Identity formation and construction of communities among the users of social networking sites

Identity formation and construction of communities among the users of social networking sites

Study of social networking sites and formation of community within the social networking sites is a new topic. Emergence of social networking sites and its impact on the social life is therefore a recent phenomenon. The social networking sites are a common platform for users to come together on the basis of common interest, ideas and opinions. Its existence and relevance is justified by number of factors operating together, such as large user base, radical changes in the process of socialization and impact of social media on our everyday life etc. What makes social networking sites so interesting is the fact that it is user centric. The very foundation of social networking sites was laid to facilitate socialization among the users. India has one of the largest social network user bases especially for social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. This is even truer for urban centers such as Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. The use of social networking sites is so common among the youth that it almost seems as though if one is not part of social networking site one does not have any social life. Everything we have in real life gets replicated in the online communities, the good and the bad. Therefore, this study is an attempt to understand how the users are able to come together and form community in the cyberspace. The researcher also attempts to study the impact of the same in the real life and vice versa. Since the advent of social networking sites it has radically changed the way we socialize. This study also looks at how social networking sites and social network analysis emerged. Identity formation is yet another aspect of the study; online identities are very fluid as one has to type themselves into existence. Therefore, the identities people take online are varied and often may be completely different from the reality. This aspect of fluid identity has both positive and negative aspects as we will see later in the thesis. Social media technologies are woven into the very fabric of our social life. As mentioned above are the various aspects of the social networking sites that we are looking into. The dissertation is divided into five chapters, the first chapter introduces one to the topic, along with aims, objectives, need and background of the study, the second chapter consists of the reviewed literature, the third chapter deals with the methodological part of the dissertation as various tools and techniques used in the study are explained, while the fourth chapter is the analysis and interpretation of the primary data collected, it is presented using various bar diagrams and tables, and the fifth chapter brings out the important findings in the study and also in the conclusion chapter. The fifth chapter summarizes all the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, the dissertation consists of the bibliography list and the questionnaire which was distributed to collect the data.

BENGIA PAPPI

Sociology