The aim for this master thesis is to create an understanding of the intersubjective processes of how individuals are experimenting with their identities in social media and the consequences for the identity and embodiment. The thesis is completed with the help of discourse analysis and a starting point in four complementary theories. Central to the implementation of the analysis is the concept of diffraction. Therefore the thesis is, which is reflected in the choice of theoretical approaches and methods, critical to many aspects of classical philosophy of science and method. The empirical material is based on interviews. During the analysis the theory is applied to empirical data received from the interviews, but the empirical data will also be used as inspiration for examining my chosen theories. The analysis covers several topics. First I discuss how a web-identity is constructed and how this can be considered as a process of negotiation with other users on the same website. Furthermore I discuss how my informants negotiate about boundaries conserning sexuality and corporeality, but that the subjective boundaries shift in the encounter between different discursive claim to legitimate expression of body and sexuality. In the final section, before the final discussion, I discuss the body's impacts on communication on a website. During the final discussion several questions are being raised. Centrally, however, is how the essays selected theories help to demonstrate how the negotiation of boundaries in social media is complex, and that experimentation with the identity of a website partly dependent on society's other discourses on gender, body and desires. But it is also discussed how discourses of gender, body and desire is shifted inside the selected websites, and that these sites creates new opportunities for identification and self-knowledge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-176278 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Lindberg, Martin |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Centrum för genusvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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