Abstract:
The production of meaning and organizing human experience to construct an identity
yields a complexification when deployed on Facebook. Narrative Identity theory, with its
three stages of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration, as proposed by Ricoeur
provide a framework for unpacking the process of identity construction for social media
users. Agency, both as promised potential by the literature on social media and its
structure as well as by the imaginative experience entailed in narrativisation, lead to the
ambiguities of empowerment and fragmentation. This study draws on digital
anthropology and narrative identity theory in order to analyze a selection of posts from
three widely visited Facebook pages with historical content. The construction of meaning
through user engagement with text takes on wider significance imposed by the post-
modern structure of the Facebook itself with implications on user construction of identity.