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Purpose: This conceptual paper takes identity, digital technology, young people and education as a combined starting point and suggests how to research young people’s identity practices in and out of school. Today’s young people form their identities in a world that is increasingly imbued by digital technologies. What is evident too is that these technologies and the use of them are not restricted to one single context. Rather, digital technologies mediate multiple contexts simultaneously – to an extent where they collapse. This means that school and leisure time, public and private, digital and analog, virtual and material, time and place, social contexts and audiences, through digital technology, merge in various ways in young people’s identity practices and everyday life.

Design/methodology/approach: Little is known about what identity practices in collapsing contexts means to young people in their lives and how educators and others can support them. Most studies to date investigate digital technology use as a discrete phenomenon and few studies concern young people’s identity practices in contexts, as they occur. In an increasingly digital world, where dependency on digital technologies continues this forms an urgent knowledge gap to bridge. In particular to guide educators, and others, who support young people as they live and learn through interconnected spaces in and out of school. The conceptual approach of this paper is of importance to better understand how to bridge this gap.

Findings: This paper suggests a research approach that extends previous research at the intersection of identity, young people, digital technology by outlining extended ways for thinking about identity in a digital world that can be useful for investigating identity as an existential practice, extending beyond identity representations, in conditions mediated by contemporary digital technologies and in collapsing contexts. What is also included are methodological considerations about researching young people, identity and technology as dynamic research objects, rendering a holistic approach.

Research limitations/implications: It is a conceptual paper that addresses identity, digital technology, young people and education as a combined starting point to outline further research.

Originality/value: The Guided Tour Technique and Social Media Research is suggested as possible methodologies for holistic and ethically sensitive, empirical research on identity, digital technology, young people and education.

Smiling easily, with slightly lowered eyelids, Mary looks straight into the lenses of the little device she holds at arm’s length. She seems to be in her teens. Her hair curls down her neck while she tilts her head softly to the side and takes a number of pictures of herself. After carefully selecting and making some adjustments, a picture is uploaded together with her other self-portraits, which she has already shared. Next to this new picture she writes, “I am a bit clueless as to how I look . . . Any suggestions?Also, in which picture do you think I look ‘the best’”? Within a few hours, Mary’s request has gotten numerous responses. 

I often use this brief narrative in writings and lectures to illustrate how one young person can use contemporary digital technologies in practices about identity. In both research and educational policy context the making of identity has for long been endorsed as one important condition for learning. It is argued that developing a confident, individual identity, and reflecting upon the identity of others, is fundamental in any educational practice (Swedish National Agency of Education 2011: 2018). Today, matters of identity intersect with the ongoing digitalization of society in general and education in particular (European Commission 2017 and 2018) and digital technology mediate conditions for social interaction that differ from those available in pre-digital times (Hällgren 2019). So, these new conditions enable young people not only to represent identity in other ways but also to make and learn about identities in digitally mediated ways - within as well as outside of educational contexts. 

This paper is about methodological considerations when undertaking research on what it means to make identity when using digital technologies, such as social media. The objective is to critically explore and better understand different methodologies. The considerations relate on an ongoing Swedish research project – called Crowdsourcing Identities – which concerns youth, identity and social media. The overall aim of the project is to deepen knowledge, conceptually and empirically, about young people’s making of identity, digital technology and learning, as they combine, or not. And, also how they may, to various extents and in different intersections, influence conditions for teaching and learning. 

From previous enquiries of the project, the interpretive lens of Crowdsourcing Identities developed as one way for thinking about young peoples’ making of identity and digital technologies (Hällgren 2019). It draws on perspectives of existentialism, social constructivism, technology and ideas of crowdsourcing and brings together human practices, theory and technology. Technology is not essential to identity, but can represent and convey identity, and more specifically, it can be used to engage online crowds of others in practices about identity. That is, a practice of “continuous requests and answers about existential matters of being, becoming and belonging. Who am I? How do I appear to others? Who can I be and become? Where do I belong?” (Hällgren 2019, p 4). 

How may young peoples’ existential practice, and not only representations, of identity when mediated by digital technologies, be researched? Identity and technologies have, indeed, been extensively research and theorized in terms of the Selfie, the Persona, as Facebook identities, as open source identity, the Self as networked, as online identity, virtual identity, digital identity, and such.  However, empirical resonance in larger structures of young peoples´ existential interactions about being, becoming and belonging, mediated by contemporary, digital technology, is yet to be explored. Questions in focus of this paper concerns how this can or could be done, what data gathering methods are appropriate, what ethical issues becomes pertinent, and what other methodological issues needs attention?

Methods/Methodology: This paper is largely analytical and points towards methodological considerations. In multimodal, multidirectional, collaborative and networked ways young people can represent, communicate, gather information and also engage online crowds of others in continuous requests and answers about being, becoming and belonging. Contemporary digital technologies, such as social media, are pervasive in young peoples’ social interactions, and aggregate huge amounts of data on almost every aspect of their lives (boyd 2014, Björk 2017, Quan-Hasse and Sloan 2017, Lindgren 2017). Researching identity, as an existential practice, at the intersection of digital technologies, produces a dynamic unit of analysis and a number of methodological and ethical considerations. 

Is one method for data gathering, or many, to preferer? Or netnographic field work, participant observations or qualitative interviews (Kozinet 2015)? Or using a bricolage of methods (Denzin and Lincoln 1994), improvising and combining what is at hands in creative, adaptive ways and using the unit of analysis as guidance to aim for what boyd (2008) term as a typological map of human practice? Or is data driven analytics the way to go? Or using data emerging from the media itself, such as hashtags, links, likes (Lindgren 2017)?

Information about large-scale patterns of social practices can be extracted through automated data collection and analysis. Data collected from social media contexts are often referred to as “big data” and needs to be approached critically, both in terms of epistemology and ethics (boyd and Crawford, 2012) Moreover, social media data can be diversified, for instance, as participative intentional data, consequential data, self-published data, social media data, data traces, found data etc. (Purdam and Elliot 2015). 

Being big or small and however collected, these data, in particular self-published data, brings new ethical challenges that has to be continuously dealt with in ethically sensitive and professional ways. Most of social media data are easily accessed and seemingly public, but as boyd and Crawford explain, that does not mean it can be used without ethical consideration. AoIR (2012) recommends a progressive approach to ethical decision making and emphasizes concepts such as harm, vulnerability, respect for persons, and beneficence to be operationalized in research practices and in context sensitive ways. Guidelines particularly sensitive to young people are provided by EU Kids Online (2008). Boellstorff et. al. (2012) recommend researchers to operate from principles of care, respect, non-deception and empathy but also anonymity and informed consent. 

Expected outcomes: The methodological considerations presented in this paper will be of importance to better understand how young peoples´ practice of making identity is mediated by digital technologies, primarily social media. The interpretive lens of Crowdsourcing identity can then be reflected in the methodologies used to research young peoples’ making of identity and digital technologies in more informed ways, and this may lead to a more ethically informed understanding of this phenomenon.

Considering the amount of data available for researching this fundamentally human practice of making identity, it is of importance to make deliberate, well informed choices on how to empirically reflect this practice – and the meaning it has to young people. Moreover, these methodological considerations may have wider implications if the promotion of digital technologies in education is thought of in their underlying ethical and existential meaning.  Digital technologies that are central in the practices such as the one implied by the short vignette of Mary may become promoted in formal education in ways that are naïve and perhaps harmful if not fully understood. With an informed understanding this might be more a matter for education of using wisdom to guide the use rather than techniques.

The purpose of this article is to outline crowdsourcing identities as one way to think about humans’ making of identity when practiced in conditions mediated by contemporary digital technologies. It brings together human practices, theory and technology and draws on perspectives of existentialism, social constructivism, technology and ideas about crowdsourcing. Humans’ making of identity is considered a practice that concerns continuous requests and answers about existential matters of being, becoming and belonging: Who am I? How do I appear to others? Who can I be and become? Where do I belong? In that sense, it is a relational and social practice that is essential to exist as someone — rather than as no one. However, contemporary digital technologies such as social media are not considered essential to this practice. Technologies are thought of as mediating conditions where, for instance, social interactions about existential matters, such as the making of identity, can be practiced in ways that extend on what were possible in predigital times. In multimodal, multidirectional, collaborative and networked ways humans can represent, communicate, gather information and also engage online crowds of others in continuous requests and answers about being, becoming and belonging; Who am I? How do I appear to others? Who can I be and become? And, where do I belong? To illustrate this, two brief narratives of Mary and Steve introduce the article. The making of identity, the duality of Self and Other, the gaze as a panopticon of others, identity and technology and ideas about crowdsourcing are presented and outlined, converging into the interpretive lens of crowdsourcing identities — one way to think about the making of identity when practiced in conditions mediated by contemporary digital technology.

In Swedish and European policies, education is identified as one key agent for advancing opportunities of digitalization and delivering digital transformations. In Sweden the National Digitalization Strategy for the School System was presented 2017. Later, the Swedish national curricula were revised with stronger writings about digital competence and put into effect on the 1st of July 2018. Digital competence is said to apply to all students and staff members from preschool to adult education. In short, these revisions propose, abilities to programming as central, but also abilities to solve problems, to use of digital technology creatively while turning ideas into action, work with digital texts, media and tools, understand and use digital systems and services, to critically approach media and information as well as understand the impact of digitalization on society and individuals. Digitalization policies are indeed comprehensive, yet, we argue there are still important matters calling for attention. For instance, what does competence mean in relation to digitalization? What does digital competence mean in relation to social values in the curricula? And, what does adequate digital competence mean in relation to actual, everyday practices in schools and more widely? This presentation reports early results of an ongoing critical discourse analysis of the intersection of digital competence and social values, in policy and practice. It is argued that there is a discursive gap that needs to be bridged by ethical considerations. It is suggested that if the government’s digital agenda is to be truly in human service, bring about a bright future and a sustainable digital transformation of Sweden, components of social values, what it is to exist as a human; that is what technology does to the human condition, need to be included and equally relevant to other components of digital competences.

This presentation reports on an ongoing Swedish research project called Crowdsourcing Identities which concerns youth, identity and social media. The making of identity has been endorsed as one important condition for learning for a long time, in both research and educational policy context. It is argued that developing a confident, individual identity, and reflecting upon the identity of others, is fundamental in any educational practice. Moreover, matters of identity intersect with the ongoing digitalization of society in general and education in particular and digital technology proposes conditions for social interaction that differ from those available in pre-digital times. So, these new conditions enable young people not only to represent identity in other ways but also to make and learn about identities in digitally mediated ways - within as well as outside of educational contexts. The overall aim in the project is to conceptually and empirically deepen the knowledge about young people’s making of identity, digital technology and learning, as they combine. In focus is also how they may, to various extents in different intersections, influence conditions for teaching and learning. This presentation reports on the conceptual side of the research. It is suggested that one way to think about young people’s identity making, when practiced in conditions proposed by contemporary digital technologies, is through the interpretive lens of Crowdsourcing Identities. It draws on existentialism and social constructivism and converge theories about identity, technology and crowdsourcing. By so, it offers one way for thinking about digital technology, such as social media, as spaces not only for representing and expressing identities, but also as mediating conditions for identity making – a practice about existence and not just superficial expressions of vanity.

The intention with this article is to explore how visuals and written text may combine to further understandings about complex matters such as gendered aspects of the human condition. To do so, I bring together my professional practices as researcher and artist by theorizing, conceptualizing and visualizing aspects of children’s gender identity making. As such, this article is conceptual rather than empirical and covers issues about learning, existentialism, social constructivism, children, identity, and gender. It also exemplifies what I call Art Blended Research, an approach that draws on the insight of that there is more to see than meets the eye. In conclusion, the strength of this approach does not lie in the ability to explain what is. Instead, the strength of Art Blended Research is found in possible explorations and inspirations of what might be.

What does it mean to become a boy today? How does boyhood manifest itself in different contexts? How can we describe fathers and sons in contemporary society? And can we make the invisible boy visible in ways alternative to those of media?

This publication is the outcome of an international, multidisciplinary exploration of how boys become boys and how boys form identities today. The project was global in its scope and included 24 artists and academics from Sweden, USA, Turkey, UK, Finland, New Zealand, Croatia, Nigeria, Switzerland, India, Canada and Italy have contributed to the Invisible Boy. The publication with its 20 chapters includes academic papers, video, drawings, digital images, photography and music. Combining a variety of intellectual expressions the chapters forms a joint example of multimodal explorations to further understandings of complex matters such as gendered identity making.

The contributions are organised in four themes: Negotiating Identity, Bodily Existence, Boyhood Interrupted, and Gender and Contemporary Media.