The self-presentation of poets: modern poets and their online personae.

Social media experiences exist within online platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. Social media engagement is commonplace today. Consequently, online platforms contribute to the self-presentation of the individual user. Applying Erving Goffman's (1956) philosophies surrounding self-presentation and Moore, Barbour, and Lee's (2017) development of online personae, this qualitative study examined poets and their usage of social media. Goffman (1956) and Moore, Barbour, and Lee (2017) propose the concept of identity construction and interactions which enhance self-presentation or ideal personae. This research aimed to deepen an understanding of poets' use of various social media platforms and their impact on the development of their personas. Literature supporting self-presentation, identity, persona, artists, polymedia, parasocial relationships, and management of an online profile contributes to the underpinning of this study. Ten in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with modern poets were conducted through Zoom, a video-calling platform, to explore and evaluate how poets use methods of visual communication to present their art and their personae. Through a novel approach to photo-voice and photo-elicitation, called Social Media Elicitation, an analysis of the participating poets' social media activity was undertaken to ascertain how they presented their personae. An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the data and understand the participants' subjective experiences and perspectives on their personae as poets. NVivo data analysis software was used to support coding and thematic analysis techniques. Through a thorough investigation of each poet's identities, which contribute to their overall poetic persona, a typology of five types of online poets was developed to classify the identities explored within this study: Nostalgic, Activist, Educator, Promoter, and Confidant. As the data collection occurred during the COVID-19 Lockdown, this data also serves as a time capsule of poets during this worldwide event. This research enhanced an understanding of poets and how they interpret the contribution of social media to the development of personal identities, contributing to the wider knowledge of self-presentation of modern poets online.

Author dc:creator

• Seiler, Julia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• A. Laing, S. Pedersen and P. Bremner

• Self-presentation
• Online personas
• Social media
• Poets
• Identity construction
• Parasocial relationships

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:rgu-repository.worktribe.com:3475667
https://doi.org/10.48526/rgu-wt-3475667

Author Identifier

0000-0002-2181-7509

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:rgu-repository.worktribe.com:3475667