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Stigma, Secrets, and the Human Condition: Seeking to Remedy Alienation in PostSecret's Digitally Mediated Environment
Author(s) -
Wood Naaman,
Ward Susan
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.2010.33.4.578
Subject(s) - anonymity , alienation , stigma (botany) , social psychology , vulnerability (computing) , sociology , identity (music) , construct (python library) , psychology , power (physics) , internet privacy , aesthetics , computer security , law , computer science , political science , philosophy , programming language , physics , quantum mechanics , psychiatry
While digitally mediated environments have altered how human communication takes place, they do not necessarily alter the human condition of alienation. Applying key principles from Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), the popular blog PostSecret offers ways in which anonymous users attempt to remedy the alienations linked with the stigmatic act of secret keeping. Through imaginative, associative, and vicarious conversations, the blog purports to offer the unconditional acceptance necessary to remedy the alienations. Because of the complications of anonymity in the nonreal reality of the internet, the blog can offer only echoes of acceptance. Although some of the stigma literature argues that self‐acceptance or assertions of power are the strongest solutions to stigma's negative effects, this article extends the stigma construct with the suggestion that vulnerability might be a viable option to remedy the attendant alienations correlated with stigma.