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This study analyses how media choices can be used in the construction of social identity.

We approach the topic through the analytical lens of identity work. We present a case study of a community of IT students during their first year of studies, including participant observation, focus groups, and surveys. We focus on what community means to the individuals located within a specific social context. This allows us to examine ICT use and adoption holistically as a key aspect of community formation and identity maintenance.

We depict everyday interactions in which the choice of an older information communication technology, Internet Relay Chat, serves participants in their quest for social belongingness in their community and in distinguishing the community positively from other social groups. This chapter describes how identity work is accomplished by adopting and valuing shared, social views about users versus non-users, including: (1) emphasizing the skills and efforts needed for using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), (2) undermining the use of other technologies, and (3) deploying and referencing IRC jargon and “insider humor” within the broader community.

By examining online and offline social interactions in a defined community over time, we expose the process of identity work in a holistic manner. Our analysis emphasizes the underlying process where media choices can be harnessed to fulfill the need to identify with groups and feel affirmed in one’s claims to both personal and social identity.

The event management (EM) industry has attempted to elevate the professional status of event professionals. Contributing to these efforts, this study explores the professional identity (PID) construction process of event professionals. To facilitate the relevance of the PID construction process before the COVID-19 pandemic, it includes the impact of COVID-19 on event professionals' PID constructions.

Using narrative inquiry as the methodological approach, the study includes 18 semistructured interviews with event professionals before COVID-19 and additional 14 interviews during COVID-19. A narrative framework was developed to analyze the data.

The results include five significant themes highlighting the imperative role of agency in PID construction. Before the pandemic, event professionals pointed to self-driven pride and social-driven stigmatization as a part of PID narratives. Before and during the pandemic, profession-driven professional status recognition was significant. During the pandemic, situational reality-driven work skills and community-driven commitment became central to PID narratives.

The findings suggest the need for the EM industry to harness a collective PID. Specifically, given the community-building role professional associations played during the pandemic, associations can take part in leveraging a PID that connects core values.

This study contributes to the EM literature by using PID, a novel construct in EM research, to develop a baseline for event professional PIDs in changing environments; this functions as a platform for the EM profession to create a shared collective identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore career identity within the aged care sector.

The research employs a descriptive interpretive methodology using 32 in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

This paper shows that social processes and occupational and professional status issues shape career identity in an aged care context. Individuals seek positive career identities through emphasising job fit in relation to their personal experience and values in order to counteract the impact of “taint”.

This study was based in one organisation. Future research could explore its findings in the context of multiple organisations, and include the concept of career identity in other low status, “tainted” occupations, such as childcare, in order to develop a more complete understanding of identity construction processes.

The findings suggest that aged care providers could employ a values-driven approach to recruitment, complementary to pay and career development, to enhance recruitment and retention of aged care employees. Universities and professional bodies could consider more active use of aged care student placements to highlight the opportunities that aged care offer to new graduates in allied health professions.

This paper extends our understanding of career identity in relation to “taint” and “dirty work” in the context of two occupational groups in the understudied sector of aged care.

This article analyzes women’s only leadership development training to determine how leadership roles are conceptualized and implemented, how women independently and collectively construct new leadership role identities, and how leadership identities are retained post training. Themes of nested validation, accepting the belonging narrative, identity emergence, leadership as multiverse, and reflective/reflexive leadership development were discovered. Leadership validation was needed by participants to own their new leadership identity. Through accepting a new narrative, participants confirmed that they belonged in their new leadership role. Identity work occurred on personal and social levels, allowing participants to assume a strengths-based approach to leadership development. Women’s only leadership programs, which acknowledge new leadership narratives and identities, allowed emergent leaders an improved opportunity to assume and retain their new role.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the meaning of the socially constructed identity of Al‐Ma'brouk in rural Egypt.

The principal qualitative tool of data collection included intensive interviews with a sample of ten parents from two villages in lower Egypt.

The two main outcomes which emerged from the research were first, the social construction of intellectual disability in rural Egypt has contributed to the emergence of a distinctive culturally‐mediated social identity called Al‐Ma'brouk, or the “blessed”, with ascribed social roles; and second, this socially constructed identity has a positive impact on the families of intellectually disabled children.

The first finding concerning the local social construction of intellectual disability corresponds to previous research on how culture shapes “disability”. The second finding that ascribed social roles of intellectually disabled children have rooted social rationalizations raises a general question concerning how rural communities in Egypt justify and cope with intellectual disability.

Many studies on intellectually disabled children overlook their social roles in society, and mainly envision disability as a barrier and a familial adversity. The paper contributes to the debate that intellectual disability is a social construction rather than a limiting factor.

In this chapter, I utilize insights from symbolic interaction to analyze the identity work processes of larp subculture participants to construct and perform their in-game identities. I extend the research on larp subcultures in two ways. First, I place larping within the larger context of leisure subcultures and society by arguing that larping is representative of changes in leisure and subcultures in postmodern society. Second, I draw upon ethnographic data collected among the New England Role-playing Organization (NERO) to analyze larpers character identity performances. RPG and Larp researchers have developed several theories about the relationship between larp participants and their character performances. While these concepts provide a helpful framework for understanding the participant-character relationship, they undertheorize the in-game constructed performance of identity. Using symbolic interaction theory, I analyze the identity work processes larpers use to construct and perform their larp identities extending our understanding of the similarities between everyday identity and larpers' character identity performances.

The urban renewal process in neighbourhoods with well-rooted communities often reveals the ties between people and spaces, and highlights the inextricable links between social and physical structures. The residents of three neighbour-hoods in the city of Barcelona–Trinitat Nova, Plus Ultra and Vallcarca–have endured and fought against the threat of radical urban renewals planned by the municipal authorities for decades, and their efforts have only recently been rewarded with the acceptance of their demands by local administrations. In this period, residents organized themselves to defend their vision of the place against official plans, a vision which was a collective construction of personal memories and historical evidences. In the PROHABIT research project, we have undertaken an interdisciplinary study, involving architects-planners and social and environmental psychologists, to understand the process of construction of a sense of community and place identity in three neighbourhoods. The study has highlighted the need to overcome the divisions between social sciences and design disciplines, between the real world of experience and the abstract world of design thinking. In this regard, the work conducted in this project offers some insights into the need to create a holistic understanding of today's urban environment, and how architects and planners need to develop skills and methods to enable them to form part of the open and participatory planning systems which our contemporary urban environments demand.

The experience of “misfit” between individuals’ professional identities and their work roles or work contexts is common in career transitions. In contrast to extant literature that focuses on the identity struggle of these people, this study examines how problematic identity dynamics associated with misfit motivate the shift toward the development of positive identities and induce creativity in meaning-making and change-oriented actions. It builds on the insights of Mead (1934) and Joas (1996) who view creativity as the most significant aspect of human agency, and the identity work literature that highlights the agentic process in identity construction. The study looks at a group of “pracademics” whose career trajectories deviate from the prototypical patterns in academia. It examines the identity work strategies that these people undertake to overcome misfit and shows how identity work liberates them from the limits of a particular identity, and facilitates new activities that alter aspects of their work contexts. The study advances our understanding of identity work as a creative human endeavor and sheds new light on the change-oriented agency of misfits.

This study aims to contribute to social identity theory in tourism by exploring the reflections of Chinese tourists visiting North Korea and how they negotiate their intergroup identity in this similar-others destination.

Data were collected via online platforms and in-depth interviews. A qualitative approach, i.e. thematic analysis, was used to analyse the two sets of data.

Results showed that when encountering North Koreans perceived as similar others amid the social, economic and political environments in which they were embedded, Chinese tourists often categorised themselves as ordinary tourists, preferentially treated tourists and vicarious tourists based on intergroup similarities to North Koreans. They also performed intergroup comparison to boost their self-esteem at group and collective levels and developed corresponding strategies to generate distinct emotional group commitments.

It is recommended that destinations reinforce the friendly and unique relationship with their similar-others source markets to improve their attractiveness. Destinations should also strive to enhance the experience of tourists from their similar-others markets by arousing their positive collective-level affection, emotional resonance and nostalgic memories and avoiding negative emotions.

This study offers a theoretical framework analysing the features of tourists’ social identities while visiting a similar-others destination, contributing to our understanding of the interactive and contingency nature of social identity in tourism, and responding to the call for addressing the broader social contexts in which tourists’ group identity is embedded.

本文致力于探索赴朝中国游客的反思以及他们在这个“类似他者”目的地如何协商群际身份, 以对旅游领域的身份认同理论做出贡献。

本文运用主题分析方法; 资料来源于网络文本和深度访谈。

当中国游客面对被视为“类似他者”的朝鲜人时（具有相似的社会、经济和政治环境）, 他们会根据与朝鲜人的群际相似性, 将自我分类为“普通游客”、“受优待者”和“过来人”三类。此外, 他们还会通过群际比较来提高群体层面和集体层面的自尊, 并且采取对应策略以产生不同的群体承诺。

本文提出了一个分析游客访问“类似他者”目的地时的社会认同的理论框架, 对理解旅游中的社会认同的互动性和偶然性做出了贡献, 并响应了在考察游客群体认同时关注其所处的更广泛的社会背景的呼吁。

目的地应该强化它们与“类似他者”客源市场之间友好且独特的关系, 以提升自身吸引力。目的地还应该唤醒游客积极的集体情感和怀旧, 产生主客情感共鸣, 并避免负面情绪, 以尽力提升来自“类似他者”客源地的游客的体验。

Este estudio pretende contribuir a la teoría de la identidad social en turismo mediante la exploración de las reflexiones de los turistas chinos que visitan Corea del Norte y cómo negocian su identidad intergrupal en este destino similar a otros.

Los datos se recogieron mediante plataformas en línea y entrevistas en profundidad. Se utilizó un enfoque cualitativo a través de análisis temático para analizar los dos conjuntos de datos.

Los resultados mostraron que, al encontrarse con norcoreanos percibidos como otros similares en el entorno social, económico y político en el que estaban integrados, los turistas chinos a menudo se categorizaban a sí mismos como turistas ordinarios, turistas con trato preferente y turistas vicarios basándose en las similitudes intergrupales con los norcoreanos. También, realizaban comparaciones intergrupales para aumentar su autoestima a nivel grupal y colectivo, y desarrollaban las estrategias correspondientes para generar distintos compromisos emocionales grupales.

Se presenta un marco teórico en el que se analizan las características de las identidades sociales de los turistas que visitan un destino similar a otro, lo que contribuye a nuestra comprensión de la naturaleza interactiva y contingente de la identidad social en turismo y responde a la necesidad de abordar los contextos sociales más amplios en los que se inserta la identidad de grupo de los turistas.

Se recomienda que los destinos refuercen las relaciones amistosas y únicas con sus mercados emisores similares para mejorar su atractividad. Los destinos deberían esforzarse por mejorar la experiencia de los turistas de sus mercados emisores similares, estimulando su afecto positivo a nivel colectivo, su resonancia emocional y sus recuerdos nostálgicos, y evitando las emociones negativas.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the proposed changes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), which eliminates Asperger's disorder (AD) and replaces it as “autism spectrum disorder.” Implications of these changes on the identity of adults with AD and the influence of everyday life experiences will be addressed.

Methodology/approach – This research is based on 19 interviews with adults diagnosed or self-diagnosed with AD. Central themes surrounding issues of identity and everyday life experiences were determined using grounded theory approaches.

Findings – This study demonstrates how the diagnosis and self-diagnosis of AD is fused with individual identity. It also shows how Asperger identity is positively embraced. The proposed changes to eliminate AD in DSM-V threaten these assertions of Asperger identity, which could potentially enhance stigma experienced by people with AD. Regardless of its removal, Asperger identity must be considered within the broader context of people's everyday lives and how experiences in social interaction and communication can be strong agents of identity construction.

Social implications – The proposed changes to eliminate AD in DSM-V is a social issue that will impact individuals with Asperger's and their families, as well as health-care professionals, health insurers, researchers, state agencies, and educational providers.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter offers a unique insight into identity construction based on the diagnosis and self-diagnosis of AD.