Durodolu Oluwole Olumide

The Role of Social Media in Shaping Identity among Digital Natives: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Interactions

Section: Library affair and science. Foreign experience

Abstract: The purpose of the article is to critically examine how various social media platforms impact the formation and negotiation of identity among digital natives. Most specifically to explor ediscursive strategies used by young people in their interactions online and how these reflect broader social, cultural, and ideological dynamics. Research methods employ investigative research which rigorously examined the role of social media in determining identity among digital natives, engaging Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a methodological lens. The research explores how language, illustrations, and multimodal interactions and engagements within online environment has contributed to the building of personal and joint identities, at the same time interrogating with issues of power, surveillance, and authenticity. Scientific novelty highlights the unstable and situational landscape of online identities, drawing from howusers knowingly adapt or execute different selves across various platforms. In Conclusion the rapid interaction on social media has led to shaping the identity especially among those who have been labelled as digital natives because it has become a veritable platform for selfexpression, recognition, and sense of belonging. However, these same platforms has become an avenue for surveillance, commodification, and reproduction site for various ideological variation. Through CDA, has becomes evidently an identity construction avenue in the digital spaces not only for individual expression but profoundly entangled with power relations and socio-cultural dynamics. Understanding these undercurrents is indispensable for fostering amore equitable and critically engaged digital environments.

Keywords: Social media culture, Digital Natives, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Online communication, Shaping Identity.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/bv2025.04.164     Citation

• Durodolu Oluwole Olumide (University of South Africa (Pretoria City, South Africa), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2734-8165

Cite:
Durodolu Oluwole Olumide (2025). The Role of Social Media in Shaping Identity among Digital Natives: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Interactions. Bibliotechnyi visnyk, (4) 164-172. doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/bv2025.04.164

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