ABSTRACT
In the preceding two chapters I have described the ways in which my informants engage with media and ICT and how this engagement impacts upon their social groups. Underlying this media engagement and social interaction is a process of self-creation, a concept which I bring to the foreground in the present chapter. In all the dimensions of audience engagement I identifi ed amongst my informants, we can see how this engagement, to greater or lesser degrees, either played a part in or refl ected (or both) a kind of project of creation of the self, by the self. I described how my informants, both actively and less actively, sought information relevant to themselves and their interests and how this information was interpreted and utilised variously by them, refl ecting, again, their respective ‘selves’. We saw how some of them strongly identifi ed or connected with people real, fi ctional or created by broadcasters, and how this identifi cation and connectivity played a part in the development of their senses of self. Finally I described how some informants engaged with media and ICT in ways which created both their own worlds, time-spaces for the creation of themselves and ‘other worlds’, and social time-spaces for the creation of social relationships. I now want to reveal the ways in which these social relationships feed back to the individual, within a refl exive process of self-creation.
