Working Title: Identity Construction and Online Social Networks

I am a media psychologist specializing in online social communities and identity work.  I have a strong fascination and curiosity with the ways in which individuals, social groups, and organizations utilize Internet communications technologies to form relationships.  Of special interest is the increasing fluidity of these relationships, and how people develop various and unique facets of themselves in response to their various online social networks.  

Long-term relationships (to each other, to our careers, to our communities) are evolving into many time-limited micro-relationships, in which we pass in and out of each other’s lives according to shifting needs and wants. Online social communities provide us with ways in which to handle fluid lives and these micro-relationships.  From individuals wishing to break out of their narrowly constructed identities to explore other facets of themselves, to organizations seeking to create multiple identibrands, online social networks offer unlimited opportunities for reinvention.  

My prior research looked at how marginalized people were able to utilize virtual worlds as a means for identity exploration, developmental redirection, and positive benefits transference back into their real world lives.  I expect to take what I have learned thus far and, with this dissertation, dig deeper to explore the relationship between individual and online community effects on each other.  Within this framework, I will look at the concept of fluidity and micro-relationships as they relate to online identity expression, and how these expressions transfer back to the offline world.