Social Networking Sites and Self-Promotional Culture. Notes for a Theory of the Mosaic Identity

Abstract

This exploratory work theorizes about how social networking sites favor, as identity technologies, a way of conceiving and presenting individual identity in self-promotional terms. As a result of the normalization of this logic –which is coherent with the late capitalism’ promotional culture–, it is growing the incorporation of self-branding practices in the users's daily communication. Besides, it is increasing the perception of the social profiles as micro-media and the interpretation of the own network as a personal audience. In brief, four main trends in the presentation of identity which are promoted by these web services are identified: a distributed and fragmented conception of the self, where the tiles from mass media become key content to express subjectivity; a tendency to quantify relationships and affections; the perception of being in an unavoidable competition with others; and standardization of the audiovisual presentation of self as a communicative material capable of attracting attention and communicate authenticity.

Keywords

• Identity
• social networking sites
• self-promotion
• advertising
• mosaic culture