Virtual Identities and Self Promotion aims to examine, explore and critically engage with the issues surrounding creating a sense of self in online environments.   Undoubtedly, our experience of the web is changing and has changed our identity both on and offline. Many of us have used 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 social networking sites, writing a blog, creating a website, commenting on an article, or contributing to updates on twitter. Many users present an idealized “me”, specifically shaped for our various audiences. These new technologies have changed the way we think and how we have constructed our identities and consequently have informed our relationships and interactions within both online and offline arenas.

We invite submissions investigating and exploring virtual identity creation and self promotion, including but not limited to the ways in which users:

• Use social media to create identity professionally, personally, socially, academically
• Socially construct (gender, race, sex, etc) their identity in online environments including social media, and other online communities
• Use online technology in order to study language, communication, and identity construction
• Construct and reconstruct themselves in arenas promoting user-generated content, such as youtube
• Surveil, adapt, and/or censor their online identities and content, changing the nature of digital expression
• Create digital artifacts as a way of self discovery and identity construction
• Negotiate online identity with physical identity socially,  professionally, and academically
• Use online interactions for validation of self, emotionally and/or intellectually
• Are affected by interface design in their online experiences as well as their identity