Performing Identity on Facebook
I recently read an inspiring article by Jeffrey and Shaowen Bardzell from Sept/Oct issue of interactions magazine. The first part of the piece examines the nature of avatars, or digital representations of self. The authors point out that avatars are increasingly important as the interface element through which users interact in online applications, ranging from profiles on Facebook to 3D characters used in virtual worlds like Second Life. Drawing on Goffman and Turkel, the Bardzells make some strong points about the relationship between avatar and user identity. Specifically, they recommend that designers understand avatars as subjectivities as opposed to representations: “A representation is a static signifier… a subjectivity, in contrast, is a living force, an agent that both acts in the world and is constituted in the world through action.” The authors continue:
“In this view, avatars are not images or characters radically separated from the “real” players; they are aspects of players’ real-life identities played out on virtual stages, not unlike the way the same people might “perform” at frat parties or wedding receptions or in classrooms and restaurants.”
This distinction has profound implications for the design of social software. Designing a social tool following the representation model is a relatively straight-forward, but ultimately limiting approach. Essentially, it involves providing a finite set of fields that users can fill in to describe themselves. However, if we wish to create an application that really resonates with users and becomes part of their social life, it must provide a space for more fluid and dynamic types of identity performance. The choices designers make about the structure of the platform will influence the subjectivities that users develop and experience: “As interaction designers, we might ask how the stages, or interactive ecologies, we create regulate or encourage identity performance.” Since I don’t play many videogames, the only avatar I have much experience with is my Facebook profile. I wonder, in what ways does Facebook enable or constrain different types of identity performance?