The cyberself: the self-ing project goes online, symbolic interaction in the digital age

It is argued that using a symbolic interactionist perspective to frame the cyberself-ing project allows us to understand the creation of the cyber ‘I,’‘me’ and digital ‘generalized other’ as well as the dynamics of interactional cuing online.

Abstract

Juxtaposing symbolic interactionist and postmodern interpretations of cyberself-ing, I bring data to bear on the tensions between these two theoretical stances. I argue that postmodernist accounts are no longer tenable; such studies were based on multi-user domains (MUDs), but generalized to cyberspace. I examine the evolving internet population, which has reached a critical mass of the American population, to demonstrate that MUD users no longer constitute the majority of users. After substantiating this shift in the user base, I elucidate evidence that corroborates the countervailing thesis of ‘socialized’ online selves. I argue that using a symbolic interactionist perspective to frame the cyberself-ing project allows us to understand the creation of the cyber ‘I,’‘me,’ and digital ‘generalized other,’ as well as the dynamics of interactional cuing online.