The identity curation game: digital inequality, identity work, and emotion management

ABSTRACT

The research examines an understudied facet of digital inequality: how digital inequality impacts identity work and emotion management. The analysis reveals how unequal access to digital resources shapes how well youths are able to play what I call the identity curation game. Digital resources determine youths’ ability to succeed in this game that is governed by three implicit rules: (1) constantly update or be sidelined, (2) engage in constant reciprocated identity-affirming interactions, and (3) maintain a strategy of vigilance to remove traces of failed identity performances. This article draws on Symbolic Interactionism and pays particular attention to Hochschild’s theory of emotion management. Drawing on these frameworks, the findings reveal how under-resourced youths experience connectivity gaps that disrupt their ability to play the identity curation game, as well as the resulting emotional consequences. Under-resourced youths manage distinctive negative emotions arising from connectivity gaps that hinder their digital identity work, as well as engaging in distinct kinds of suppressive work to police their own emotions including longing, envy, shame, frustration, and stigmatization. In making these linkages, the research reveals the cascading effects of digital inequality among youths where constant connectivity is the sine qua non of social inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital divide
• digital inequality
• young people
• identity
• symbolic
• interaction
• emotion work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Laura Robinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She earned her PhD from UCLA, where she held a Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Studies and received a Bourse d'Accueil at the École Normale Supérieure. In addition to holding a postdoctoral fellowship on a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded project at the USC Annenberg Center, Robinson has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Affiliated Faculty at the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. She is a series co-editor for Emerald Studies in Media and Communications and previously served as the Chair of CITAMS (formerly CITASA). Her research has earned awards from CITASA, AOIR, and NCA IICD. Robinson's current multi-year study examines digital and informational inequalities. Her other publications explore interaction and identity work, as well as digital media in Brazil, France, and the U.S. Her website is www.laurarobinson.org.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Santa Clara University Miller Center; Bannan Institute, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education; SCU Internal Research Grants Program; and the SCU Faculty-Student Research Assistant Award Program.