| This dissertation investigates the burgeoning phenomenon of adolescent girls in the United States using the popular and free technology, Instant Messaging, as means of negotiating identity through their communication with peers. Using qualitative methodologies of interview and narrative analysis with a theoretical grounding in post-structuralist feminism, this extensive study culls numerous themes from the Instant Messaging conversations and the interviews. Among the findings are the idea that this new means of communication allows girls to construct themselves and appropriate identities at a pace that was not possible through past communications, such as illicit note-passing in school; IM allows girls to manage and manipulate social lives and construct identity in a world without the cultural trappings of a body. However, even in this disembodied world of the Internet, dominant patriarchal and corporate discourses are apparent, and traditional---and often harmful---notions of gender manifest themselves throughout the conversations submitted by the study participants. In conclusion, the dissertation poses a double-strained theoretical premise about adolescent girls and identity construction through new media: IM acts as both a space to transgress certain social roles and explore identity and conversely, a landscape rife with discourses that continue to marginalize and limit girls within culture. |
