When we think about identity, the medium through which we express, articulate and define that concept plays heavily into how it is understood. As society uses new mediums, that mediation becomes remediation, and consequently redefinition. As the public sphere has become more ” identity research has shifted focus to collective issues. This is due to concerns regarding group agency and politics, the means by which those definitions are created and maintained, and the freedom from physical proxemics due to new communications technologies. Those developments foreshadowed the mainstream embrace of new media and social networks. The condition of virtual identity and community is now experience by a large public, interacting and existing through digital media. But how does that change the way we shape the community, and how it shapes us? Issues of the individual and the collective provide challenges to internet users and scholars alike. This work explores those issues, namely the question of how we resolve the online public sphere (or spheres) with our personal identities, and how we collaboratively construct recursive publics. 

Apparently the latest draft is also already up on the website. I’ll be presenting Sunday morning as part of a panel on “Media Spheres” – the invitation was an honor because there are a lot of really great and interesting scholars I hope to meet! Obviously I’ll be tweeting from @mrliterati, feel free to reach out if you’re there as well!