Social Media on Identity Construction
By: Muhammad Gilang Ramadhan
Tags: Instagram, Identity, Facebook, Interaction, Social Media

As the times are passing by, the development of information and communication technology is also increasingly rapid and changing, this thing is indirectly changes the way we interact, as well as individuals interaction and communication with each other. The internet as a digital space can create a new cultural space. We cannot deny that with the internet, it provides a lot of convenience for its users. We can easily access various kinds of access to information, education, entertainment and many other things with just one gadget. This makes it very easy for individuals to access the internet to penetrate the boundaries of the dimensions of the user’s life, because it can be accessed anywhere, anytime and by whoever it is.

According to Usita (2010) Adolescent Identity Formation In Online Space, interactions in cyberspace form an identity within a person. Furthermore, he argues that if a person’s experiences and relationships have an impact on one’s identity, then the interactions that occur in cyberspace also have an impact on that individual. In line with Usita’s findings, Morse (1998) also saw the impact of the interaction space in cyber space with identity. According to him, a person’s identity in cyberspace becomes very easy to form (Morse in Wilson 2002). Turkle (in Wilson 2002) provides a reason why social interaction in cyberspace provides the capacity for users to change their own identity. According to Turkle, interactions on social media such as in chat rooms or in other online spaces are considered gender-neutral interactions and the people who are in them are considered egalitarian.

Through social media, each individual can easily build his own identity according to what he wants to show to the public or his audience. Social media gives freedom to users to be able to express themselves according to what they want to show. Several social platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, for example, which are one group, provide facilities such as profile photos, self-descriptions or biographies, posts that can be uploaded through photo descriptions (Instagram) and also status (Facebook), and so on. With the facilities provided by Facebook & Instagram, this makes it easy for users to express themselves or create images about themselves so that they want to be known or seen. In other words, they can easily change or maybe fake who they really are in the real world just by the profiles they create on social networks like Facebook and Instagram. Facebook and Instagram are freeing their users to reshape their identity. Ellis (2010) found that Facebook is a “personal and social identity as communicative creation”. This means that every interaction and communication carried out on social media is an expression of one aspect of the identity of the people who are interacting (Ellis, in Benage 2011). Furthermore, Ellis saw that the formation of identity in people who use Facebook starts when someone chooses their profile picture. Someone who will choose his profile picture not only thinks about whether the photo is good or not, but also thinks about how other people will respond to the uploaded photo.

The identity created by every social media user, especially Facebook and Instagram, is made in the form of profile pictures, photo feeds (Instagram), status (Facebook), the language used, the number of followers, and also their circle of friends on the platform. So they can have a new and different identity from who they were when they were born, according to what Jenkins, Hall, and Giddens said that a person’s identity is raised from the society’s definition of himself, not from someone’s birth.

Muhammad Gilang Ramadhan

(Communication Student’s of Muhammadiyah Surakarta University)