Searching for a "true" identity or experience

This week we talked a fair amount about "true" identities and "real" experiences in online spaces. I'd like to use this post to explore those notions further.

We all craft our identities to some extent depending on the situation and circumstances in which we find ourselves. We reveal what we want people to see, and in every space there in conduct which is socially acceptable, and conduct that is not. This seems to be true in off- and online spaces. On Facebook, we share things we want other people to know; our photos and comments reveal a persona that may not tell the entire story of a person's "actual" profile. But what they reveal is still part of who they are. 

So when we conduct research online, I'm not sure the question of whether the participant's identity is "true" or "real" is the right question to ask. This question seems to imply that the researcher is searching for an empirical truth, and suggests that there is indeed one truth to find. At least in the work I do, and it seems in qualitative work more generally, this is not our question nor our task. We are not looking for one truth, but a story, a narrative, an account of an experience that we can explore, analyze, discuss, and share with our peers. Through this sharing process we invite discussion and further analysis.  And we give voice to stories, experiences, and people, which/who may have been silenced for some reason.

Perhaps our question should focus on the experience of a person or community, and our task should be to represent that experience in a way that tells their story and moves our thinking around that topic forward. The experience that is revealed in an online setting is a real experience. It happened. Discourse unfolded and people reacted. That is real. That is valid. And that should be brought to light. A researcher can simply give voice to the experience, or they can analyze it and compare it with other stories. But it remains that the experience that unfolded in that online space is true and real.

With the proliferation of networked access and discourse in online community spaces, it seems that people are becoming more and more comfortable engaging with others virtually. This is further reason to take people's identities and experiences as true. We may not see the whole person in an online experience, but then again, we may never see all of the facets of a person's life and personality no matter how much we interact with them on and offline.

The hard sciences have shaped much of our language around research and study, but we should be careful to use linguistic precision, as our language reveals a lot about our underlying understandings of science, research, and knowing. In more qualitative work, our research may well benefit from shifting our focus to experiences rather than truths and generalizability. Much can be learned from reading, comparing, and analyzing people's experiences.