Creation and Dynamics of Identity within Social Media Landscape

Today, the digital space became a natural landscape of identity formation, determining, in turn, individual’ societal functioning and political behavior. Accordingly, propaganda influence processes also significantly moved to online environment, especially social media as a crucial platform for communication, including political one. At the same time, as previous studies revealed, this digitally constructed identity is fragmented to a more or less extent – the phenomenon called “fragmented Self”. This determines the relevance of investigating mechanisms of the place of fragmented Self phenomenon in the processes of shaping public opinion through propaganda, as well as functioning of social media as a soft power tool. In this context, the study aimed at outlining the mechanisms of social media-constructed identity influence on the effectiveness of digital propaganda and soft power tools. The study is based on qualitative methodology, with the application of both content analysis and grounded theory elements. The findings demonstrate societal implications of the fragmented Self phenomenon within the context of soft power. The novelty of the results lie, in particular, in juxtaposition and connection of Michel Foucault’ theory of fragmented Self and Joseph Nye’ theory of soft power, in the plane of social media and propaganda within their landscape. The main result of the study is building a conceptual model of digital soft power influence on fragmented identity, within three-dimensional system of coordinates. The work makes a theoretical contribution to the study of the problem of identity in the context of nonlinear socio-cultural dynamics, reflected in the dynamics of identity

Conceptual framework · Phenomenon · Politics · Social identity approach · Social media · Soft power · Security, Politics, and Digital Transformation · Social and Behavioral Studies · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia