Negotiating and Constructing Identities through Facebook Communication

This study was premised on the observation that in the contemporary moment, the online construction and presentation of the self has become a general cultural practice. Using the idea of persona, a concept that explains the presentation of the self and masks that people “wear” to constructthemselves in real and virtual settings, this paper argues that the existence of multiple personas is clearly demonstrated in the context of Facebook communication. Using a “desktop” analysis of a selected Facebook pages, and a semi-structured interviewing of the owners of the selected Facebook pages, this study explored the construction of self by Facebook activists in order to identify how they negotiated and constructed personas that they deployed and employed in their everyday Facebook communication. This study also established the versions of identities that emanated from such constructions and how those versions came to prominence.