I just answered a call for papers for Migrations and Identities Journal of People and Ideas in Motion, a new bi-annual publication slated to debut next summer.
The transition from high school to college is characterized by a change in identity and a need to migrate to new social networks. This is true even for students attending a university who are not geographically displaced in the transition. A review of existing literature supports the notion that online communities can serve as an important bridge in this process, spanning past and future notions of identity and relationships to one’s current cultural context. This study examines the use of online social networks by two groups of teenagers—high school seniors and new university freshmen—making this transition. Through surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups, these students reveal the effects of geographic migration and barriers to entry in new social networks on their changing sense of identity. A framework is developed from this inquiry explaining some of the dynamics involved when teenagers choose to attend a university in their hometown versus leaving the comfort of familiar social supports.
I’m submitting based solely on an abstract, which for me is not the way I would prefer to do it. However, I think there is some relevance to MIJ and the kinds of things I likely will be working on for my dissertation over the course of the next few years. If accepted, I’ll have about two months to process the literature I have read and data I want to collect into a 5-8,000 word article. It is likely I will take on this project, regardless, as a final paper for the Social Psychology class.
Online identity management is a growing area of interest among Web 2.0 developers. The proliferation of social networks and sites requiring new accounts makes it a common phenomenon to have to manage dozens of username-password profiles across many communities of different personal value. Much of this redundancy of action begins well before students leave home for college. My interest is in understanding the benefits to propagating and iterating one’s identity when migrating from one context to the next, and also in the barriers that present themselves to new members of an online community.
