Social Media as Social Transition Machinery

Abstract

Social media, and people's online self-presentations and social networks, add complexity to people's experiences managing changing identities during life transitions. I use gender transition as a case study to understand how people experience liminality on social media. I qualitatively analyzed data from transition blogs on Tumblr (n=240), a social media blogging site on which people document their gender transitions, and in-depth interviews with transgender bloggers (n=20). I apply ethnographer van Gennep's liminality framework to a social media context and contribute a new understanding of liminality by arguing that reconstructing one's online identity during life transitions is a rite of passage. During life transitions, people present multiple identities simultaneously on different social media sites that together comprise what I call social transition machinery. Social transition machinery describes the ways that, for people facing life transitions, multiple social media sites and networks often remain separate, yet work together to facilitate life transitions. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing~HCI theory, concepts and models • Human-centered computing~Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms • Human-centered computing~Social media • Human-centered computing~Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing

How Remote Work Can Foster a More Inclusive Environment for Transgender Developers

“…Using computers, they can say what they really mean without fearing for their safety or worrying about being stared at." Likewise, drawing from prior research on identity transition management techniques [23], we know that having tools to segment identities across one's personal life is paramount. We see that the ability to have control over that segment is important for professional work is just as important.…”

Life Transitions and Social Technologies

“…Some life transitions, such as starting a new job or moving to a different city or country, involve physical movement or routines with new physical settings [25][26][27]. In other life transitions, such as realizing one's LGBTQ identity, people may remain in many of the same physical settings as before, but will start to frequent new digital spaces [18]. Many life transitions involve both physical and digital movement.…”

“…Several social computing researchers have discussed and theorized how van Gennep's [14] liminality framework (see Figure 1) applies to life transitions and social technologies. For example, Haimson [18] built from van Gennep's liminality framework to develop the concept of social transition machinery, which describes the ways that, for people facing life transitions, multiple social media sites and networks often remain separate, yet work together to facilitate life transitions. This work argued that van Gennep's description of the transition stage as being neutral or identity-less is not accurate in digital contexts, when instead people often portray multiple identities on different social media sites [18].…”

“…transitioning into and out of the military [12,38,39], job changes [8,10], transition from incarceration to citizen life [35], immigration [26], transition into older adulthood [5], coming to terms with a death in one's network [7], and gender transition [18,20,21]. Although social technologies can be beneficial during life changes, people also face many challenges using social technologies during transitional life periods [8,11,12,18,21,23,30,36]. For instance, managing social lives online is a complex endeavor due to context collapse [43], decisions around disclosure [2], and potential harassment [11].…”

“…For instance, managing social lives online is a complex endeavor due to context collapse [43], decisions around disclosure [2], and potential harassment [11]. Thus, many people maintain online identities and networks across several social media sites [18,40,44]. [22].…”