The new personal world: digital media communication and formations of self and persona

Human culture is highly connected to human communication. What is often overlookedis that the structure of communication that is privileged in any era of humanity has profound differences and thereby does shift and mutate human culture. At the same impact level as print and the printing press in the 15th century, online/social media of contemporary communication are potentially transforming human culture profoundly. Through a series of qualitative interviews, this article explores how individuals from different generations are aware of past communication structures that dominated their youth and the current structure of digital media communication that now shapes their everyday lives and the wider dimensions of their social world. This study reveals how we have entered a “new” and “transformed” personal world: the focus of this research is on how digital media communication is developing distinctive and different formations of the self and the construction of a visible identity-a “persona” - over the last 15 years.