A study of conceptualisations of authenticity in relation to young people's self-presentation on social media.

This project will explore the relationship between authenticity, social media, and education. Through
interviews, focus groups, and photo-driven data collection this project will explore how young people view
authenticity online and offline, and how education can respond to these changes in young people's digital
literacies and online experiences.
The relationship of digital technologies to authenticity is complex. Pallud and Straub (2007) suggest that
the words 'technology' and 'authenticity' clash, in that technology connotes the simulated, whereas
authenticity connotes the natural and real. However, there appears to be a move towards consumers and
platforms desiring authenticity within social media. The popular app 'BeReal' testifies this; the app
distances itself from others that are believed to instil superficial performativity into user practices (Duffy
and Gerrard, 2022), and has opened discussions around authenticity in the digital world of constructed
self-presentation (DeVito and Birnholtz, 2017). In this changing landscape and given the growing presence
of social media in the everyday practices of young people, this project will explore how young people
conceptualise authenticity and how this shapes their actions and interactions online and offline.
From an educational perspective, this project positions authenticity as a vital part of developing digital
literacy. The UK computing curriculum notes how in key stages 3 and 4, students should be digitally
literate, "express themselves and develop their ideas through, information and communication technology
at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world" (DfE, 2013:1). A key
part of learning to 'express themselves' and be 'active participants' is to navigate matters of authenticity,
which are hard to conceptualise as these are partly subjective, partly contextual, and partly about
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experimenting with and learning about their own preferential identities. The online and the offline are
no-longer separate entities, and our identities in these realms intertwine (Arfini et al., 2021) and separate
in subtle ways, creating the need to understand how authenticity or inauthenticity work in the context of
social media and contemporary lives for young people. Nonetheless authenticity is a largely
under-researched and under-theorised concept, particularly in educational research. Given the increasing
moves of social media apps and designs towards authenticity in various forms, this project aims to fill this
gap in the research literature to better understand the importance of authenticity in young peoples' lives
and what this means for education and digital literacy.
This study is influenced by interpretivist design and will take a phenomenological approach to address the
research gap. It will employ creative methods, utilising disposable cameras as cultural probes, by asking
participants to take pictures of what they're doing at a certain time, 3 times a week, for a month. At the
end of this month, I will undertake semi-structured interviews with the participants to discuss these
photos, their views of 'authenticity', and their social media habits, allowing for an analysis about key
conceptualisations of authenticity and online norms. This will be repeated two more times over the span
of 6 months, with the final discussion ending with a focus group for participants. This will create a critical
workshop for participants to discuss what they have noticed, what may have changed regarding their social
media presence, and their conceptualisations of authenticity.