Riorganizzazione continua dell'identità online. Pratiche di self-presentation nell’era dei contenuti impermanenti sui social media

One of the fundamentals of the web is its technical ability to store content for a potentially indefinite period. While this possibility has facilitated many time and space consuming practices and has generated great enthusiasm among users and academics, less attention was paid to their negative implications. As repeatedly mentioned by Mark Zuckerberg, social media users have recently risen to think about their online presence with a view to greater control both on the effects that the diffusion of specific personal content could have and on the audiences with which they interact. The so-called impermanent contents have become increasingly fundamental in the self-presentation practices of young people, driven by avoiding the use of social media such as Facebook due to the excessive presence of parents, relatives, etc. For instance, Snapchat carried the ephemeral content to a broader audience, finally allowing users to leave awkward editorial techniques used to share personal or intimate content through those practices that boyd called "social steganography." However, since Stories were implemented on Instagram, they find their highest spread, reaching a broader and diverse audience than those of Snapchat or other niche social media platforms. In addition to these considerations, several scholars highlighted that younger users are frequently driven by the need to share free-to consequences content on social media, and consequently, they wish to have more control over their online self-presentation. Considering that, this study aims at investigating reasons why people use Stories rather than the traditional publishing tools, as well as the practices put in place by users. Additionally, we focused on analyzing which implications the concepts of authenticity (as opposed to the concept of filter culture) and intimacy (as opposed to that of hacking the attention economy) have on the use of Stories on Instagram. This study uses a mixed-methods approach. The quantitative phase is based on a survey distributed through an advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram to four micro targets of young Italians (male and female between 18 and 24 years old and between 25 and 34 years old) built on Facebook Audience Insight platform. During the qualitative empirical phase, we interviewed 16 subjects, 4 for each previously identified micro-target. The recruiting phase took place through avalanche sampling. The research findings show that those who intensivly use Stories on Instagram also have a greater awareness of the use of the affordances offered by social media platforms. A powerful driver in the use of Instagram Stories is his perception of immediacy, perceived as the opportunity to build an everyday record of thoughts and experiences, even not particularly significant moments, without worrying about the content aesthetics. A further relevant element is the shift of focus from the permanent/impermanent dichotomy to the public/private one. Therefore, one of the Instagram Stories essentials is the opportunity to track experiences and archive them without completely disappearing, but shifting from a public to private status. Then, Stories are constantly recoverable, consultable, and possibly publishable. Finally, the research also shows how the users' relationship with visibility gets a different dimension in the Stories: the audiences that are no longer invisible but articulated in a list of followers generate a new relationship driven to emphasize being seen by specific people, possibly belonging to their peer group.