the digital self: sport fan identity formation in the digital
DESCRIPTION
Presentation given on Friday, November 9, 2012 at the annual North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) conference, in New Orleans, Louisiana.TRANSCRIPT
Naila Jinnah�Queen’s University
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NASSS 2012
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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)
NASSS 2012
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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
NASSS 2012
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* Selectivity in self-presentation
* Authenticity in self-presentation
* Digital cues for self-presentation
* Feedback on self-presentation
NASSS 2012
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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
NASSS 2012
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.”
NASSS 2012
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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)
NASSS 2012
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NASSS 2012
* 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
NASSS 2012
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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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NASSS 2012
