"Before" method section: Analysis of identity work on social media

Methods for data collection 

Plan for collecting data 

Collect data from 3-9 people ranging from young adults and up. Follow these individuals studying the rituals they learn and refer to in their posts and reposts, as well as likes they put on certain posts.

Data will be separately taken in differentiating the three major media sites Facebook, twitter, and instagram. In doing so hopefully seeing the different ways each participant acts in their rituals on these separate sites trying to determine why there might be similarities and why there would be differences if any are found with how participants act on each site. The minimum number of posts looked at for each participant will be around 20 but at most 50. Towards the end of the study I will direct message each participant individually and ask them questions pertaining to identity work and what it means to them. 

Procedures/methodological choices

I will be transcribing all the comments and direct messages made by all participants and compiling them into a set of data that allows me to see trends between each individual and finding certain things that are important to each of them showing similarities between each of them as well as differences such as what they like or what they think describes them best. 

Overview 

-Follow 3-9 people closely finding interesting trends and posts that may be impactful for them as well as other participants of the study

-Gather 20-50 posts from each person 

-Compile these posts throughout the study 

-Share certain positive and negative posts found on social media and see the reaction each participant has to it 

-Gather the comments and direct messages into a type of transcription that can pull data out of it to share the underlying themes of identity work and performance on social media

-If given time and the opportunity to ask the participants to read each others posts and give back anonymous feedback to me about what they think the understand is the others identity they are trying to perform and then applying it to what that one participant thinks they are performing. (The "I" and "me")

-Show the negative affects of identity work through social media and how it could be changed by showing the positive affects and efforts to grow ones identity through an online image

Overall purpose for this method 

-To find how much of an impact social media has on identity work/performance through others and arguing whether or not it will always be negative or grow to be a positive environment for someone to grow an identity.

-Also for outside citations I will be using the refinery29 post on my blog post over identity showing the importance of identity especially for young adults with the data already collected over identity crisis causing deaths. (https://www.refinery29.com/2017/03/146733/identity-crisis-causes-social-media-fake-world?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email_share)