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

Abstract

The construction, performance, and regulation of identities in the online world have deep implications for individuals, organizations, and society, particularly as digital technologies become increasingly omnipresent in our daily lives. In the last decades, analyses of online identities’ processes have moved from the exploration of identity play, through identity performance, toward a growing identity regulation through algorithmic management and the monetization of personal data. Despite a significant tradition of critical management and organization studies literature on identity, online identities have to date received only scant attention. This Special Issue explores what critical management and organization studies can contribute to research on online identities. Drawing on empirical analysis of virtual forums, social media, and platforms, the six papers included here highlight the struggles that accompany identity processes in the online environment and their implications for workers, activists, and other organized selves. In this introduction, we contextualize these contributions with reference to online identities studies and metaphors of the internet as a place, a tool, and a way of being. We comment on the contributions they make relating to the role of the body, and individual and collective dynamics in online identities processes. Following this, we propose critical ways forward concerning new forms of digital work, multiphrenic context collapse, and online references and sources of identity. We invite researchers to not only critically explore but also to engage with this brave new world that increasingly shapes our individual and collective selves.

Online identity work dynamics of Instagram micro-influencers: an extreme case approach

“…This article makes a final methodological contribution to the literature on online identity work (Jäkälä and Berki, 2013 ; Cover, 2015 ; Haimson and Hoffmann, 2016 ; Barros et al, 2023 ) via our use of online autobiographical narratives revealed through the Instagram timelines of extreme cases (Eisenhardt, 1989 ). To date, various researchers in the field of identity work have emphasized the need to explore the temporal precedence of identity work to better understand its dynamics (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003 ; Knapp et al, 2013 ; Bataille and Vough, 2022 ).…”

“…The algorithms are designed to keep the users engaged and to generate more interactions to provide more data for the platform (Bishop, 2018 ). Instagram micro-influencers in particular are highly susceptible to these normative and algorithmic controls (Barros et al, 2023 ), given that their online success is tied to metric success (Duffy et al, 2021 ). A number of studies in this vein have focused on how content creators, such as Instagram influencers, adapt their online brand (i.e., their online identity) to changes in the broader culture (e.g., Duffy et al, 2021 ), also referred to as consumerist identities (Banet-Weiser, 2012 ).…”

“…By studying individuals with high engagement levels, we were able to gain deeper insights into the identity work strategies employed and the reactions to these strategies from an online audience. To conclude, given that Instagram micro-influencers use SNSs to create a sense of self and to perform identity work in a public and consistent way (Carter and Grover, 2015 ; Piszczek et al, 2016 ; Barros, 2018 ; Moser and Ashforth, 2021 ; Barros et al, 2023 ), thoroughly examining their lives provided us with an extreme context in which the process of online identity work became highly visible.…”

“…Advanced media technologies are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and integral to people's daily lives, providing new tools and environments for the formation and enactment of their identities (Cover, 2015 ; Barros et al, 2023 ). In the current study, we define identity as the “individuals' subjective interpretations of who they are, based on their socio-demographic characteristics, roles, personal attributes, and group memberships” (Caza et al, 2018 , p. 889).…”

“…Online identity work is then seen as the process of identity work that takes place in virtual worlds, such as on social network sites (SNSs) (Boyd and Ellison, 2007 ; Cover, 2015 ; Barros, 2018 ; Barros et al, 2023 ). SNSs refer to the set of interactive internet applications that facilitate the creation and sharing of user-generated content (Davis, 2012 ).…”