The Interplay between Online and Offline Explorations of Identity,Relationships, and Sex: A Mixed-Methods Study with LGBT Youth

Although the Internet is commonly used by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth to explore aspects of sexual health, little is known about how this usage relates to offline explorations and experiences. This study used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the interplay between online and offline explorations of multiple dimensions of sexual health, which include sexually transmitted infections, sexual identities, romantic relationships, and sexual behaviors. A diverse community sample of 32 LGBT youth (ages 16–24) completed semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed and then qualitatively coded to identify themes. Results indicated that, although many participants evaluated online sexual health resources with caution, they frequently used the Internet to compensate for perceived limitations in offline resources and relationships. Some participants turned to the Internet to find friends and romantic partners, citing the relative difficulty of establishing offline contact with LGBT peers. Further, participants perceived the Internet as an efficient way to discover offline LGBT events and services relevant to sexual health. These results suggest that LGBT youth are motivated to fill gaps in their offline sexual health resources (e.g., books and personal communications) with online information. The Internet is a setting that can be harnessed to provide support for the successful development of sexual health.     

Classifying and Relating Different Types of Online and Offline Volunteering

The contemporary media environment allows for online volunteering where volunteers can participate without being physically present or being affiliated with a traditional organization. Challenging the traditional types of volunteering and accounting for the new trends, this study identifies different types of online and offline volunteering and examines the relationship between them. Drawing on online survey data from 816 U.S.-based volunteers, this study finds that active online volunteers are also active offline volunteers, suggesting that volunteering in one sphere can complement volunteering in the other sphere. This study discusses implications for understanding volunteering as a complex activity where individuals engage in varied organizational contexts to different degrees and extend their participation to both online and offline spheres.     

Going Home to Pakistan: Identity and Its Discontents in Southeastern Europe

In this article I explore the claim that post-independence Macedonia is a cornerstone of European civilization (a traditional Greek claim) and analyze efforts to assert the country's position in the international arena as a “modern” and authentically Western state deserving of membership in the European Union. Such efforts involve the establishment of ties between Macedonians and the Hunzukuts, who live on the remote Hindu Kush Mountains in Pakistan and claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great. I also analyze comparable initiatives, sponsored in recent years by the Greek state, to prove ties between Greeks and the Kalasha, who also live in remote areas of Pakistan and believe that they are descended from Alexander the Great. Greece and post-independence Macedonia offer us insights into the populist underpinnings of the nationalist promotion of a European identity presented as rooted in the East.     

Embodied versus Disembodied Information: How Online Artifacts Influence Offline Interpersonal Interactions

This article examines how the sheer volume of personal information recorded and searchable online (online artifacts) has transformed the situated activity system central to Goffman's dramaturgical theories. In‐depth interviews reveal that individuals believe disembodied information based on online artifacts is a more accurate representation of others than embodied information from spatially and temporally bounded face‐to‐face (FTF) processes because they represent how others have behaved over time and are attested by their online contacts. However, the n‐adic structure of online interaction leads to mismatched expectations about whether disembodied information is taken into account during FTF encounters, and consequently can result in embarrassment.     

Negotiating the Digital Closet: Online Pseudonymity and the Politics of Sexual Identity

Online surveillance interferes with the individual's ability to control their expressive identity - to determine the scope of the social context in which their activities are to be seen and interpreted. Entrepreneurs have responded to these concerns by offering pseudonymizers, which employ cryptographic techniques to allow users to create several unlinkable personae and choose among them when engaging in various online interactions. This article investigates the tension between pseudonymity as a design paradigm for privacy technologies and as a lived practice for users. Because coming out - strategic revelation and the claiming of identity - has been at the core of the gay liberation movement, this article posits a politically and sexually active gay professional man as an ideal user of pseudonymity software, and places the design logic of pseudonymity within that particular set of social understandings. It reveals the conflicts, contradictions and trade-offs inherent in that use. Pseudonymity permits a very strong control of identity. It permits the user to segregate his public performances, and to engage in public debate without fear of bodily retribution. However, it is all but useless as a means of controlling the social context of those performances. It requires that decisions about self-presentation in certain contexts be made in ignorance of who is sharing that context, and with what resources or purpose. While it promotes the production of multiple selves, those selves are not easily lent to practices of intimacy or community. Pseudonymity also facilitates profiling practices that define and reify classes of people, even as it protects the individual from some of the repercussions of being defined as part of that class. In short, pseudonymity software is informed by a politics of heroics rather than of community.     

Similarity and the Quality of Online and Offline Social Relationships Among Adolescents in Israel

Studies on online social relationships have focused on how Internet use is associated with sociability, but have not compared the quality of online with offline relationships. On the other hand, studies on adolescent friendship formation have used school samples disregarding the Internet as a new social context for it. We took a different approach, studying the relationship between the social context of acquaintance (school, neighborhood, and online) and the structure and quality of friendships among adolescents. In a representative sample of Israeli adolescents (n=980), similarities in age, gender, and place of residence were studied in respect of the social sphere in which each friend was met (neighborhood, school, and online communication). We found that when a friend was met at school the likelihood of similarity in age, gender, and place of residence was higher than when contact was made online. Friends met in the neighborhood and schools were usually closer than friends met online. However, social similarity mattered even for friends who were met online. The more similar an online friend was in residence and gender, the stronger was the social tie.     

Research and Identity: Role-efficacy,Benchmarking, and the Identity Construction Process

Abstract

In the spring of 2016, university students with little to no research experience volunteered to assist with surveying for a larger project on college success. Volunteers discussed their field experiences through written statements and semistructured interviews. Eighty log sheets and 14 in-depth interviews serve as the qualitative data for this study. We followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) Thematic Analysis approach and reviewed the log sheets for key themes. Based on the initial analysis, semistructured standpoint interviews with student volunteers explored the development of a nascent research-based identity. Findings suggest that students’ research-based identity construction was a process that moved from low role-efficacy to emerging role-efficacy through the use of benchmarking and justification strategies that helped overcome negative emotions surrounding an initial sense of low role-efficacy with survey research tasks. We discuss how identity construction unfolded over time and suggest implications for this research.     

网络文化提升城市认同的路径探析

城市认同感体现着城市对于主体的凝聚力、感召力和吸引力,是城市文化和城市软实力建设的重要维度。网络媒介作为一种强势崛起的新的文化范式和传播范式,在城市认同感的构建中具有不可忽视的重要地位。要加强对于网络文化提升城市认同的路径和机制的研究,充分发挥网络文化在时间、空间、符号、仪式、共同体等维度对于城市认同的构建作用,促进网络所形构的城市记忆、城市地方感、城市符号、城市媒介仪式、城市共同体想象,增强网络主体与城市之间的情感、记忆和审美等纽带联结,使网络媒介成为构建城市认同、增进城市文化魅力和文化软实力影响效果的有效途径和方式。     

The Social Construction of Social Work Ethics: Politicizing and Broadening the Lens

Structural barriers and the intrinsic paradoxes of practice often lead to a discrepancy between what a social worker would like to do and what that individual actually implements, resulting in ethical tensions. However, the canonical approach to ethics has had a narrow perspective on what constitutes ethics and has tended to treat these issues as peripheral rather than central to the social construction of ethics. This essay provides an explanation of how the construction of ethics evolved and what interests are served by this viewpoint, thereby illuminating the political ramifications of the current social construction. The author suggests ways to broaden the lens of focus.     

Self-Reported Gender Identity and Sexuality in an Online Sample of Cisgender,Transgender, and Gender-Diverse Individuals: An Exploratory Study

The relations between self-reported aspects of gender identity and sexuality were studied in an online sample of cisgender (n = 4,954), transgender (n = 406), and gender-diverse (n = 744) groups. Aspects of gender identity and sexual fantasies, attraction, behavior, and romantic relations were assessed using the Multi-gender Identity Questionnaire (Multi-GIQ) and a sexuality questionnaire. Results show a wide spectrum of gender experiences and sexual attractions within each group, an overlap among the groups, and very weak relations between atypical gender identity and atypical sexuality. At the group level, aspects of gender identity and sexuality were mainly predicted by gender and sex-gender configuration, with little contribution of sex assigned at birth. A principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that measures of gender identity and of sexuality were independent, the structure of sexuality was mostly related to gender, whereas the structure of gender identity was mostly related to sex-gender configuration. The results of both approaches suggest that measures of gender identity could roughly be divided into three classes: one including feeling as a man and feeling as a woman; a second including measures of nonbinary and “trans” feelings; and a third including feeling as a “real” woman and feeling as a “real” man. Our study adds to current scientific data that challenge dichotomous conventions within gender identity and sexuality research. Possible social and clinical implications are discussed.     

Deviant Identity in Online Contexts: New Directives in the Study of a Classic Concept

This article provides an overview of emerging research into the concept of deviant identity by highlighting major new directions in cyber‐deviance scholarship. We suggest that the examination of deviance in online settings offers unique new insights into the processes of identity construction and reinforcement, role play, and the social organization of deviant communities. We conclude by considering developments that may advance the literature on deviant identity in real world spaces, as well as expand the conceptual utility of deviance for other subareas of sociology.     

The Advantages and Limitations of Seeking Sex Online: A Comparison of Reasons Given for Online and Offline Sexual Liaisons by Men Who Have Sex With Men

Australian young adults reported how often they wanted to use condoms in both romantic (n = 667) and casual relationship (n = 152) contexts and how often they thought their partners wanted to use condoms. Young adults wanted to use condoms more often than they perceived their partners to in both casual and romantic relationship contexts. Gender interactions showed that this pattern was especially strong among young women. Women seemed to underestimate the frequency at which their male partners wanted to use condoms. Furthermore, both the participants' condom use desires and perceptions of their partners' condom use desires predicted condom use behavior. Results suggest that gendered expectations may play a part in how often individuals perceive their partners to want to use condoms, which, in effect, may determine condom use behavior.     

Elder Transgender Lesbians: Exploring the Intersection of Age,Lesbian Sexual Identity,and Transgender Identity

This study is the first to examine the experiences and needs of an international sample of current, English-speaking, lesbian, transgender-identified (trans-lesbian) adults around a number of later life and end-of-life perceptions, preparations, and concerns. I analyzed a subset (n = 276) of the cross-sectional data collected from the online Trans MetLife Survey on Later-Life Preparedness and Perceptions in Transgender-Identified Individuals (N = 1,963). I assessed perceptions and fears around aging, preparation for later life, and end-of-life as well as numerous demographic and psycho-social variables. Despite the overall feeling that they have aged successfully, the respondent trans-lesbian population harbors significant fears about later life. I found that this population, while better-prepared than the overall respondent trans-identified population, is still ill-prepared for the major legalities and events that occur in the later to end-of-life time periods.     

Meaning and Identity in “Cyberspace”: The Performance of Gender,Class, and Race Online

This article explores issues of gendered, classed and raced identities using examples drawn from my research on a type of online forum known as a mud. I critique previous accounts of research regarding identity online which have suggested that online interactions encourage greater identity fluidity and multiplicity. Drawing on examples from face-to-face interviews and online interaction, I discuss several aspects of identity. I first examine participants' efforts to meet face-to-face and discuss their privileging of offline information regarding identity. Using two examples of “gender-switchers,” I then show how some participants distance themselves from experiences of gendered identities which might otherwise disrupt previously held beliefs about gender. Next I discuss classed and raced identities, which participants express in conversations about income and ethnicity. These discussions point to the interconnections between online and offline interpretations of class and race. Thus, in discussing these examples, I emphasize the need to examine not just online performances, but also the participants' interpretations of such performances. Despite the potentially disruptive effects of online ambiguity, many participants continue to believe in essence and continuity of identity.     

Coming,Going, Remaining in Public Housing:

This study investigated policies of retention and transfer among housing authorities in North Carolina which had projects with 50% or more elderly (N = 40). Results showed approximately 90% of the housing authorities had written eligibility and continued residence policies but few reported having services offered within their projects. Reconsideration of eligibility status was done by a combination of participants, but the ultimate decicision to evict a tenant usually lay with upper level management. Approximately one-half of the authorities reported having no resident staff persons in their projects and fewer than this amount required special training of their managers in the services and needs of their older clients. Recommendations are made to decision makers in public housing.     

Identity,Consumption, and the Home

Despite a rich literature on the power dynamics of households within domestic space, the specificities of home consumption have been undertheorized within broader accounts of consumption and identity. Consumption frequently is conceptualized as a individualistic process, undertaken by a single self-reflexive actor. Focusing upon the purchasing, acquisition and display of furniture and other domestic goods, this article reflects upon the role of home consumption in identity construction within both individual households as well as different household groups. We argue that home consumption at times may be equally important to both individual and multiple households—despite conventional associations between homemaking and the nuclear family. Notions of the self may be dissipated in collective provisioning by households consisting of couples, although fractures and conflict also may undermine general agreements about shared space. Both the making of the landscape inside the home and the narration of this making are ongoing projects undertaken within and through the diverse webs of relationship among individuals within a household.