ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Facebook's architecture of disclosure increases our sense of public life as based on personal identity maintenance. A traditional approach to political identity formation comes from social identity theory. This approach states that individuals choose primary identities based on varying characteristics of social groups and the prospect of being recognized as a member of that group. Facebook moves us towards presenting those public identities by providing a forum for their expression. Inherently, political identity construction is about shared experience forged through the use of symbols and stories. Indicative of the performative nature of the group formation is the fact that there was no website or email that users were driven to for more information. The group was simply a means of drawing like-minded users to serve as the audience for the performance of political identity.
