PHD THESIS DEFENCE OF STACEY MAY KOOSEL ON 27TH OF AUGUST

The Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Art and Design’s doctoral candidate Stacey Koosel will defend her thesis „The Renegotiated Self: Social Media’s Effects on Identity: ” (“Ümberkujundatud mina: sotsiaalmeedia mõju identiteedile“) on the 27th of August 2015 at 10.00 at Estonia pst 7 building in Auditorium 440a.

Supervisor: Dr Raivo Kelomees (Estonian Academy of Arts)
Consultant: Dr Chris Hales (SMARTlab, Liepaja University)
Pre-reviewers: Prof Dr Mauri Kaipainen (Södertörn University) and Dr Marina Grišakova (Tartu University)
Opponent: Prof Dr Mauri Kaipainen (Södertörn University)

The defense will be in English.

Stacey Koosel’s PhD thesis is a collection of articles that explore the effects of social media on personal identity. The communication of identity narratives online has become abundant with the increasing popularity of social media. Social media enables users to build profiles based on their personal identities, making identity play a primary source of entertainment in the information age.
Topics such as privacy, ethical use of information, authenticity, social control, self-expression, self-censorship and other media affordances have all, subsequently, become important issues. The topic of ‘identity’ is used as a framework through which social media use can be analysed. The cultural phenomenon of digital identity is explored in a collection of seven articles using different approaches, including media ecology, the philosophy of technology, virtual ethnography and artistic research.
The articles raise questions about the ideology of identity creation in social media, by interviewing artists on how they use Facebook, pointing out paradigm shifts and paradoxes in contemporary culture and the discussion of other research in the field of digital culture.