MEDIA AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

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INTRODUCTION
According to Hall (2000), culture implies shared meanings. Culture is what represents us and communicates to the world about who we are, what we do, and how we act. In other words, it is the various cultural aspects being tools for identity construction. Identity is the way that people see themselves, and how other groups or people see them. People will see other mostly on how they represent themselves- that is, based on what people communicate to others about themselves. In other words, identity is the construct that encompasses how we think about ourselves and the role we play in the larger society. People construct their identities using various cultural artifacts- that is, the cultural artifacts will communicate about people and their culture, thus identities.
 In this paper, we analyze how the media functions as an act of identity construction. Based on the various scholarly arguments, the paper will highlight the various ways that the media has constructed the images of particular people or groups of people, especially the women. The media can be defined as a communication tool that stores and delivers information. There are several forms of media, including the radio, television, print media, and the internet or social media. In all these, the prime function is to convey information about people, things, and events. In the last few years, the social media has become the center stage of interaction and communication, and it is indeed a good example of identity construction. However, the term media in this context will generalize all types of media including, but not restricted to the social media. The television and the print media are also key in the identity construction.
   
The conception and development of the internet has been an impactful element on communication and socialization it is with the development of the internet that the social media has developed, and the social media has been lauded by scholars as a key identity builder. The various studies done on the impact of social media on identity construction have concentrated on the popular social media sites, key among them Facebook (Bolander & Locher, 2010). Facebook and other social sites have changed the way the identities of people are constructed. As mentioned above identity is how people view themselves and how they are viewed by others. In this case, the social networking sites have provided a forum where people can come together and interact, not people who are affiliated to one another, but people who even may have never heard of the other. You will get them interacting on social media, exchanging information about themselves. In this exchange or interaction, images about ourselves are created, and it is from these images that our identities are constructed.
According to Wagman (2011, pp. 145-156), the digital media is used by institutions like the government to collect out data and distribute it to others, often without our knowledge, and people also use the digital media to promote themselves to others. What it this promotion? The author implies that people often use the digital media like Facebook to post information about themselves knowing that this information will be accessed by people. As such, the people will be using the social media to construct their identity. The information about a person that is made available on Facebook and other media will often be the information that people will use to judge the person- that is, to guess who the person is, social status, economic status, political affiliation, etc. In that case, people are often careful when posting any information online knowing that a lot of people will have access to it and, therefore, nobody will want to create a bad impression on himself or herself. The way we interact over the social media, leave alone the information that people post online, is also another tool that can be used to create the identity of a person.
Identities as individuals are shaped by a great number of factors. For example, age, gender, upbringing, hobbies, religion, class, and ethnicity, among others. It is worth noting, however, that the identities are not a mere summation of all these factors, but a ‘social positioning of self and other (Bolander & Locher, 2010). Going by this argument, it is clear, as such, that of importance here is the intersubjective and interactional connotation. In other words, our identities and those of others are created through interacting with others meaning that the identities are not individually produces, rather they are intersubjectively produced. More so, the identities emerge interactionally, but are not in a priori fashion. When people interact, they often tend to position themselves regarding social, economic, and political status. In this context, positioning can be defined as the process whereby we locate selves during interactions (conversations) as we jointly produce story lines. What does this mean then? As we engage one another in conversations of whatever manner, there are ways that we will see ourselves as different from the others. For example, two teens chatting on Facebook will feel oneself and the other as belonging to different classes, social set ups, political affiliation, and economic status. When one posts pictures taken while on a plane and posts them to the friend on the other end, the friend will actually position the other as a person coming from a rich family where they enjoy all the luxuries of life. The identities will have been constructed here.
Far from the social media and Facebook, we can analyze the other media like the television and the print media and see how they construct the identities of people. Brandy (2013) talks about the media practices and the painful pasts. Apart from the exchange of the information that aids in identity construction, the media may also construct identities and convey the same to the audience. This happens especially in the print and television media. The main reason is that we tend to believe that everything conveyed to us through the television and the print media to be true. However, the media mostly conveys the information that is used for identity construction. For example, in the issue of the Canada's TRC, identities have been created about that of the commission and some other people. For example, the aboriginal people. How do we conclude that people are aboriginal? And how do we say a culture is the majority. This is all about identity construction and most probably how the media has presented these people. Media coverage of events is about mediating identities and construction of others. The media has brought to light the plight of the Inuit and Metis children, who have been subjected to assimilation into the majority culture. So, it this coverage an identity mediation or an identity construction. There is a thin line between these two, since the image created about the various parties including the children, the commission, and the general Canadian culture are all acting as tools of identity construction. The children in this case are positioned as people who are of least significance in the Canadian culture and who need to be assimilated into the popular culture. They are people without a place and the only thing to do to them is to assimilate them.
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Identity construction in the magazines is not something new, and we have seen various people rise out of nothing to become celebrities to be admired and talked about by almost everyone. A god example is presented by a post on Tumblr by Laverne Cox (Cox, 2015). In her post, she expresses her joy in seeing a woman very beautiful and very sexy appearing in a magazine and being the talk of everyone, despite the fact she is a transgender. The lady is indeed receiving so much support that amazes Cox, who is inspired to make her own photos and may be also be among the advocates of the transgender movement. The woman in the Timemagazine magazine is called Caitlyn, who Cox describes as a person who is not only beautiful, but also good hearted, talented, and intelligent. The two things we can grasp from this post is how magazines, or rather the print media constructs identities, and the way the post itself constructs the identities of the transgender women. As suggested by the post, we can learn that transgenders are among the least accepted people in the society, and their identities are constructed with contempt. However, this changes when the Timemagazine brings about Caitlyn to appear in the magazine presenting her nature as a beautiful woman who is like any other we have in the society. As Cox says, Caitlyn had the courage to move past denial and into truth publicly. As such, Caitlyn is positioned as a strong women such that her example is to be used to encourage other people, especially with related problems, to move past their odds and embrace themselves before the society can embrace them.
From the story of Caitlyn as presented by Cox, we can learn that apart from presenting ourselves to others, we are also presented by other people to others. For example, the identity of Caitlyn is presented by the magazine crew in that they are the ones who featured her, though most probably with her own consent. But the fact is that the crew wanted to present her to the public may be with an intent to change how people thought about the trangsgenders. The same way, other present us in their interaction and conversatios. For example, students often can construct the identities of their teachers as they interact with other students or other people. In this case, the image of a person, thus the identity of another person has been created by others. The photos of the lady communicate so much about her, and the words and the language act as spices and additional information. This notion concurs with that of Wagman where he says that photographs are the most important conduits that communicate who we are. As such, whichever media the photographs are used does not matter as the fact remains that they help in identity construction.
Wagman talks about the impact of photography on the identity or the image of people. He states that the camera is a powerful tool as it is with a gun. What is the implication? The author argues that photography is used recklessly without the photographer having an idea of the power he or she is wielding. So, what is this power? What can photographs do to a person, or even a society? The main theme in this context is that if identity construction and the author is proposing that one can make or destroy an image of a person using a simple photograph. Coupling this with the notion that photos are a critical communicator of who we are, we can, as such, argue that photographs are tools for constructing identities. The photographs are often shared in media like Facebook meaning that the media is functioning as an act of identity construction. The photographs are used for self-promotion, for example, like in the case mentioned above of a kid posting a photo taken on a plane. In that case, no one would deny the kid as from coming from a rich family, among other judgments that will be accrued to this.
Jiwani and Young (2006) talk about marginality in the news as they talk about the case of murdered women and children. They recognize the role of the media in making known the things that are going on in the Canadian society- that is, the soldiers in Afghanistan and the war against the women in the domestic soil. In this case once again, the society as a whole is displayed through the media and the identity of the Canadian people, in general, are displayed as people with wrong perceptions about women. The women in the Canadian society as displayed in the media is that they do not respect the women in the society. In this case, the identity of the powers that reign is constructed using the media, though indirectly. The government can send troops outside soils to fight for a cause at the same time neglecting one that is in the domestic soils and one that is of more importance. In other words, there is blooming sexualized violence against the women in Canada, who should have been the government's priority. In that case, the media has been responsible for bringing this to light, and the identities of the parties involved revealed. In that case, the media has been an act of identity construction.
In conclusion, the essay presented has proved that media is a cultural artifact whereby it has been communicating about people. It has been shown that it functions as an act of identity construction, defined above as presentation of who we are. In this context, the essay has identified that the media is where all the communication about people take place, and that is the primary means used by people to present themselves to others. It is also the primary means where people access others and learn about others. In that sense, the media is the means by which the information used to construct the identities is conveyed from one person to another or between groups of people.
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