Managing precarity at the intersection of individual and collective life: A Membership Categorisation Analysis of Tensions and Conflict in Identities within an Online Biosocial Community

Abstract

This paper explores how individuals living within high-stakes precarious categories navigate their identity within online spaces. Using Membership Categorisation Analysis, we investigate how categorical inferences are indexed by those individuals within online biosocial communities in everyday speech, as part of their construction of identities. More specifically, we analyse online interactions of women who have been identified as carrying a BRCA gene mutation in an online biosocial community. Our findings show how (1) the online spaces participate in constituting and sustaining a form of collective responsibility, where those who are within a high-stakes precarious identity category are expected to not only support and educate each other, but also monitor the compliance to category predicates, and (2) the tensions and conflict in making sense of, belonging to, resisting and sustaining a category membership often occur when there are clashes with the socio-moral order. Overall, this paper’s contributions are twofold, first, methodologically, the use of Membership Categorisation Analysis provides an insightful analytic approach to identities, online communities and their organisation. Second, the emerging tensions identified provide insight into the complex ways in which online communities offer a forum in managing precarious identity as individual and collective life intersect.

The Dynamics of Online Fandom Communities: A Qualitative Study on Engagement and Identity

“…The study also delves into the tensions and conflicts inherent within these communities, reflecting the findings of Cheded et al (2022), who explored the management of precarity at the intersection of individual and collective life within an online biosocial community (Cheded et al, 2022). Our research found similar dynamics at play within fandom communities, where conflicts often arise from the negotiation of individual and collective identities.…”

Online identities in and around organizations: A critical exploration and way forward

“…The authors propose that precarious identities benefit from being developed in the space provided by an online community in which members may navigate categorizations and biomarker knowledge of genetic predisposition; however, this exposes those navigations to a socially sanctioned regime of compliance to a collective moral order. While reinforcing the idea of online communities as a space for identity exploration and construction, Cheded et al (2023) provide an important contribution to the field by exposing the obligations contingent on belonging to a specific social category. Members seeking support and information balance this openness with strategies of belonging based on self and other surveillance and assessment.…”

“…Soini and Eräranta (2023) suggest that disembodiment is essential to explore possibilities of sexual identity disclosure, while also arguing that this disembodiment informs how participants navigate this embodied issue in their workplace. Conversely, Cheded et al (2023) contend that inclusion in the biosocial identity category depends on certain moral expectations regarding the body and its manipulation.…”

“…In this SI, authors make several distinct contributions. In their study of online biosocial communities, Cheded et al (2023) bring a power perspective to identity play in a collective environment that is usually considered to be based on an open dialogical process. Their study examines the dynamic of individual and collective identities by exploring their influence on participants' precarious identity exploration.…”

“…In critical online identity studies, the use of social media affordances (Khazraee and Novak, 2018; Leonardi and Vaast, 2017) to create a collective identity that fostered engagement and commitment among participants by social movements was particularly examined (Castells, 2004; Etter and Albu, 2021; Gerbaudo and Treré, 2015; McCaughey and Ayers, 2003). Findings from these studies were mixed in terms of the effectiveness of these actions in creating a shared identity, with some highlighting the easier sharing of symbolic resources (Ackland and O’Neil, 2011) and others claiming that virtual exchanges are unable to develop strong emotional connections (Coretti and Pica, 2015; Wall, 2007).…”