Unpacking the Self: Digital Self

Vocabulary practice flashcards defining core terms, theories, and scholars from the lecture on the Digital Self, impression management, and online identity.

Digital Self

A mask put on by an individual to engage in the technological world.

Online Identity

The sum of all characteristics and interactions of an individual in cyberspace.

Partial Identity

A subset of characteristics that make up an individual's overall identity.

Persona

The partial identity created by an individual that represents oneself in a specific situation.

Personal Identity

The interpersonal level of self that differentiates the individual as unique from others.

Social Identity

The level of self whereby an individual is identified by his or her group memberships.

Tim Berners-Lee

The inventor of the World Wide Web.

Self-Presentation

The process of controlling how one is perceived by other people, serving as the key to relationship inception and development.

Impression Management

The conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others about a person, object, or event by regulating and controlling information in social interaction.

Self-Construction

A type of self-presentation that attempts to match oneself to one's own ideal self.

Pleasing the Audience

A type of self-presentation that attempts to match the self to the audience's expectations and preferences.

People-Pleasing

An excessive focus on pleasing others that can cause identity confusion by eroding authentic self-awareness and lead to chronic stress through anxiety over approval.

Disinhibition Effect

The psychological effect where individuals feel less restrained online, causing them to believe they can express their 'true self' more easily than in face-to-face interactions.

Self Revelation

An update to the extended self where online disinhibition and confessional effects make it far easier to present oneself in ways that would have been awkward in pre-digital times.

Loss of Control

A phenomenon in contemporary digital self-management where an individual's digital self-representations are compromised because others can re-share private content with unintended audiences.

Shared Sense of (Cyber) Space

The overlap among digitally aggregated extended selves seeking access rather than ownership within cyberspace, treating it as a public place occupied by rotating participants.

Cyberspace

The symbolic, theoretical space associated with the internet, analogous to the mental projection formed while reading a book rather than the physical book itself.

Oversharing

The unintentional or risky disclosure of excessive personal and intimate details (such as passwords) online, creating vulnerabilities and privacy issues.

Vulnerability

A state of being open to harm, attack, or injury (physically, emotionally, or otherwise), which is heightened by a lack of privacy on social media.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

A state driven by vulnerability and lack of privacy on social media, leading to compulsive feed-checking and constant posting to appear active and interesting.

Digital Detox

A designated period of time during which a person refrains from using connected devices like smartphones to break compulsive or addictive usage patterns.

Arm's Length Self-Photography

A practice identified by Mendelson and Papacharissi (2011) on platforms such as Flickr and Photobucket that marked a significant shift toward modern digital self-portraiture.