the digital self: sport fan identity formation in the digital

Naila Jinnah�Queen’s University

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“As audiences move from predominantly passive spectators to publicly interactive contributors through tools like Twitter, sport consumption has become a “key source of personal identity – both material and symbolic, that is it meets needs and it expresses a person’s place in the world.”

(Horne, 2006, p. 71)

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* Social media + identity * Digital fandom * Telecopresence (Shanyang Zhao) * The “other” within * The digital audience * Representation (Stuart Hall) * Performance (Ervin Goffman) * The “real” world

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*  Selectivity in self-presentation

*  Authenticity in self-presentation

*  Digital cues for self-presentation

*  Feedback on self-presentation

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* Framing the digital “first impression” * Fandom as content

* Gaps in visualization process due to lack of physical markers in digital interaction

* Partially filled through assumptions made based on publicly available digital content

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vs.

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* “This disembodied state allows people in different geographical locations to communicate in real time through electronic mediation in a corporeal interaction format; the people interacting are present in person at their local sites but connected by an electronic proximity rather than a physical proximity.”

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* Post-modern assemblage: “The self constructed via prosthesis (keyboard, mouse) using reproductive technologies (digital camera, voice) is a unique production only loosely associated with something like a “real” referent. Ultimately, it relates within the ontological space of other selves in the same plane – even to the manifestations of the same self under erasure but still existing as a glossy mirage or echo, an earlier self.”

(Barnett, 2009)

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* Crisis of representation

* Artificial self

* Digital confessionals

* Dual audiences

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* Twitter as a mode of representation

* Identity enactment as performance

* “It is the transmission of meanings through performance (enactment) that actually constructs these meanings and identities.”

* Repetition of performative acts of fandom contributes to sports fandom discourse

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* Social interactions: “dramaturgical performances shaped by environment and audience, aimed at creating specific impressions according to the desired purpose of the actor.” (Bounegru, 2008)

* Twitter performance: * Deliberate expressions in order to contribute to a

certain image others may have of that tweeter

* Seemingly unintentional expressions which provide cues to determine what kind of person tweeters are “behind” their mediated self

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Contact me: njinnah@gmail.com @NailaJ

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NASSS 2012