AMANDA HYNAN FINAL THESIS PDF

Goffman (1959) discussed the presentation of self in everyday life as individual
performances that can be broadened into team or region behaviour and manipulated
accordingly to affect audience reaction. Central to Goffman’s discussion is the idea
that an individual plays a part and creates a performance which s/he hopes observers
will take seriously. Goodley (2011) speaks about how Goffman’s later work (1961,
1963) has been hugely influential in permitting analyses of the ways in which
disabled people are labelled and pressurised to accept conceptualisations of
themselves through the expectations and interpretations of others. Goodley argues
Goffman’s work helped to close down long-stay hospitals and position disability as a
sociological problem. Watson (2002) describes how many disputes have arisen within
the field of disability studies over theories of identity. He explains those which focus
on the fact that identity formation is built on fixed concepts of shared experience can
be oppressive when disability forms the foundational basis. He discusses his interview
study of disabled people’s accounts of self-identification that found they primarily did
not see themselves as disabled and their views were spread over the following
positions: some felt their impairment did not make them different, some focused on
what they could do as the essential component of identity and others rejected a social
construction of normality. Watson (2002) talks of the importance of being able to
exercise choice over one’s identity and the ability to create a personal narrative.
As previously stated, the development of the internet has provided a theoretical space
within which researchers can consider and debate identity theory. Much research has
started to look at the implications of online identity formation. According to
Livingstone (2008), a consistent observation about young people is the attention they
pay to the presentation of self. She suggests online social media sites, due to the
convergence of multimedia such as email, music, photographs, website linking etc.,
are offering young people opportunities to construct their presentation of self in ways
not seen before. Much has been made of this phenomenon in the popular press and
concerns have been raised that adolescents lack the judgement skills to protect their
own and others’ privacy. Gross (2004) re-examined some early internet identity
theories (Turkle, 1995 and Sweeny 1999, both cited by Gross, 2004) which suggested
adolescents use the internet for anonymous identity exploration. She collected
questionnaire data from 261 adolescents, aged 12-13 years olds and 15-16 year olds,
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