Technological advancements continue to increase online accessibility and the virtual population. As students engage with these advancements, their lives and identities will be on a worldwide platform. The realities of online identities present a challenge for educators to teach students how to manage those online identities. Researchers have studied the after-effects of online identities, but there is a gap in understanding the individual's thought process during the creation of online identities. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis was to understand the perspectives of working high school graduates regarding the creation of online identities. The research questions were designed to elicit recent high school graduates' perceptions or viewpoints about creating online identities. The conceptual framework for this study included social identity theory and computer-mediated communication theory. Data were collected from 9 face-to-face interviews, including the creation of summary sheets, and were analyzed via member checking and extensive manual coding. Eight themes emerged, revealing that online identities were created to support social connections. The participants' responses generated 4 types of online identities: real, desired, enhanced, and deceptive. Participants did not place consideration into the idea that they were creating an identity. Recommendations included an application for educators to model online behavior and to help students manage their online identities. Further studies could include a data gathering tool that uses an anonymous platform. These findings can inform curriculum and expand the landscape of the literature toward the social change goal of helping students grow and thrive in the online world in a safe, effective, and ethical manner.

Sharenting is a new term used to define the action of parents posting about their children online. Social media provides parents with an easy to use outlet for image distribution to all family and friends that simultaneously archives the images into a digital baby book. While convenient, once publicly posted anyone can gain access to the images of the children. Instagram is a favorable social media channel for sharenting. A popular hashtag on Instagram, #letthembelittle, contains 8 million posts dedicated to child imagery. A set of 300 randomly selected images under the hashtag were coded. Images tended to contain personal information such as the child’s name, age, and location. Communication Privacy Management and Uses and Gratifications theories provided the theoretical frameworks for this study. The results suggested a possibly dangerous pattern of parental oversharing that could negatively impact the child and the child’s safety.

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The internet and social media networks have created a changed world of media. Influencers work with creating content on these platforms. This study is focused on five female influencers which each has a large audience of viewers and that work within the category of beauty. They make content that mainly focuses on makeup and fashion. The study's aim is to examine discourses about beauty, identity and emotions in content created by these influencers, and to examine if norms and ideals about beauty is reproduced or challenged. The study relies on a theoretical framework with theories about influence marketing, identity and self-presentation online, the consumer society and how it relates to beauty, gender analysis, and also the role of emotion in cultural politics. The study uses two methods, the first being an analysis of content posted on Twitter using the tool Textometrica and the second being a multimodal discourse analysis of ten videos posted on YouTube. The results show that western ideals of beauty often are reproduced in this material, and that they are reproduced in different ways and forms. Multiple themes and topics within the discourse is discussed. These for example involving who the influencers are and what it takes to become a popular influencer, the identities these influencers build online and aspects of how they create their content, the myth that anyone can become as beautiful and sellable as the influencers if only they use the right products in the right ways, how the body and someone's appearance is seen as a never-ending project that can always be improved and also at theme about an internalised judging gaze. Beauty in this discourse is a word that metonymically becomes sticky with positive values and emotions and almost becomes a synonym for concepts of happiness and health. To be ideally beautiful becomes equivalent to be happy and confident.  To be ideally beautiful becomes equivalent to be healthy. The reproduction of these norms is problematic in many ways, where one of the most important is that it excludes people that does not live up to the norms. It can also be harmful in a way of effecting mental health and wellbeing of the people trying to live up to these norms.

På Facebook är man författare till sin egen digitala självbiografi. Sociala medier och socialanätverk har gjort det möjligt för användare att kunna forma den bild av sig själv man vill visaomvärlden. Vi har gjort en studie om vilka strategier man använder sig av för att dela bilderoch vad dessa bilder säger om användarens identitet. Med hjälp av tidigare forskning samtvår egen studie bestående av intervjuer och enkäter har vi kommit fram till att man ofta delarbilder för att ta kontakt och känna gemenskap med andra människor/användare. Användarnavi undersökte vill visa den bästa bilden av sig själva samtidigt som användarna vill visa en såverklighetstrogen bild som möjligt. De har inga problem med att modifiera bilden av sigsjälva med att exempelvis ta bort en tagg eller be någon ta bort någon bild som är publiceradpå dem. Vad som visas på deras Facebookprofiler har stor betydelse för användarna. / On Facebook, you are the author of your own digital autobiography. Social media and socialnetworks have made it possible for users to decide how they want to be perceived. We haveconducted a study regarding what strategies people use to share images and what they sayabout the users identities. We have found out through previous research, interviews andsurveys that people often share images to connect with others and socialize. The users westudied wanted to present their best sides and still stay true to their personalities in real life.They have no problems with modifying their self-image by, for example, removing tags orpictures taken of them. What is displayed on their Facebook profile page is very important tothe users.

How can political participatory processes online be understood in the dynamic, conflicted and highly mediated situations of contemporary society? What does democracy mean in a scenario where inequality and difference are the norms, and where people tend to abandon situations in which they and their interests are not recognized? How can we accommodate differences rather than consensus in a scenario where multiple networks of people are the starting point rather than a single community? In this thesis, these questions are explored through an iterative process in two studies that have used or resulted in three prototypes and one art exhibition. The first study is of communication practices in a global interest community, which resulted in two prototypes: Actory, a groupware that takes differences rather than equality as the starting point for a collaborative tool, and The Affect Machine, a social network where differences are used as a relational capital. The second study is of communication practices in a local commonality where the art exhibition Performing the Common created a public space and involved participants. This resulted in Njaru, a collaborative tool with integrated decision support and visualization of representativeness. In summary, these works depart from the notion of the importance of belonging for e-participation, where the individual can be seen as a participant in several performative states, more or less interconnected trans-local publics. Here the individuals’ participation in the local public sphere compete with their participation in other communities, and affect the conditions for local democracy. This thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of these processes, and discusses how differences in democratic participation can be managed with the help of ICT. / Hur kan politiskt deltagande på Internet förstås, i de dynamiska, konfliktfyllda och medierade situationerna i dagens samhälle? Vad innebär demokrati i ett scenario där ojämlikhet och skillnad är normen och där människor tenderar att överge situationer där de själva och deras intressen inte erkänns? Hur kan vi hantera skillnader snarare än konsensus i ett scenario där flera nätverk av människor är utgångspunkten i stället för en enda gemenskap? I denna avhandling har dessa frågor utforskas genom en iterativ process i två studier som har använt eller resulterat i tre prototyper och en konstutställning. Den första studien gäller kommunikationen i en global intressegemenskap vilket resulterade i två prototyper: Actory, som tar olikheter snarare än jämlikhet som utgångspunkt för ett samarbetsverktyg, och The Affect Machine, ett socialt nätverk där olikheter används som ett relationskapital. Den andra studien gäller kommunikationen i en lokal gemenskap där konstutställningen Föreställningar om det gemensamma skapat ett offentligt rum och engagerade deltagare. Resultatet resulterade bland annat i Njaru, ett samarbetsverktyg med integrerat beslutsstöd och visualisering av graden av representativitet i processen. Sammanfattningsvis utgår dessa arbeten från en idé om vikten av tillhörighet för e-deltagande, där individen kan ses som en deltagare i flera performativa stater, mer eller mindre sammankopplade translokala målgrupper. Här konkurrerar individernas deltagande i den lokala offentligheten med deras deltagande i andra samhällen, och påverkar förutsättningarna för lokal demokrati. Denna avhandling bidrar till en djupare förståelse av dessa processer, och diskuterar hur skillnaderna i demokratiskt deltagande kan hanteras med hjälp av IKT. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Submitted. Paper 8: Submitted.</p>

The following study examines the background of users’ decisions about their behavior concerning online identity, specifically looking at the acceptance or rejection of self-sovereign identity solutions and the technologies that support them: blockchain and asymmetric encryption. A qualitative analysis is presented of typical user narratives concerning online behavior, while exploring the cultural values underlying users’ decisions about accepting or rejecting new, potentially emancipatory technologies. The results include inventories of values and beliefs that played a key part in informing the respondents’ behaviors, and presents four distilled narratives of reasoning about online identity in the form of the archetypes of the ​Pragmatist, the Self-doubter, the ​Cyber-conscious and the ​Futurist user, each representing a specific set of values, beliefs and their interplay resulting in specific intentions and behaviors, along with design guidelines for innovative blockchain technologies based on the user expectations in these narratives. The research concludes with relating the findings to existing theory, and proposing a number of quantitatively testable hypotheses for the refinement of technology acceptance research in the specific domain of online security and identity.

In this fast-paced, globalized world, certain online sites represent a hybrid personal-public sphere'where like-minded people commune regardless of physical distance, time difference, or lack of synchronicity. Sites that feature chat rooms and forums can offer a deep-rooted sense of community and facilitate the forging of relationships and cultivation of ideologies. This dissertation investigates whether this trend is relevant to web sites concerning hip-hop. This genre is arguably one of the most pervasive and influential global cultural forms, yet it is markedly different from most other forms of globalized culture because it emerged within and is still embedded in a distinct subculture. The notion that the Internet could become a bastion for hip-hop fans is quite paradoxical: hip hop is a cultural form so deeply rooted in the sense of place and so invested in its relationship to spatiality that it could potentially pose a particular challenge to the notion of virtual communities. This research examines the virtual hip-hop experience in the UK in order to assess whether this music and the culture that surrounds it have been adopted in their original American form or whether they have been adapted to make them more relevant to their new locale. In particular, the study probes how the ideology, values, behaviors and attitudes that bestride American hip-hop are represented, consumed, and reproduced on the mediated world of web sites.

De nos jours, les réseaux sociaux ont considérablement changé la façon dont les personnes prennent des photos qu’importe le lieu, le moment, le contexte. Plus que 500 millions de photos sont partagées chaque jour sur les réseaux sociaux, auxquelles on peut ajouter les 200 millions de vidéos échangées en ligne chaque minute. Plus particulièrement, avec la démocratisation des smartphones, les utilisateurs de réseaux sociaux partagent instantanément les photos qu’ils prennent lors des divers événements de leur vie, leurs voyages, leurs aventures, etc. Partager ce type de données présente un danger pour la vie privée des utilisateurs et les expose ensuite à une surveillance grandissante. Ajouté à cela, aujourd’hui de nouvelles techniques permettent de combiner les données provenant de plusieurs sources entre elles de façon jamais possible auparavant. Cependant, la plupart des utilisateurs des réseaux sociaux ne se rendent même pas compte de la quantité incroyable de données très personnelles que les photos peuvent renfermer sur eux et sur leurs activités (par exemple, le cas du cyberharcèlement). Cela peut encore rendre plus difficile la possibilité de garder l’anonymat sur Internet dans de nombreuses situations où une certaine discrétion est essentielle (politique, lutte contre la fraude, critiques diverses, etc.).Ainsi, le but de ce travail est de fournir une mesure de protection de la vie privée, visant à identifier la quantité d’information qui permettrait de ré-identifier une personne en utilisant ses informations personnelles accessibles en ligne. Premièrement, nous fournissons un framework capable de mesurer le risque éventuel de ré-identification des personnes et d’assainir les documents multimédias destinés à être publiés et partagés. Deuxièmement, nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour enrichir le profil de l’utilisateur dont on souhaite préserver l’anonymat. Pour cela, nous exploitons les évènements personnels à partir des publications des utilisateurs et celles partagées par leurs contacts sur leur réseau social. Plus précisément, notre approche permet de détecter et lier les évènements élémentaires des personnes en utilisant les photos (et leurs métadonnées) partagées au sein de leur réseau social. Nous décrivons les expérimentations que nous avons menées sur des jeux de données réelles et synthétiques. Les résultats montrent l’efficacité de nos différentes contributions. / Today, social networking has considerably changed why people are taking pictures all the time everywhere they go. More than 500 million photos are uploaded and shared every day, along with more than 200 hours of videos every minute. More particularly, with the ubiquity of smartphones, social network users are now taking photos of events in their lives, travels, experiences, etc. and instantly uploading them online. Such public data sharing puts at risk the users’ privacy and expose them to a surveillance that is growing at a very rapid rate. Furthermore, new techniques are used today to extract publicly shared data and combine it with other data in ways never before thought possible. However, social networks users do not realize the wealth of information gathered from image data and which could be used to track all their activities at every moment (e.g., the case of cyberstalking). Therefore, in many situations (such as politics, fraud fighting and cultural critics, etc.), it becomes extremely hard to maintain individuals’ anonymity when the authors of the published data need to remain anonymous.Thus, the aim of this work is to provide a privacy-preserving constraint (de-linkability) to bound the amount of information that can be used to re-identify individuals using online profile information. Firstly, we provide a framework able to quantify the re-identification threat and sanitize multimedia documents to be published and shared. Secondly, we propose a new approach to enrich the profile information of the individuals to protect. Therefore, we exploit personal events in the individuals’ own posts as well as those shared by their friends/contacts. Specifically, our approach is able to detect and link users’ elementary events using photos (and related metadata) shared within their online social networks. A prototype has been implemented and several experiments have been conducted in this work to validate our different contributions.