Wired – Selves: From Artifact to Performance

Abstract

To understand how personal home pages are used for self-presentation, we need to move beyond notions of home page as artifact. Studying the home page as a product or thing overemphasizes manifest content and functional specificity. Such an approach also tends to isolate online selves from the people and situations shaping them. It seems possible to get around these difficulties by analyzing home pages as areas for action, and self-presentations as performances staged within them. This study treats the home page as a block of personal space, and the collection of text, graphics and links within it as virtual possessions. The page is then compared with its material equivalent, the bedroom, and the self that inhabits each space is understood through a combination of participant observation, informant-led tours and indepth interviews. These methods sketch a detailed picture of how four women in college perform their “selves” in room space and cyberspace. When building their home pages, they tease meaning out of everyday experience and translate these interpretations into symbolic objects that they can share with their audience. The findings argue against a virtual/real dichotomy, indicating instead, that their online performances are very much a part of their offline realities.