Online Mediatization of the Identity of the Writers During the Pandemic

Abstract

Self-exposure has become a mode of communication on which the functioning of social networks and blogs is based. Internet users create content in the digital environment, built on habits acquired in the old media. Remixability and mobility make possible new forms of mediation and self-production in the process of mediatization. During the research on the self-exposure of Romanian writers in the online environment, the pandemic represented the opportunity to investigate the behavioral changes in the conditions of prohibiting face-to-face events (including cultural ones). Starting from the hypothesis that, given the quarantine period and the prohibition of events, the only sources of information are traditional media, especially television. Through mediatization, the authors apply strategies to keep their visibility online to promote their books through self-exposure and emergence of identities. The research used autoethnography, based on the writer's experience, to track the emergence of identities and the types of narration used in the posts and their multimodality. Monitoring for data collection was performed on a private site like a diary/blog and processed with empirical tools. We noticed that the writers had exposed themselves online by mediatized identities, and the narratives had diversified during that period; identities and posts are mediatized around the news provided by the media. Researched periods: 23-29 March and 13-20 April 2020. Total posts: 224. This study could be apart from a bigger social image of life during the pandemic when online activity had intensified.