Social Media and the Self

1 Course Unit

This course invites students to explore the performance of identity on social media apps. We begin by tracing the emergence of the idea of an individual self in early modern Europe and examine two competing ideals in particular: authenticity and self-possession. We will then look to the rise of consumer culture, alongside new visual and electronic media, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as crucial context for a “performing” self to emerge. The balance of the course will focus on the online self, from the emergence of the internet to today’s social media era and its multiple forms of managed self-disclosure, from blogs to tweets, from reels to videos. We will explore changing definitions of public and private, algorithmic memory, emotional labor in the workplace, gender and sexuality, and the economics of sharing. A major question the course will pose throughout: How do users balance (or blend) competing demands to be authentic and to promote oneself strategically? 1 Course Unit