Virtual Identities and Self Promotion seeks to examine, explore and critically engage with the issues surrounding the ideas of self and identity in online environments and in social media.  Our relationship with online environments and our concepts of self changed rapidly and radically during the COVID19 pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, we relied on the web to keep our jobs, teach, see family, and attend conferences. Identity, culture, family, and politics have changed with increased exposure and use of the web (not just due to COVID)  over the course of our modern era.  As a result of access to various social media, identities transformed both on and offline. Many people use online environments to explore the fluidity of self-expression as an “identity laboratory.” Almost everyone in today’s age has experienced some kind of online identity play, whether through playing an online game, participating in professional networking sites, writing a blog, creating a website, commenting on an article, using dating apps or contributing to updates on various forms of social media. Our current world is seeing social media platforms become sites of contention politically and socially as sites are used to promote contentious and dangerous ideas such as racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-government, and anti-LGBTQ+ viewpoints. Many users present the idealized self, specifically shaped for various audiences. New ways to shape our virtual identities and self-promotion have changed how we construct ourselves.  Virtual identities are socially constructed and reflective of the time and era in which they emerge.

We invite submissions investigating and exploring virtual identity and self-promotion, including but not limited to:

• Use of social media to create identity professionally, personally, socially, academically
• Socially constructed identity in online environments including social media and other online communities
• Use of Podcasts to create academic, political, and social content
• The changing relationship to online engagement during COVID19
• The emergence of virtual meetings during COVID19
• Use of social media to engage politically or influence the political sphere
• Use of social media to promote hate and/or racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-government, and anti-LGBTQ+ viewpoints
• Use of social media to promote acceptance of various communities
• Use of the web to create “Influencers”
• Use of online technology in order to study language, communication, and identity construction
• Constructed and reconstructed identities in arenas promoting user-generated content, such as YouTube
• Created digital artifacts as a way of self-discovery and identity construction
• Negotiated online identity with physical identity, socially,  professionally, and academically
• Use of online interactions for validation of self, emotionally and/or intellectually

Submission Requirements:

• Title of Individual Paper
• Abstract of 250 words which describes the main concepts to be addressed by presentation
• Please include, name, institutional affiliation, e-mail, and telephone
• For guidelines on proposing a panel please contact the Chair of the session or visit the PCA/ACA website.
• Undergraduate Papers are welcome

Submission Portal:  https://pcaaca.org/

Submissions will only be accepted through the PCA website.

All presenters must be current, paid members of the PCA and fully registered for the conference.

Please feel free to contact the Chair of Virtual Identities and Self Promotion with any questions:

Monica S. Gallamore, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Section FB Page:  https://www.facebook.com/virtualidpca