Record, revise, reinvent, and resist: The politics of social media self-representation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everyday social life on a global scale, it also destabilized social norms for sharing life online and, potentially, broader understandings of selfhood and identity. This study investigates how the unique conditions of pandemic life re-colored normative practices of self-representation—the process of producing and circulating personal media texts—on popular social media platforms. Through social media scroll back interviews with 48 U.S. adults, I found that pandemic social pressures and safety regulations altered how social media users understood the politics of digital visibility—a shift in the personal experiences they considered “worthy” of sharing through digital mediation. In light of this perceived shift, I argue that participants adjusted to pandemic cultures through a typology of adaptive curatorial practices: recording, revising, reinventing, and resisting as self-representation. Ultimately, this study extends existing conceptual boundaries in response to disrupted social contexts, which includes centering digital silence as a key form of self-representation.