CROWDSOURCING IDENTITIES: ONE WAY TO THINK ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE’S MAKING OF IDENTITY IN CONDITIONS PROPOSED BY CONTEMPORARY, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES?

Abstract

This presentation reports on an ongoing Swedish research project called Crowdsourcing Identities which concerns youth, identity and social media. The making of identity has been endorsed as one important condition for learning for a long time, in both research and educational policy context. It is argued that developing a confident, individual identity, and reflecting upon the identity of others, is fundamental in any educational practice. Moreover, matters of identity intersect with the ongoing digitalization of society in general and education in particular and digital technology proposes conditions for social interaction that differ from those available in pre-digital times. So, these new conditions enable young people not only to represent identity in other ways but also to make and learn about identities in digitally mediated ways - within as well as outside of educational contexts. The overall aim in the project is to conceptually and empirically deepen the knowledge about young people’s making of identity, digital technology and learning, as they combine. In focus is also how they may, to various extents in different intersections, influence conditions for teaching and learning. This presentation reports on the conceptual side of the research. It is suggested that one way to think about young people’s identity making, when practiced in conditions proposed by contemporary digital technologies, is through the interpretive lens of Crowdsourcing Identities. It draws on existentialism and social constructivism and converge theories about identity, technology and crowdsourcing. By so, it offers one way for thinking about digital technology, such as social media, as spaces not only for representing and expressing identities, but also as mediating conditions for identity making – a practice about existence and not just superficial expressions of vanity.