اينترنت و تغييرات هويتي، پژوهشي در ميان كاربران جوان حرفه اي

The Impact of Internet Use on Identity Changes: A Study on Young Professional Users

The presence of the internet users in the virtual space, particularly a constant and continuous presence as opposed to temporal presence, with professional and semi- professional motivation as opposed to with motivations instigated by entertainment purposes would have various and profound effects on various aspects of the usersʹ identity as well as on their life style. Here we will focus on the Iranian users, especially the Iranian youth as they constitute the largest group of Iranian population who have shown to have been engaged in internet through the usage of the features, facilities and opportunities provided by internet. In fact, Iranian users regarding their objectives in the real world and also their kind and degree of the usage of the internet would receive different and broad changes gradually. In this paper, we argue that the social effect of presence of the Iranian youth in the virtual space and will explain how the various dimension of their identity and attitudes have changed. The findings have been gathered through qualitative method and some techniques such as in-depth interview, field research among 10 professional users as well as participatory observations and content analysis of a number weblogs. The results of this study reveal that constant use of the internet and especially interaction and exchange of information with other users will lead to construction of modern and reflexive identity among the users. Meanwhile, the rate, kind and mode of use and the management of the self by the Iranian users in virtual space will affect the quality and quantity of identity change of the users.