From diary narrative to the referential Self: how questionnaires and quizzes reshaped online self-writing

Abstract

This article discusses the evolution of self-inscription from the soul-searching autobiographical narratives characteristic of personal diaries to the highly referential and indirect language articulated in today’s social media. To trace the origins of this shift, this study considers blogs of the first decade of the 21st century where traditional diary narrative started to transform into a new type of ego-text. It suggests that the spread of online quizzes and questionnaires in the beginning of the 21st century played an important role in the creation of the referential Self characteristic of today’s online rhetoric. Entering the realm of traditional ego-text, these prestructured tools replaced evident self-narration with a disguised indirect version, providing ready-made identity templates and establishing clear rules of information circulation.