Presentation on the fragmentation of online identities, the inadequacy of the personal branding metaphor and the idea of the multiverse as a new metaphor for thinking about online identity. For a transcript of the keynote, see this blog post: http://academic.stedwards.edu/socialmedia/blog/2011/11/16/negotiating-multiple-identities-on-the-social-web-goffman-fragmentation-and-the-multiverse/

1. Many voices, one stream
Negotiating
Multiple
ID ENTITIES
on the Social
Web
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D @Corinnew

2. We are actors
presenting a
character to an
audience
- Erwin Goffman

3. How are we supposed to know
who we will be performing for?
? ? ?
? ? ? ?

4. In Goffman’s terms, we can now perform different plays to
different audiences at the same time.

5. Are we performing for a human audience
or for an audience of search engines?

6. Our online
identities are
fragmented

7. Our online
identities are
fragmented

8. What if an audience
could piece all the
fragments back
together?

9. What if an audience
could piece all the
fragments back
together?

10. Google Portrait of Marc L.

11. We see identity fragments
Engines see identity aggregates
- MIT, Personas Project

12. We see identity fragments
Engines see identity aggregates
- MIT, Personas Project

13. Personal
RANDING
& strategic self-presen
tation

14. Personal
RANDING
& strategic self-presen
tation

15. Personal Brand

16. Being too concerned with
branding restricts the self
Jobs refused to be branded.
He was not Apple. He was
not Next, or Pixar. He was a
unique self, full of
contradictions and that’s what
humanized him.

17. The problem is that we think
of a brand in the classical way
of thinking of the cosmos:
it’s either this or that. It can’t
be both. It’s all about getting
the positioning right.

18. We used to think of a particle the same way: it is either here or
there. It can’t be both places at once. It can only have one
position. Or can it? Quantum mechanics suggests it can.

19. According to the Heisenberg
principle, once we observe
the particle and try to
measure it, we disturb the
way it behaves. This in turn
changes what we see.
Maybe that’s the problem
with online identity. If you
look in one place you see one
aspect of a person’s identity. If
you look in another place you
find another aspect. What
you’re looking for, where
you’re looking for it and the
instruments you use to do so
will determine what you see.

20. The Internet literally chops our
identities into packets and hurls
us piecemeal around the globe.
Our digital identities, reduced to
subatomic particles or
electrons, fly at near light speed
through semiconductors, wires,
and cables strung across the
ocean floor. We mount to the air
as waves from satellites, cell
phone towers, and wi-fi
hotspots. We shoot out as
streams of photons from our
screens, as waves of sound
from our speakers, and glide
across the surface of our tablets
with the brush of a finger.

21. Crab Nebula
Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its
multiplicity of possible universes could
somehow inform our concept of identity

22. Crab Nebula
Maybe the idea of the multiverse with its
multiplicity of possible universes could
somehow inform our concept of identity
Our very identities have become the
indeterminate particles and waves of
quantum theory. We do in essence
exist in millions of places at once, being
observed by a million others who
interpret us in a myriad different ways.
The Internet defies position, embraces
fluidity, and fosters multiphrenia. Map of the Internet

23. CREDITS
Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D.
Associate Prof. of Communication
St. Edward’s University
Twitter: @corinnew