Performing the networks of domestic and public persona

Abstract

In this preamble to the newest collection of contributions to Persona Studies, we draw on the growing terminology from its initial offerings to consider the co-infiltration of the public and the domestic in the presentation of the online self. We provide two case studies that explore the overlapping of regions of public life that interface with social media and provide individuals with the means to curate persona micro-publics. These very different examples of persona performance are both organised around accounting for the ‘intercommunication’ of self-identification and presentational media (Marshall ‘Persona Studies’). Further, we suggest that the public spaces of social media and the web have been domesticated; that is, they have been made to ‘fit’ into the interpersonal demands of an individual’s many micro-publics of attention. This domestication has occurred via the individualised presentational media strategies of persona formation, such as memes and selfies, involved in the intercommunication of the self across multiple platforms and services to perform different roles.