Constructing Digital Selves: Social Media, Identity Formation, and the Politics of Polarization

Abstract

This chapter critically examines how social media platforms function as key sites for the construction, negotiation, and contestation of identity in an increasingly polarized digital world. Moving beyond the celebratory narrative of connectivity, it interrogates how algorithmic architectures, platform capitalism, and mediated communication shape contemporary subjectivities and intensify ideological divides. Drawing on theories of identity formation, public sphere debates, and digital sociology, the chapter argues that social media does not merely reflect pre-existing social divisions but actively structures and amplifies them. The chapter explores how digital identities are curated through performative self-presentation, symbolic interaction, and affective engagement, while simultaneously being shaped by surveillance, datafication, and algorithmic visibility. It analyses the emergence of echo chambers, filter bubbles, and networked publics, highlighting how personalization technologies reinforce homophily and political polarization. Particular attention is given to identity politics, online nationalism, gendered digital spaces, and the circulation of misinformation within polarized communities. By situating social media within broader structures of inequality, class, caste, race, gender, and global power hierarchies; the chapter demonstrates that polarization is not only ideological but deeply socio-structural. It concludes by reflecting on the implications for democratic discourse, deliberative engagement, and possibilities for digital inclusion in a divided world.