Anita Cloete - Watching and being watched: Negotiating identity in a digital age
his paper wishes to discuss the complex and ambiguous process of identity formation within a context that could/will be described as a digital age. Therefore, it will also engage with what it means to live in a digital age and highlight the significant changes that took place in local communities and also globally. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities this rapidly changing context offers for the process and project of identity formation will be outlined. Specific reference will be made to how social media platforms and films become cultural resources people could use for reflecting on the self and constructing and deconstructing identity. The concept of surveillance and sousveillance will be utilized to demonstrate how complex and even ambivalent the digital context is wherein identity
must be negotiated today. Throughout the article it is argued that being is closely related and connected to context and new understandings of reality. Moreover, the question of being is also intrinsically linked to the process of meaning making which is of utmost importance in a rapidly changing context where living with uncertainty and an identity that is in flux are often the only viable option