Virtual Identity


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  • While working on this month’s edition on virtual identity, I’ve been reading Life After Death, Damien Echols’ memoir of a ruptured life. At 18, Echols was convicted along with two other men of the murders of three children, allegedly in a Satanic ritual. It wasn’t until 2011, after Echols had spent 18 years facing execution on Death Row, that he and the other two members of the “West Memphis Three” were released in the wake of new DNA evidence and critical media attention. One horror — the murder of three innocent second graders — was followed by another, in which three teenagers were convicted of those murders based on little more than the crime of liking Metallica [1]. Unfortunately stories like Echols’ aren’t that surprising… Identity gets intertwined with attention — how we see ourselves, and how others see (or don’t see) us.

Why Weird Twitter

Why Weird Twitter

"The @Adderall_RX Girl": Pharmaceutical self-branding and identity in social media

“The @Adderall_RX Girl”: Pharmaceutical self-branding and identity in social media

Onymous, pseudonymous, neither or both?

Onymous, pseudonymous, neither or both?

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