183
Digital
Life Stories: Auto/Biography in the Information Age
SAGE Publications, Inc.200410.1191/0967550704ab010oa
MichaelHardey
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Michael.Hardey@ncl.ac.uk
Address
for correspondence: Michael Hardey, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology,
Claremont Bridge, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK; Email: Michael.Hardey@ncl.ac.uk
This paper is about `digital
life stories' as a new form of autobiography in the `information age'. One
of its aims is to argue that we have been living in the information age long
enough for digital life stories to become a significant new form of narrative
that reflects the social realities of everyday life under conditions of global
complexity. It is argued that digital life stories constitute a new genre
that is characterized by four key dimensions. These dimensions are analysed
and placed in the context of lives lived in the information age and auto/biographical
writing. Issues related to the identification and analysis of digital life
stories are then considered. The paper concludes by exploring the implications
of digital life stories for auto/biographical work.
In
his book Documents of life-2, Plummer (2000) notes that since the earlier
edition, published in 1983, the development of digital infor- mation and communications
technologies (ICTs) have opened up new possibilities for the construction
and publication of autobio- graphies: Search for `autobiography' and you will
come up with millions of entries of all kinds: from thousands of school children
telling their lives in simple formats for a classroom project to CD-Roms that
help you format your family tree; from the most personal sexual autobiography
in a `chat room' to the published life stories of Thomas Jefferson or Alex
Haley's Roots. (Plummer, 2000: 97) The time between the two publications captures
something of the pace of technological change that led to the often hyperbolized
184
notion
of the `information revolution' and the advent of life with, if not in, the
`information age' (Castells, 1996: 328). For Castells, the digital integration
of oral, print and visual modalities into one system has a social impact compatible
with the advent of the alphabet, giving rise to new forms of identity, organization
and decentred flows of power. He went on to argue that `the internet is the
fabric of our lives' (Castells, 2001: 1). While auto/biography is part of
this fabric, the analysis of Internet-based narratives remains neglected.
A recent text that provides a detailed review of auto/biographical research
left it to the conclusion to note that we may be `entering an interactive,
``real''- cyber world of auto/biographies' (Roberts, 2002: 174). A purpose
of this paper is to argue that we have been living in the information age
long enough for digital life stories to become a significant new form of narrative
that reflects the social realities of everyday life under con- ditions of
global complexity (Urry, 2002). The way that the hardware and software that
give access to the Internet also provides users with the ability to `talk
back' through email, newsgroups and web pages is central to any conceptualization
of an information age. Despite the diversity of formulations as to what constitutes
this age, there is a general consensus that organiza- tions and individuals
are confronted by, and contribute to, a rapidly evolving amount of information
of local, national and international origins (Webster, 1995). Figures for
2003 from the Office for National Statistics reveal that for the first time
over half the UK population were Internet users.1 North America reached this
level of connectivity some time ago and most European countries are at least
equal if not ahead of the UK in citizens access to ICTs. This use of ICTs
is reflected in contemporary theories that place an emphasis on the role of
`networks', `mobilities,' `scapes', `liquidity' and `flows' of various sorts
(e.g., Castells, 1996; Graham and Marvin, 2001; Lash, 2002; Bauman, 2000; Urry, 2000; 2002). Scapes reflect a new geographical fluidity and the flow
and exchange of extraordinary amounts of information. Space—time compression
and the pluraliza- tion of information are forces of globalization that enable
many people to be more physically, economically and socially mobile and consequently
more embedded within networked technologies of various sorts (Wellman and
Haythornthwaite, 2002). Email, for example, enables families to remain in
touch with each other on a daily basis wherever individual members are geographically
located. Indeed, contemporary notions of identity and family are less embed-
ded in the proximate, everyday life of neighbourhoods and communi- ties and
increasingly lived out through connections mediated by the Internet (Putnam,
2000). ITCs have therefore taken a central place
185
in how
people live out their lives, find and maintain connections and seek to represent
themselves to others. One of my concerns, therefore, is about `digital life
stories' that reflect the new ability, open to anyone with access to a computer
linked to the Internet, to create and publish their auto/biography and interact
with a global audience. They constitute a new form of self-expression that
is constructed through text, images and hyper- links (Selvin, 2000). The accounts
considered here are `digital', as they are created and consumed within a media
framed by digital data. This enables material that in other media is distinct,
for example, photo- graphs and text, to flow together in complex relationships.
Digital media occupies a disembodied space where the boundaries between author
and reader and other dualities of the modern off-line world are challenged
or recast (see Featherstone and Burrows, 1995; Haraway, 1991). `Life stories',
rather than more familiar labels such as `autobiography' and `life history',
help mark out a distinctive genre. The term has also been used elsewhere in
the context of the lives of women, colonial subjects and others who are under-
represented in other narrative forms. Chanfrault-Duchet (2000), for example,
notes the complexity of meanings weaved by `ordinary people' (2000: 74) in
their accounts of their lives. The use of the label `digital life story' is
also congruent with the emphasis placed by many authors of Internet narratives,
who explain that they want to `tell my story' (Hardey, 2002a), and the emergent
nature of identity and biography in our contemporary era (Giddens, 1991).
The aim of this paper is to encourage recognition of the signifi- cance of
digital life stories to the study of auto/biographical material and move towards
a definition of them as a genre. It opens with an outline description and
analysis of the key features of this new genre and proceeds to examine the
format, narrative pattern, tensions between the author and the audience, and
the content of digital life stories. This is followed by an examination of
the methodological approaches needed to identify and understand digital life
stories. The conclusion reflects on the role of digital life stories in the
infor- mation age. DIGITAL LIFE STORIES AS A GENRE The notion of `genre' has
various usages, but it is used here to dis- tinguish digital life stories
from other material on the Internet and other forms of auto/biography. This
is also helps to locate digital life stories within the tradition of recounting
lives in other forms such as auto/biography and oral histories. Therefore,
while digital life stories
186
represent
`a major change' (Plummer, 2000: 99) in life story telling there are continuities
with past forms. Key characteristics of the genre are outlined below: Format
and medium Web pages and weblogs that are inherently digital, dynamic, inclusive
of text, pictures and other media. Narrative pattern Interweaving narratives
that are loosely ordered by hyperlinks that are attached to an archive of
material and other places on the Internet. Author and audience Constructed
and reconstructed for a global audience that reads `unique' narratives by
making hyperlink choices. Content An individual life that is grounded in other
people, localities and events. These features shape the expectations and experiences
of digital life stories for both author and reader. They also point to a tension
between the construction of the stories and their `reading'. This arises because
digital life stories are more or less reconstructed by the act of consumption.
However, a digital life story has, as in other media, a broad structure that
commonly opens with significant life event such as a marriage, separation
or illness. It then proceeds through various events that are more or less
loosely attached to a chronology. This self-referential narrative enables
people to tell the story of who they are, where they are and what makes their
experiences distinctive. However, the audience may consume a narrative that
transcends an individual web page or weblog by following hypertext links to
other places on the Internet. FORMAT AND MEDIUM There are a vast number of
personal home pages that, as Chandler (1999) has observed, reflect the `construction
of their makers identi- ties'. In the early 1990s when the World Wide Web
was novel, the construction of Internet web pages demanded a knowledge of
Hyper- text Mark-up Language (HTML) as well as relatively rare access to suitable
networked computer equipment. Since then access to the Internet has grown
exponentially and new, `click and drag' tools have simplified the construction
of web pages. In 1995 there were an esti- mated 20,000 web sites which had
grown to over 10 million by 2000 with some 2 million pages being added every
day (Netcraft, 2000). Estimates of the number of web pages need to be treated
with cau- tion, but whatever the actual number there is a general agreement
about their continued and rapid growth. The weblog (aka blog) in the past
two years emerged as a new space relatively free of commer-
187
cial
interests that are increasingly represented on web pages. For example, advertising
may be more or less overtly associated with per- sonal home pages as part
of users agreement with their Internet Ser- vice Provider (ISP). Blogs have
their origins in software developed to make updating web pages simple. They
are therefore similar to per- sonal home pages but make even less demands
on technical skills and do not require users to have an account with an ISP
in order to publish material on the Internet. Indeed, the earlier label of
`me-zines' indicates the essential subjective nature of the blog. Marked by
rapid growth it has been estimated that there are 701,150 blogs.2 With about
half this number being written in lan- guages other than English. This is
significant in that a far greater pro- portion of general Internet resources
are written in English and may reflect the relative accessibility of the blog
format to those unable or unwilling to subscribe to a ISP. This suggests that
the blog format may be particularly useful to those whose only access to ICTs
is via cyber cafes, centres set up to address the digital divide and libraries.
Selvin (2000) notes that home pages are presented to visitors and the links
made to other parts of the Internet constitute a means of self-expression.
The personal home page and blog is, therefore, a dis- tinctive space within
the Internet with some of the attributes com- monly associated with broadcast
media. In effect, users can design, create and broadcast material about issues
that concern them. Digital life stories involve the construction of individual
narratives that may include pictures, scanned documents and sound bites linked
together through hypertext. These narratives are scattered across the Internet
and can be found through search engines or any of the many indexes of web
pages and blogs (for example, Yahoo.com, Lycos.com, Blog- ger.com, Gblogs.com).
They may also be found embedded in web pages that are constructed around particular
themes or issues such as a chronic illness or a social problem (Kennedy, 1999).
The stories within these pages tend to be used to offer people a grounded
experi- ential account of, for example depression or divorce. Indeed, some
of these narratives may also exist independently as blogs or home pages that
the author continues to construct. NARRATIVE PATTERN Web pages and blogs have
a discernible pattern that is shaped by the technology that is used to construct
them. Blogs encourage authors to adopt a `diary' approach so that as they
add new material it is displayed consecutively. Chronology is therefore an
important dimension of digital life stories as in more familiar print based
188
auto/biographical
forms (Erben, 1998). Roberts's (1999) observation in relation to print narratives
that the analysis of `time perspectives' may reveal significant assumptions
about how individuals view their lives is also true of digital life stories.
However, the dynamic nature of the media means that such perspectives may
be continually subject to revision as the author makes changes to the narrative.
Whether a web page or blog format is used, authors of digital life stories
in effect `store' material that may be linked into their narrative by hypertext
links. Behind the main narrative, an archival collection of fragments is stored
and can be called up to add more to a parti- cular thread of the story, should
a reader follow the related hyperlink. These links take two forms. First,
those links that are attached to, for example, a picture or scanned document
that may contain some text and links back to main narrative. Secondly, links
that `jump' the reader to other parts of the narrative or to Internet resources
else- where such as newsgroups. Here the reader moves away from the original
locality as they are in effect constructing a narrative that, as a whole,
will contain material gleaned from across the Internet. While the author of
a digital life story may construct the narrative within a temporal ordering
of experiences this may be more or less subverted by readers making choices
of hyperlinks to follow. WRITER AND AUDIENCE McLuhan (1964) argued that what
he referred to as `hypermedia' would revolutionize writing by overturning
author-centred text and its attendant apparatus of publishers and distribution
systems. As a publishing and distribution system, the Internet enables individuals
to circumvent the print media with its attendant production and marketing
structures. For some, this is seen as liberating users from the inequalities
between producers and consumers that exist in other media and suggests that
the Internet is inherently democratic (Poster, 1995). For others, such developments
reflect the `scapes' within which people may make new connections and seek
new ways of anchoring their identity (Urry, 2000). In any event as Featherstone
and Lash (1999: 5) argue, `in cyberspace we move beyond the old realist divisions
of space/time, sender/receiver, medium/message'. The interactivity celebrated
by theorists has been understood to give readers the power over content previously
enjoyed by the author (Landow, 1992). There are strong associations here with
poststructur- alist literary theory, which celebrated amongst other things
the `death of the author' (Culler, 1983). However, in digital life stories
the auth- ority of the author is destabilized rather than ended or transformed
189
because
he or she decides how to use the hypertext medium and, for example, when and
to what links may be offered to readers. Indeed in terms of control over the
appearance and `rhythm' of a digital life story, the author has more control
than is the case in print media (Levine, 1995). Therefore, while every reading
is potentially unique (Snyder, 1996), it is underpinned by a form and structure
that is con- structed by the author. Digital life stories lack a defined audience.
Anyone can visit them from anywhere and at anytime. Boller (1992: 20) goes
so far as to sug- gest that `an electronic text only exists in the act of
reading — in the interaction between the reader and textual structure'.
As Skinner (2002: 28) concludes, such `narratives can truly be without end'.
If writers of biographies have in mind a reader (Elbaz, 1987), the authors
of digital life stories construct them with visitors in mind. However, this
audience is global, lacks the proximity of off-line com- munities and, unless
contact is made through email, is unknown. The mediated nature of the Internet
has led some to argue that the consequent social distance may decrease inhibitions
about describing intimate personal information (Turkle, 1995). This may be
a con- tributing factor in authors' apparent lack of concern about some of
the information they open up to readers. Indeed, the ways indivi- duals utilize
the Internet to facilitate their own agendas is associated with broader social
and cultural inequalities. Bourdieu's (1984) assertion that the ability to
play a musical instrument and that a knowledge of `classical' music is one
of important signs of cultural capital may be reframed in terms of digital
technologies. The increas- ing popularity of digital life stories suggests
that the ability to create and maintain a presence on the Internet may be
a sign of cultural capital appropriate to our contemporary era. Inscribed
with links and other cultural and social preferences digital life stories
may become both a repository for and display of cultural adroitness and social
distinction. Within the rapidly expanding blog community, there is competition
amongst some authors to have their blog achieve the status of a `featured'
blog. Such blogs are given particular promi- nence on web resources from which
searches can be conducted to identify blogs with specific content. The unseen
Internet audience may become more or less visible when individuals enter into
email exchanges with the author. The widespread recognition of the quality
of information or advice offered on some web pages or blogs can pro- mote
the author to the status of an `expert' in a particular field. Indeed, the
contents of a blog that was authored in Baghdad during the recent war was
reproduced in the Guardian newspaper. However, as in other media there may
be for some a desire for Warhol's
190
promise
of 15 minutes of fame by establishing an evolving presence on the Internet
(Stenger, 1991). CONTENT The anonymity made possible within Internet domains
has been drawn on by Turkle (1996) and others as one of the most fruitful
ways of investigating the possibilities of identity. Influenced by a postmodern
agenda some argued that online identities become detached from the embodied
self as users experimented with their dis- embodied identity in cyberspace
(Haraway, 1991). More broadly ICTs, and especially increased public use of
the Internet, has been seen as an important, if not key, driver of what Hall
(1992), in a dif- ferent context, described as disembedding processes that
are closely linked to the rise of individual reflexivity: The more social
life becomes mediated by the global marketing of styles, places and images,
by international travel, and by globally net- worked media images and communications
systems, the more identities become detached — disembedded — from
specific times, places, histor- ies and traditions, and appear `free-floating'.
(Hall, 1992: 303) However, digital life stories represent one way people are
using ICTs to embed their identities and maintain if not create links within
their communities in all senses of the word. Miller and Slater's (2000) ethnography
of Internet users in Trinidad pointed to these embed- ding possibilities.
Trinidadian users promoted `Trinidadianness' and their own sense of identity
through the Internet. In effect, Trinida- dians who frequently had globally
dispersed families could be in every- day contact and establish a sense of
`household' not previously possible. Complete with photographs and sometimes
video and sound recordings, evolving digital life stories may become highly
effective mechanisms for promoting a sense of belonging and solidarity. One
of the challenges for individuals in this information age of `scapes' and
`flows' is, therefore, to construct and anchor their ident- ity and relationships.
As Giddens (1991: 53) argues in the contempor- ary era, the self is `reflexively
understood by the person in terms of her or his biography'. This is inscribed
with experiences that include relationships and places that can enhance the
narrative, which is a mode of cognition rather than a literary construction.
Such `autobio- graphical thinking' in a `broad sense of an interpretative
self-history produced by the individual concerned ... whether written down
or not ... is actually the core of self-identity' (1991: 53). This `core'
may be less amenable to displacement by some cyber identity. As
191
Wynn
and Katz's (1998) study of home pages found, authors `pull together a cohesive
presentation of self across eclectic social contexts in which individuals
participate in' (1998: 324). There is an affinity here with Giddens's (1991)
reflexive narratives of the self that are always `under construction' and
those accounts mapped out in digital life stories. The subject of digital
life stories may therefore be simply stated to be `the self'. In this, digital
life stories follow the traditional auto/biographical path of representing
a life and the interconnected- ness of that life with other people and places.
In effect, authors are `telling their story' in a way that anchors their identity
on the Internet and at the same time represents an ongoing reflexive process.
The diary-like format of many blogs facilitates a flow of narrative writing
that may involve the author in daily accounts of events and their reflections
on them. In addition to this basic auto/biographical form, it is possible
to identity three broad types of narrative.33 First, as noted previously,
there are what might be referred to as `family' auto/biographies. Here, individual
digital life stories may be interlinked through hypertext to create a `family
web'. A family or community history may also be constructed as people seek
to generate a sense of `family' despite the geographical dispersal of individual
members. The extract below is taken from the opening of a digital life story
that runs to many thousands of words as well as photographs and hyperlinks.
My name is George Davies and this web page is about my life (up to now) [hyperlink
to a baby picture] and the town [hyperlink to map and part of the narrative
about the place] I have lived in for forty years. I'm interested in family
history and so I also keep this page so that we can stay in touch and maybe
find lost people that are our relatives [hyperlink to family tree]. Things
have changed so fast that Hull is not the place that most of us once called
home. There is an echo here of a sense of the `loss' or transformation of
community depicted by Willmot and Young (1960) and others. Within some digital
life stories, there is an attempt to use them as a platform not only for family
life but as an evolving family history, so that past members are represented
in something like memorial tones. For example, one author whose son died of
an AIDS-related illness maintained his digital life story, which is hyperlinked
to others in the family, as a `living remembrance' so that future generations
will recognize the son's place in the family. It should be noted that while
such digital life stories may be a conduit for the remembrance of fam- ily
experiences and interaction they are one of many ways the same people may
interact (cf. Wellman and Gulia, 1999).
192
The
second category reflects a desire to share difficult life transi- tions and
offer others advice and support. The narratives commonly challenge expert
knowledge domains such as medicine and the law. There is a resemblance here
with what Frank (1995) has identified as a `quest narrative', whereby illness
may reveal new aspects of the self following a metaphorical journey, involving
various difficulties and interactions, from which the protagonist returns
with a `boon' to share with others. This may be, for example, expressed in
terms of `how I got back my life from doctors' or `my story of divorce and
the loss of my children'. Such digital life stories can contain what in other
media would be contentious material. For example, one author in the process
of explaining the process of his divorce included a severe criticism of the
social workers who were involved in his case along with their photographs,
email addresses and other material that he has found on the Internet: I'm
a local lad. Always lived around the same streets. Known people since I was
at school.... Only time I have really left it was when I was in the navy.
Got to see bit of the world and gave me a trade but I never belonged out there....
I work with an old mate in his garage [hyperlink to several pictures and an
advertisement for the garage].... When I first saw Mrs Smith [hyperlinks to
a social service web site and details of the social worker's background taken
from a social ser- vices web site, including an email address] she said to
me she didn't want any trouble, like she was already expecting it. This is
about class. She had an education and thought she was better than me. She
knew this because of my accent which as you might expect is not like that
of a country lady.... Fathers must fight prejudice [hyperlinks to campaigning
organiza- tions]. My life may share things with yours which shows that my
experi- ences are not unusual. Foucault (1991: 189) reminds us that organized
expert knowledge involves the archiving of information and places the individual
`in a network of writing' and that `engages them in a whole mass of documents
that capture and fix them'. Such classificatory processes have become `designed
in to the flows of everyday life' (Rose, 1999: 234) as digital technology
opens up new possibilities for surveillance. The proliferation of such documentation
is a feature of the infor- mation age that also provides individuals with
the ability to repro- duce and publish such material. Medical, social work,
educational and other documents may be scanned and depicted within digital
life stories to verify some aspects of the author's narrative. In effect,
authors attempt to construct a counter narrative to the expert
193
discourses
they have been the subject of and seek a degree of confir- mation through
interaction with readers. The third category may be thought of as `conversion'
narratives. The auto/biography is used partly to tell a story of conversion
which concludes with a plea to readers to `take a similar path'. Religion
represents a common theme that partly reflects the way faith com- munities
in the United States encourage individual members to use the Internet. The
proliferation of new religious movements, especially in the United States,
has led to fierce competition for members. These movements have been quick
to adopt new technology such as tele- vision and the Internet to `spread their
message' (Hadden, 1988). However, conversion is not necessarily associated
with religion. Digi- tal life stories that emphasize `downsizing' or one of
the alternative approaches to health and lifestyle may be constructed in the
hope that readers will `follow my example and change your life': Welcome to
my cyber home. I started two years ago as I traced my fam- ily history [hyperlink
to a detailed family tree complete with many photographs, and links to other
sites about black history]. It has grown into the story of my troubles and
how I got back my life from the social workers and psychiatrist by finding
Jesus [hyperlinks to a community church web site]. It might help you not to
fall under their power and find ways of dealing with issue that life throws
at you. I don't pretend to have the answer but you won't hear my story from
the professionals. Within these digital life stories, links are provided to
congruent web sites and similar digital life stories. Readers are also encouraged
to email the author so that specific advice or support can be provided. Moreover,
some digital life stories may have developed into what amounts to an active
promotion and selling of an illness remedy that has helped `transform' the
author's life. For example, Hardey (2000b) describes how web pages may move
from an individual account of an illness to a resource through which drugs
or remedies of various kinds may be purchased. TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY Digital
life stories represent a challenge to traditional approaches to collecting
and analysing auto/biographical material. The first prob- lem is how to identify
digital life stories which also raises the issue of how any one or number
of accounts may be considered to be `representative'. Like other auto/biographical
material, it may not be possible or desirable to make claims about the representativeness
of individual lives (Plummer, 2000). Digital life stories offer a
194
subjective
account by the author on the author. Unlike many narra- tives used in research,
such accounts are not constructed in collabor- ation with an interviewer who
has a particular research agenda (Erben, 1993). Moreover, given the rapidly
expanding nature of web pages and blogs there is no easily identifiable `population'
of digital life stories from which such a sample could be drawn. However,
one purpose of this paper is to at least move towards a basis for identifying
what con- stitutes a digital life story. The identification and selection
of digital life stories may, as in other areas of qualitative research, be
driven by theoretical concerns (Erben, 1998). For example, the desire to under-
stand how people with a chronic illness are sharing their experiences with
others through the Internet leads to the identification of narra- tives written
round particular conditions (Hardey, 2002b). Search engines provide an obvious
starting place to identify material on the Internet. Terms such as `my story',
`me and my fam- ily' and so forth will reveal a mass of links, some of which
will lead to digital life stories. However, search engines identify material
on the Internet in many different ways and these tend to neglect personal
web pages in favour of more visible commercial and organizational led material.
Those who want to transmit a `message', whether as a challenge to authority
or as a call to conversion, are more likely to `post' an indication of their
Internet resources directly to search engines than those concerned for example
to construct a resource for their family. The mutual cross linking of sites
whereby one web page makes a hypertext link to another can also do much to
increase its visibility to search engines. This again suggests that the more
`priv- ate' self constructed in family and self-narratives may require a great-
er degree of effort to identify. Newsgroups can provide another source of
links to digital life stories. However, these are more likely to reveal links
to resources constructed by those active in groups devoted to, for example,
alternative health or faith communities. Blogs have their own and rapidly
evolving mechanisms for identifi- cation. Again mutual hypertext links are
important but search engines such as Yahoo.com, Lycos.com, Blogger.com and
Gblogs. com enable specific word searches. Indeed, given the relatively greater
emphasis on personal narratives within this domain of the Internet, it may
be more easy to identify relevant digital life stories here than within the
vast pool of web pages. Ethics are uncertain in Internet-based research (Hakken,
1999) and it is too easy for researchers to view the contents and activities
in digital space as a vast collection of data just waiting for analysis. Digital
life stories, like an autobiography or work of art displayed in a gallery,
are in the public domain. Indeed, authors may be keen
195
for
their site or blog to be visited and requests for visitors to email questions
and comments are common. It is therefore possible to fol- low `informed consent'
guidelines and ask the author for permission to use his or her Internet resource
for research purposes. Unlike research conducted within newsgroups or chat
rooms, the researcher need not cast into the role of a covert participant
(Mann and Stewart, 2000). However, should an email link not be provided, requests
be ignored or permission refused it remains in the hands of the researcher
to decide whether to include such material. Moreover, whether permission is
given for one `reading' of the author's Internet material or a succession
over a period of time may not be clear. A further consideration in some instances
relates to the content of some digital life stories. As we have noted documents
of various kinds may be scanned and published together with personal details
of others. It may not be clear whether individuals or organizations are aware
of such material that they may well not want to be publicly available. However,
the inclusion of others within auto/biographical work has been discussed in
relation to more established forms of auto/ biography so that similar strategies
could be followed here (Roberts, 2002). There is a caveat here in that given
some basic information it may be possible to identify a digital life story
through the use of powerful search facilities so it is more difficult to insulate
research material than in other settings. Questions related to authenticity
and detachment from off-line identities are one of the major themes running
through both utopian and dystopian accounts of the Internet. Disembodiment
and anony- mity allow users to take on many new identities that may have little
connection to their off-line selves. Indeed there are now many well- known
examples of people who have deceived the Internet audience into believing
that their `true' off-line lives and identities are congru- ent with their
online persona. Some researchers have addressed this problem by meeting respondents
off-line `in person as well as per- sona' (Turkle, 1995: 324) while others
argue that online environments and identities are valid in themselves and
need not be verified by off- line presence (Hine, 2000). Jones (1999) reminds
us that it is the embodied user who interacts online and that we can never
fully `escape' from lived experiences. Many studies of online communities
point to the flow between on and off-line lives. Rheingold (1994), for example,
describes how his observation of the WELL community was `grounded in my everyday
physical world' as he attended marriages and other events in the off-line
lives of members. In a similar way, it has been claimed that personal home
pages tend to be situated with and often seen as part of the author's off-line
life (Wynn and
196
Katz,
1998). As Denzin (1999: 108) concluded, `cybernarratives are grounded in the
everyday lives and biographies of the women and men who write them'. The apparent
tension between off-line and online identities and environments reflects broader
and long-established debates about authenticity and `truth' within ethnographic
research (Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Plummer, 1999) as well as more recent
theoretical strands within writing about the Internet (Wellman 1997). However,
there are established domains within the Internet where people can `play'
with identity (Haraway, 1991) or write imaginative fictional stories. The
inclusion of email addresses and the desire to make connections, whether with
family members or the Internet com- munity further mitigate against users
constructing fictional narratives that resemble digital life stories and interact
with others on the same basis. The loss of the authoritative place of the
interviewer and the fixed form of the written account challenges the conventions
of narrative analysis (Riessman, 1993; Becker, 1999). The dynamic nature of
the material means that it has to be captured and `frozen' to become what
is conventionally thought of as `data'. In the case of the material alluded
to in this paper, it was captured as complete HTLM docu- ments together with
all internal links, which included pictures and scanned documents, and stored
on a CD ROM. This allows the researcher to gain a familiar sense of control
over data and subject it to various forms of analysis. New approaches may
be needed if the dynamic nature of digital life stories is to be understood
so that, for example, a series of captures of the same story over time would
allow changes to be mapped and comparisons across the time as the author alters
and adds to the story. Once captured, it is tempting to simply transfer the
text into a qualitative analysis package such as Ethnograph or NUDIST. However,
the danger here is that text is given a priority that it may not deserve so
that vis- ual and other material is ignored or marginalized. Moreover, as
Chandler's (1999) work on personal home pages shows, the design and layout
of the material viewed through a web browser may be significant. The inclusion
of material other than text in auto/biogra- phies is not new (Plummer, 2000)
and as Knowles's (2000) work suggests, images may provide important insights
into individual narratives. CONCLUSION Computer technology and access to the
Internet are pervasive aspects of contemporary life in the information age.
In a world of
197
`mobilities',
`scapes' and `flows' where people may be confronted with new forms of risks
(Beck, 1992) and uncertainties (Giddens, 1991), the making and maintenance
connections and the anchor- ing of identity takes on a new significance. It
is not therefore surpris- ing that ICTs are used by people to situate themselves
in the relational, familial, social and organizational structures they occupy.
While digital life stories are relatively new to the long established traditions
of auto/biographical writing, a number of conclusions about their nature and
trajectory can be made. First, digital life stories are cased in the off-line
self rather than represent- ing an escape from it. They are not purely performances
or narratives of imagined selves that have been associated with other Internet
environments such as MUDS (multi-user dungeons) where disem- bodiment may
encourage such experimentation. Like more estab- lished auto/biographies,
they are about and reflect the life lived by an individual author. Secondly,
digital life stories reflect and are immersed in a self that is struggling
to make choices and establish relationships in a world characterized by fluidity,
uncertainty, change and ever greater levels of classification and surveillance.
This may involve working through a sense of being perceived as an `other'
that politicizes identity and is played out among several discourses, be they
in the form of a challenge to expertise or a `conversion' narrative. Thirdly,
and relatedly, digital life stories form part of what in another context has
been called `backyard ethnography' (Smith and Watson, 1996), which indicates
how these are narratives of everyday lives that would not otherwise find a
global audience unknown to the author. Plummer (2000) partly bases his assertion
that what he labels `cyber life stories' represent a major change in life-story
telling on this ability to publish to a mass audience. Digital life stories,
therefore, appear likely to be a signifi- cant way people `tell their story',
maintain a presence and make connections in the information age. Fourthly,
and finally, digital life stories represent both a challenge to and opportunity
for academic research into auto/biography. There are methodological and ethical
issues to be worked through and we need to find new ways of understanding
dynamic digital material that may include visual and other components. Digital
life stories provide an ever-expanding resource so that never before have
so many auto/ biographies been available to us. As material on the Internet
is subject to rapid change we need to consider, with some urgency, how to
capture and archive the digital life stories that exist today before they
are transformed as the authors make changes to them or simply deleted from
the Internet.
198
NOTES
1 See http://www.statistics.gov.uk.
Last accessed 23 October 2003.
2 See http://www.Blogcensus.org.
Last accessed 23 October 2003.
3 These extracts are taken
from an analysis of 132 web pages, 37 blogs and the 89 subsequent responses
to an emailed questionnaire (see Hardey, 2002a).
REFERENCES
Bauman, Z. 2000: Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. 1992: The risk society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Becker, G. 1999: Disputed lives: how people create meaning in a chaotic
world. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1984: Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste , London: Routledge.
Burrows, R., Nettleton, S., Pleace, N., Loader, B.
and Muncer, S. 2000: Virtual community care? Social policy and the emergence
of computer mediated social support. Information Communication
and Society 31: 23—31.
Castells, M. 1996: The rise of the networked society. Volume1. Oxford: Blackwell .
——— 2001: The Internet galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business
and society. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Chandler, D. 1999: Personal home pages and the construction of identities
on the Web: http://www.aber.ac.uk/∼dgc/webindent.html . (Last accessed 23 October 2003.)
Chanfrault-Duchet, M.-F. 2000: Textualisation of the self and gender identity in the
life-story. In Cosslett, T. and Summerfield, P., editors, Feminism and autobiography.
Text theories and methods, London: Routledge, 184—203.
Clifford, J. and Maraus,
G.E., editors 1986: Writing culture: the poetics
and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Culler, J. 1983: On deconstruction: theory and criticism after structuralism . London: Routledge.
Denzin, N. 1999: Cybertalk and the method of instances. In Jones, S., editor, Doing Internet research . London: Sage, 23—48.
Elbaz, R. 1987: The changing nature of self: a critical study of the autobiographical
discourse. Iowa City: University
of Iowa Press.
Erben, M. 1993: The problem of other lives: social perspectives on written
biography. Sociology 271: 15—26.
——— 1998: Biography and research method. In Erben,
M., editor, Biography and education: a reader, London: Flamer Press, 4—17.
Featherstone, M. and Burrows,
R., editors 1995: Cyberspace, cyberbodies,
cyberpunk: cultures of technological embodiment. London : Routledge.
Featherstone, M. and Lash,
S., editors 1999: Spaces of culture. City,
nation, world. London: Sage.
Frank, A. 1995: The wounded storyteller: body, illness and ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. 1991: Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Trans . A. Sheridan. London: Penguin.
199
Giddenso, A. 1991: Modernity and self-identity. Cambridge : Polity Press.
Graham, S.
and Marvin, S. 2001: Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological
mobilities and the urban condition. London: Routledge.
Hadden, J. 1988: Televangelism, power and politics on God's frontier. New York: Holt.
Hakken, D. 1999: Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An ethnographer looks to the future . London: Routledge
Hall, S. 1992: The west and the rest: discourses of power. In Hall, S. and Gieden,
B., editors, Formations of modernity, Oxford: Polity Press, 275—332.
Haraway, D. 1991: Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature . London: Free Press.
——— 2002a: E-health: the Internet and transformation patients into
consumers and the producers of health knowledge. Information,
Communication and Society 4, 388—405.
——— 2002b: The story of my illness: personal accounts of illness
on the internet. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6, 31—46.
Hine, C. 2000: Virtual ethnography. London: Sage .
Jones, S. 1999: Doing internet research: critical issues and methods for
examining the Net. London: Sage .
Kennedy, H. 1999: Identity construction in a virtual world: the home page
as auto/biographical practice. Auto/biography VII, 91—97.
Knowles, C. 2000: Bedlam on the streets. London: Routledge.
Landow G.H. 1992: Hypertext: the convergence of contemporary literary theory
and technology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lash, S. 2002: Critique of information. London: Sage.
Levine, R. 1995: Guide to Web style. http: www.sun.com/styleguide . (Last accessed 23 October 2003).
McLuhan, M. 1964: Understanding media: the extension of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Miller, D.
and Slater, D. 2000: The Internet. An ethnographic approach. Oxford: Berg.
Netcraft 2000: The Netcraft Web
server survey: http://www.netcraft.com/ survey.
(Last accessed 23 October 2003.)
Plummer, K. 1983: Documents of life. London: Allen and Unwin.
——— 1999: The `ethnographic society' at century end: clarifying
the role of public ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28, 64 1—19.
——— 2000: Documents of life-2. London: Sage.
Poster, M. 1995: The second media age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Putnam, R.D. 2000: Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community . New York: Simon and Schuster.
Rheingold, H. 1994: The virtual community: finding connection in a computerized
world. London: Secker and Warburg .
Roberts, B. 1999: Some thoughts on time perspectives and auto/biography . Auto/Biography VII, 21—25.
——— 2002: Biographical research. Buckingham,
UK: Open University Press.
Rose, N. 1999: Powers of freedom: reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riessman, C.K. 1993: Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA : Sage.
200
Skinner, P.J. 2002: Narrative on the Net: Bill and his hyper-lives, loves
and texts. Auto/Biography X, 21—29.
Snyder, I. 1996: Hypertext: The electronic labyrinth. Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
Slevin, J. 2000: The Internet and society. Cambridge : Polity Press.
Smith, S.
and Watson, J. 1996: Getting a life: everyday uses of autobiography. Minnesota Minnesota University Press.
Stenger, N. 1991: Mind is a leaking rainbow. In Benedikt, M., editor, Cyberspace, Cambridge,
MA: First Steps.
Turkle, S. 1995: Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet . New York: Simon and Schuster.
Urry, J. 2000: Sociology beyond societies. London : Routledge.
——— 2002: Global complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Webster, F. 1995: Theories of the information society. London: Routledge.
Wellman, B. 1997: The road to utopia and dystopia on the information highway . Contemporary Sociology 124, 445—49.
Wellman, B.
and Gulia, M. 1999: Net-surfers don't ride alone: virtual communities as communities . In Wellman, B., editor, Networks in the global village: life in contemporary communities. Oxford: Westview Press, 251—274.
Wellman, B.
and Haythornthwaite, C. 2002: The Internet in everyday
life. Oxford: Blackwell.
Willmott, P.
and Young, M. 1960: Family and class in a London suburb. London: Routledge.
Wynn, E.
and Katz, J.E. 1998: Hyperbole over cyberspace: self-presentation and social
boundaries in Internet home pages and discourse. The Information
Society 134, 297—328.
NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR MICHAEL HARDEY is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography,
Politics and Sociology at the University of Newcastle. His research includes
the nature of relationships mediated through Information and Communications
Technologies. His recent publications include `Life beyond the screen: embodiment
and identity through the inter- net' (Sociological Review), `E-health: the
internet and transformation patients into consumers and producers of health
knowledge' (Infor- mation, Communication and Society) and `Writing digital
selves' (Representing health: discourses of health and illness in the media,
published by Routledge).