New dimensions of identity – media, popular culture, digital reality

Abstract

The text concentrates on the issue of identity and its transformations, driven by the spread of media and digital culture. In the first part it presents three canonic proposals for reflections on virtual identity. Firstly, reflections on the communication dimension of identity derived from Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialog. Secondly, the concept of “ontological shift” as suggested by Marek Krajewski, who sees in it the remedy for the lack of a real dimension of many virtual contacts. Thirdly, the issues of the integrity of the individual and the fluidity of modern reality in the approaches proposed by Wolfgang Welsh, Anthony Giddens, and Zygmunt Bauman. The analytical part contains an analysis of the important aspects of the notion of identity. The first is the issue of the subjectivity of an utterance and its source, which will be discussed using the example of a play based on texts that adapted from Internet blogs. The second issue is an attempt to answer the question posed by Sherry Turkle of whether if it is possible to kill someone virtually. The point of reference for the search for a solution to this issue is the popular computer game “Vampire”.
The last aspect has to do with celebrity identity in the media world. This concerns the phenomenon of celebrities in the pragmatic dimension as a model strategy of behaviour in the world, in which the boundary between privacy and public space has been blurred. On the basis of these analyses, which cover merely a small part of human experience, the author proposes a new methodological approach to perceiving and analysing aspects of identity revealed through the confrontation with the new virtual reality.