The same but different: The use of the personal Home Page by adults with Down Syndrome as a tool for self‐presentation

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that people with learning disabilities can manage their identities and define the circumstances under which they will present a self‐image that is the same or different to other people with learning disability. This paper reports a survey of personal Home Pages written by people with Down Syndrome and investigates the extent to which they use the pages to accept or deny membership of the Down Syndrome group. Opportunistic sampling of the pages listed by five Web Crawlers revealed twenty personal Home Pages of adults with Down Syndrome. Thematic analysis of the content, form and language of the pages revealed similarities and differences in the way the page owners expressed and perceived their self‐identity. The results suggest that the personal Home Page has the potential to allow adults with Down Syndrome to express multiple identities: identities that are the same and different to other people with Down Syndrome.