Title: ‘There’s just nothing stableanymore’: A sociologicalexamination of the relationshipbetween social media consumptionand youth identity in an age ofuncertainty
Abstract: This thesis investigates the relationship between young people’s identities and
the consumption of social media in a time of economic crisis. The research is
designed to examine the role of self-branding in young people’s relationship with
consumption and what this means for the notion of self in a digital world. In
practical terms, it explores the social transformations that have emerged in an
uncertain world through a comparative research between Greece and the UK
focusing on young people’s consumption of social media between the ages of
sixteen and thirty years old. The research is underpinned by a qualitative analysis
based on primary data captured by a triangulated three-stage process.
Specifically, data capture entailed: focus group discussions; photo-elicitation
interviews; and a period of observation of young people’s use of Instagram online.
The data indicates that young people seek a way out from everyday lives affected
by the Global Financial Crisis either by emigrating or escaping into the digital
world in search of what they hope to be a better life. The thesis reflects on the
online branding practices adopted by young people as they compete in this new
frontier of marketised space and proposes that social media provides them with
a key means by which they can construct their identities and in doing so creates
an environment for profile curation. The thesis discusses the implications of the
relationship between economic instability, social media, youth identities and the
intersection of consumption and production of a digitally augmented brand of the
self that is essentially ephemeral. It further reflects on the sociological
significance of social media consumption as a performative space in which young
people can assert a coherent sense of identity, while simultaneously tying them
to the very society that obliges them to do so.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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