the relationship between technology and society, as well as in diverse concepts of both identity and community. At the same time, this re-framing mirrors the process of domestication (Silverstone/Hirsch 1992; Haddon 2004) of the internet, when it ceased to be “a special thing” (Wellman 2004: 125) in order to become an everyday practice for millions of users.
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Notes
- 1.
Though the study of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) among social pshychologists dates back to the 1970s, the “first age of the Internet Studies” (Wellman 2004) begun along with a increasing diffusion of the internet in the western societies in the middle of the Nineties.
- 2.
Door-to-door connectivity corresponds to the idealized community of the pre-industrial past, characterised by strong, place-based and face-to-face ties among members, and by exclusive belonging to the community.
- 3.
Place-to-place communities, instead, are community ties spreading beyond neighbourhoods and have the shape of networks rather than groups. The household is the base for relationships, in the sense that it is “what is visited, telephoned or emailed” (Wellman 2001: 234).
- 4.
However, this distributed organisation of online communities, Baym laments, implies an impoverished sense of place and belonging compared to “virtual” communities based on a single online environment, where shared practices, norms, values and identities could be embedded (2012).
- 5.
Though risks do not necessarily mean harm, offline meetings with online contacts are among the most dangerous online risks, together with cyberbullying (Livingstone et al. 2011). Research indicate that, usually, children adopt a variety of coping strategies, and especially social strategies such as relying on their intimate friendship ties, to protect from unwanted and potentially dangerous online contacts (ibid.).
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Mascheroni, G. (2013). From virtual communities to social network sites: Changing perspectives on online identity and social relations. In: Wijnen, C.W., Trültzsch, S., Ortner, C. (eds) Medienwelten im Wandel. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-19049-5_10
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