Identity Production on Social Media: The Narrative of Second-generation Youth of Sinhalese Sri Lankan Origin in New Zealand

Authors

  • Wasana Sampath Handapangoda

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26686/jnzs.v0i21.3905

Abstract

This qualitative study examines the identity claims of second-generation youth of Sri Lankan origin in New Zealand on social media, a social terrain that transcends the boundaries of traditional social worlds. Research participants’ represented themselves online by three main strategies: visual (graphic), textual (narrative) and group. Participants simultaneously travelled back and forth between two virtual cultural identities, Kiwi and Sri Lankan, thus [re]constructing identity performances, in which “definition of the situation” played a key role. Their virtual identities represented only a snapshot of the self, where different versions of the self were performed and [re]produced, thus defying the essentialist or foundationalist notion of identity.

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Published

2015-12-16