We are what we post? Self-presentation in personal web space

This article examines personal Web sites as a conspicuous form of consumer self-presentation. Using theories of self-presentation, possessions, and computer-medi-ated environments (CMEs), we investigate the ways in which consumers construct identities by digitally associating themselves with signs, symbols, material objects, and places. Specifically, the issues of interest include why consumers createpersonal Web sites, what consumers want to communicate, what strategies they devise to achieve their goal of self-presentation, and how those Web space strategies compare to the self-presentation strategies of real life (RL). The data reveal insights into the strategies behind constructing a digital self, projecting a digital likeness, digitally associating as a new form of possession, and reorganizing linear narrativestructures. Consumption can be a self-defining and self-expressivebehavior. People often choose products and brands that are self-relevant and communicate a given identity: “Con-sumption serves to produce a desired self through the images and styles conveyed through one’s possessions ” (Thompson and Hirschman 1995, p. 151). In this way consumers make their identities tangible, or self-present, by associating them-selves with material objects and places. Although consumer researchers have included symbols and signs in the set of objects and materiality they study (Mick 1986), even these symbols often refer to physical objects or places. With the advent of new technology, computer-mediated environments (CMEs) have emerged, allowing virtual worlds in which consumers can present themselves using digital rather than physical referents. The CMEs are virtual digital places that occupy neither space nor time. They are inherently discursive spaces where people actively convene to commune with others (Kozinet