Gender, teenagers and the motivations behind identity construction on social media: A conceptual study from the perspective of Czech Republic and Ghana

Abstract

The attainment of ubiquity of social media (SM), also known as new media or new new media in people's lives continues to attract scholarship in varied perspectives. Although there is evidence that people of almost all ages are in one way or the other social media users, research indicating that young people constitute the most users of social media abound. There is extant literature on the effects (positive/negative) of social media usage on employees, students and others. However, scholarship on gender, how teenagers construct their identities on social media as well as the motivations behind the identity teenagers construct is scanty. Also, no study has explored a cross-cultural identity construction on social media by teenagers from the perspective of developed and developing countries. The main purpose of our study is to examine how teenagers from two 'worlds apart' (Czech Republic and Ghana) construct social media identity as well as the motivations behind these identity constructions of teenagers from these two countries. We also explore what roles gender play in such identity constructions. First, the authors employed a qualitative inquiry with specific focus on document analysis on the phenomenon by retrieving scholarly works from reputable databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, Google Scholar, ERIH Plus; opinions from experts as well as news items and editorials and weblogs in order to put the study in the right perspective. Second, the authors conceptualised a research model for future research design which could obtain rich naturally occurring data from teenagers from both Ghana and Czech Republic for Thematic analysis. This could be helpful in the validation of the proposed conceptual research model. Literature reviewed revealed that while some individuals construct their identity on social media to conform to ideals of society, others do so to reflect their individual aspirations in life. Also, a number of people, mostly young people create what is termed “ideal identity”. Even though the literature shows that gender has an influence on social media usage, scholarship is silent on its influence on identity construction. However, such individuals are in the minority. Research implications have been discussed in the concluding part of the study. © 8th European Conference on Social Media, ECSM 2021.