Identity, Community and the Internet Community and Identity

It is part of the symbolic interactionist credo that a person’s identity is derived from his/her relations with others and from the imagination of the others ’ perceptions and evaluations. As put by Charles Cooley a century ago: “In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self--that is any idea he appropriates--appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking glass self: "Each to each a looking-glass Reflects the other that doth pass." As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance