増殖するソーシャルメディアとセカンドオフライン社会

抄録

    This article reconsiders conceptualization of the self in the age of social media, and discusses issues of social media research in the future.

    Kilger’s "virtual self" is an image of the individual formed as a composite of digital information, and his "digital individual" is a set of virtual selves. In contrast, Waskul and Douglass’s "cyberself" is formed through anonymous, simultaneous communication, without body and place. Papacharissi’s "networked self" is a different concept: the self that is constructed by social networking site (SNS) relationships, such as those between Facebook "friends." An SNS is a system that reproduces real-life relationships on the Internet, expanding networks of friends and friends of friends. Papacharissi argues that SNS relationships enhance networked sociability. Other social platforms include microblogs (Twitter), video-sharing sites (YouTube, TikTok), mobile instant messenger applications (WhatsApp, LINE), and photo-sharing sites (Instagram). Purwaningtyas and Alicya term the self formed by Twitter the "fragmented self." Erdem points out that the self can be fragmented by using many social media platforms contemporaneously. Thus different conceptions of the self have been proposed.

    This article defines the "second offline society" as a society where the boundary between offline and online is blurred. In the second offline society, numerous popular social platforms have emerged. With reference to Madianou and Miller’s "polymedia" and Tandoc, Lou and Lee Hui Min’s "platform-swinging", this article raises issues pertaining to the examination of the self in the age of social media. It also points out that social virtual reality, social augmented reality, social credit score, and sense transformation of time and place are important topics for future research.