Identity Online

In the past decade, online dating and social networking have become increasingly mainstream online activities. Millions of people use matchmaking and social networking tools such as Match.com and Facebook. Such applications usually provide profiles – a representation of the person usually with photos and information about the self – in the context of tools for forming explicit relationships with others, tools for finding and communicating with each other, and reputation indicators.  A number of social psychological factors impact the effectiveness of these online tools for identity management.

Embodiment.  A person’s identity is comprised of behavioral or personal characteristics that distinguish them from others.  In the real world, these characteristics are often material in nature, such as their height, or social in nature, such as their memberships in groups.  Where the self is embodied, a person is contrained by the material nature of self.  There is one body, in one place at a time.  While most individuals have many facets to their identities (e.g., mom vs. colleague), only one facet tends to be “performed” at a time, and that facet depends on context (e.g., home vs. work).   A person’s Social Identity is based on culturally defined identity categorizations, such as gender, race, or other group memberships.  They are often associated with cultural, normative expectations of behaviors, or roles (see Goffman, 1959).  People may have many roles, but again in people’s day-to-day lives, the roles they play depend on both physical characterists and the situation.   Whether they are a friend, a mom, a secretary, or a judge depends on the context. 

In online situations people do not have centralized, physical presences in which their identities are embodied, and they are frequently interacting with others outside of the social contexts that usually constrain them to present an accurate, consistent identity over time. While engaged in self-presentation people experience a constant tension between the expectation that they will present an accurate identity, and the desire to present as positive an identity as possible that will help them achieve social goods from others (e.g. friendship). In the absence of any accountability, such as often found online, people tend to present overly positive identities.

Self-presentation.  Over the course of a short lifetime, people develop fairly sophisticated means for presenting identity information. They are accustomed to having a great deal of control over what kinds of information are presented to specific audiences. For example, teenagers will exhibit their studious, academically active side to their teachers, and their playful side to their friends.  The process of adjusting behavior and imange to create, modify, or maintain impressions in the minds of otehrs is called impression management. People experience difficulties achieving that same kind of control in online situations, because they cannot easily change their identity within systems from person to person, or context to context. People will most often change or remove their Facebook profiles when they realize that people from another social context (e.g., work) were gaining access to inappropriate information about the self (Smith, Farnham, & Drucker, 2000). There’s a similar fear in posting to Match.com. Although there’s a general sense that online matchmaking is becoming less stigmatized, people are often still uncomfortable posting online profiles because of their identity management concerns. People do not necessarily want their bosses to know that they want more kids, that they consider themselves Orthodox Christian, and that they have a tattoo fetish. Similarly people do not necessarily want even their friends to know that they consider long walks on the beach the epitome of romance. Many people resolve identity management problems awkwardly by creating different, pseudonymous identities across systems.

Context.  In people’s day to day lives, roles tend to be segmented by distinct times and locations. For example, people will rarely interact with their family and their coworkers in the same time and place. Online profiling applications have yet to really solve the problem of how to seamlessly model this kind of life segmentation.   People have difficulty adjusting their identities in part because they are minimally aware of the nature of their audience. They cannot manage the impressions they convey to maximize the likelihood of the receiving social rewards. For example, a teenager wants other teenagers to know she drinks beer, but does not want grownups to know. Similarly, a person might not want a dog lover to know she hates dogs, but would want a cat lover to know she loves cats. A person would prefer that her professional associates see her resume web page, rather than her Harley Davison web page. As such, it behooves profile and matchmaking systems to provide tools for users that enable them to explore who is consuming their profile.

In addition to having difficulty with impression management, people with unknown, unspecified audiences become concerned with controlling information out of concern for privacy. For example, women do not necessarily want their sex and age information made public, because random others might make unwanted sexual advances toward them. Similarly, people do not want to make financial information such as their checking account number publicly available, due to the possibility of identity theft. Many people also do not want their personal interests made publicly available for fear of being tracked by market researchers, or incurring spam.

Although identity information is difficult to manage across social contexts, people need identity information because it largely influences how they find and interact with others.  Identity information helps define the nature of the social interaction.  For example, people report having a great deal of difficulty interacting with another person when they do not know his or her gender.  Similarly, people largely modify their language depending on their audience’s age. People also feel uncomfortable disclosing information to another person without knowing something about how the other person is likely to respond to their disclosures. And finally, people who want to be found by similar others need to project their identities into the online space.

Role Strain.  In the real world, one’s social identities, or roles, are not always compatible.  While a woman might play a nurturing, supportive role with her family, at work she might be aggressively competitive.  In situations where divergent roles become activated, people experience role strain, anxiety and reduced performance.  Similarly, online, when people experience role strain, it meaningfully impacts the adoption and use of social technologies.

• Disadvantages of Online Identity
  • No centralized, physical presence
  • Limited awareness of, or control over who is your audience
    • Interacting with multiple social contexts at same time
    • Identity asynchronous
      • persists in your absence, so potential access by wrong audience
  • Online role/situational conflict
    • difficulty keeping role identities separate
    • Stress of having incompatible roles
  • Distrust of anonymous/minimally identified others
    • Fraud, cheat, impersonation
    • Trolling
• Advantages of Online Identity
  • Anonymity/Pseudonymity
    • Expose sensitive issues in way can’t do offline
      • Health
      • Alternative life style/sexuality
      • Interpersonal stories
  • Broadcast profile enables access to others
    • Without having to go to bars, job agencies
    • Use sophisticated matchmaking systems
  • Identity play
  • Fraud, cheat, impersonation
  • Trollin
• Self-presentation Online
  • Constraints in presentation medium
  • FtF: Dress, body language, paraverbal cues, car, home
  • Online: Profiles, home pages, blogs, text, music, avatars
  • Conventional signal vs. assessment signal
  • Unknown audience
    • Self-presentation
      • Often insufficient information about audience for effective self-presentation
      • Teenager presenting self as cool by drinking beer to friend vs. parent
      • Fetishist presenting self to fellow fetishists vs. work environment
    • Role/situational interaction expectations
      • People somewhat uncomfortable without knowledge of age, sex, location, race, SES
      • Situational expectations (party vs. school)
    • Harrassment concerns – don’t want to reveal I am fifteen year old girl
    • Identity theft – don’t want to expose my credit car number
    • Question of authority
      • Does the person have sufficient expertise to be making knowledge claims?
    • Accountability
      • If person is not help accountable by being anonymous, tend to distrust — with reason.
• Profiles — What matters?
  • Unique identifies
    • Name, birthday, email, home address, phone, web address
  • Social identities
    • Sex, age, race, SES, citizenship/nationality, language
  • Roles and memberships
    • School/employmnet, social roles, voluntary membership groups
  • Interest and activities
    • Hobbies, interests, activities, sports
  • Preferences/tastes
    • Musical, movie, books, food, dislikes, likes
  • Personal characteristics
    • Intelligence, interpersonal style (e.g. introverted), affective style (e.g. cheerful)
  • Values and beliefs
    • Religion, political beliefs, ethics, spirituality
  • Social standing/reputation
    • Liked, respected, leaders
  • Text
    • Fields
  • • Open-ended personal statement
    • Blog entries
  • Pictures
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Links
    • Friend lists
    • Groups

• Identity Crisis in Web 2.0
  • Digital identity: “….a person or thing represented or existing in the digital realm which is being described or dealt with”. (Kim Cameron)
  • Patchwork of identity one-offs
  • Susceptible to criminalization
    • Phishing, Pharming
  • Need unifying identity metasystem
    • Reliable way to establish who is connecting with what
  • Hard to create standardized identity layer
    • Web sites want control of identity, prevent spillover to other web sites
• Laws of Identity (Kim Cameron)
  • User control and consent
  • Minimal disclosure for a constrained use
  • Justifiable parties
  • Directed Identity
    • Omnidirectional
    • Unidirectional
  • Pluralism of operators and technologies
  • Human integration (ceremony)
  • Consistent experience across contexts
• Fraud — Phishing

• Identity Fraud — Phishing

• Identity in an Age of Web 2.0
  • OpenID (Http://openid.net/) — opensource
    • Authentication
    • Authorization
      • ACL (Access control list)
      • RBAC (Role based access control)
    • Identity information
    • Single sign (SSO) on across multiple properties

Recommended Readings

Donath, J. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In Smith, M. & Kollock, P. Communities in Cyberspace. http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Wallace, P. Psychology of the Internet. Cambridge University Press. (1999). Chapter 2: Your Online Persona, Chapter 3: Online Masks and Masquerades.

References

Smith, M., Farnham, S., & Drucker S. The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces . In Proceedings of CHI 2000, The Hague, Netherlands March 2000.

Donath, J., and Boyd, d. Public displays of connection. In BT Technology Journal Vol 22, No 4. October 2004, pp 71-82.