Identity and the ways people perceive, develop, and represent themselves have been subjected to numerous changes and greater freedom of choice throughout history. This diploma paper focuses on how, in the background of socio-historical changes of capitalism, modernism, and postmodernism, the transformation of identity is influenced by the development of new media, especially social media. These represent new areas of sociability, in which we are active on a daily basis, and they influence how we understand ourselves and form our identity. Constantly interacting with content from different users online and free from the rigid frameworks that have defined individual's identity in the past, the identity becomes increasingly fluid, fragmented, and subject to constant upgrading and the creation of new roles and relationships.
This paper assumes that social platforms and new technologies offer new ways of identity expression and continue specific processes which started in the past. Audio-visual content takes centre stage in social media communication, developing users' aesthetic sensibilities. Aesthetics becomes a filter through which an individual perceives themselves and their practices, and on the basis of which aesthetic communities are formed on social networks, which the individual can freely identify with.
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