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“Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and young adults almost inevitably “come out”, or self-disclose their identity to others. Some LGBTQ youth are more uniformly “out”, while others may disclose to some groups but not others. This selective disclosure is complicated on real...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6025558/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29861439 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15061078 |
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author | McConnell, Elizabeth Néray, Bálint Hogan, Bernie Korpak, Aaron Clifford, Antonia Birkett, Michelle |
author_facet | McConnell, Elizabeth Néray, Bálint Hogan, Bernie Korpak, Aaron Clifford, Antonia Birkett, Michelle |
author_sort | McConnell, Elizabeth |
collection | PubMed |
description | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and young adults almost inevitably “come out”, or self-disclose their identity to others. Some LGBTQ youth are more uniformly “out”, while others may disclose to some groups but not others. This selective disclosure is complicated on real name social media sites, which tend to encourage a unified presentation of self across social contexts. We explore these complications with a cohort of LBGTQ youth on Facebook (N = 199, M(age) = 24.13). Herein we ask: How do LBGTQ youth manage the disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to different people in their lives? Further, are there identifiable differences in the online social network structure for LGBTQ youth who manage outness in different ways? Finally, how do LGBTQ young people describe their experiences on Facebook? We answer these questions using a mixed methods approach, combining statistical cluster analysis, network visualization, and qualitative data. Our findings illustrate patterns in network structure by outness cluster type, highlighting both the work involved in managing one’s online identity as well as the costs to (semi-) closeted individuals including a considerably lower overall network connectivity. In particular, outness to family characterized LGBTQ young people’s experiences on Facebook. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6025558 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60255582018-07-16 “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth McConnell, Elizabeth Néray, Bálint Hogan, Bernie Korpak, Aaron Clifford, Antonia Birkett, Michelle Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and young adults almost inevitably “come out”, or self-disclose their identity to others. Some LGBTQ youth are more uniformly “out”, while others may disclose to some groups but not others. This selective disclosure is complicated on real name social media sites, which tend to encourage a unified presentation of self across social contexts. We explore these complications with a cohort of LBGTQ youth on Facebook (N = 199, M(age) = 24.13). Herein we ask: How do LBGTQ youth manage the disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to different people in their lives? Further, are there identifiable differences in the online social network structure for LGBTQ youth who manage outness in different ways? Finally, how do LGBTQ young people describe their experiences on Facebook? We answer these questions using a mixed methods approach, combining statistical cluster analysis, network visualization, and qualitative data. Our findings illustrate patterns in network structure by outness cluster type, highlighting both the work involved in managing one’s online identity as well as the costs to (semi-) closeted individuals including a considerably lower overall network connectivity. In particular, outness to family characterized LGBTQ young people’s experiences on Facebook. MDPI 2018-05-26 2018-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6025558/ /pubmed/29861439 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15061078 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article McConnell, Elizabeth Néray, Bálint Hogan, Bernie Korpak, Aaron Clifford, Antonia Birkett, Michelle “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title | “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title_full | “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title_fullStr | “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title_full_unstemmed | “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title_short | “Everybody Puts Their Whole Life on Facebook”: Identity Management and the Online Social Networks of LGBTQ Youth |
title_sort | “everybody puts their whole life on facebook”: identity management and the online social networks of lgbtq youth |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6025558/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29861439 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15061078 |
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