Identité, représentations de soi et socialisation horizontale chez les adolescentes âgées de 11 à 15 ans pratiquant l'expression de soi sur Internet

摘要

Research interest is high in adolescents’ self-expression online, digital culture and the use of Social Network sites and instant messaging. Practicing self-expression online provokes a girls’ infatuation. Based on developmental and interactionist approaches, the aim of this study is to analyze on the one hand, the meaning of teenage girls’ self-expression and self-disclosure online, and on the other hand, attempt to understand how topics of adolescence like identity development, self-concepts and self-expression online can be linked at the heart of the horizontal socialization. Our sample included 47 teenage girls, aged between 11 to 15 years. All of them are using Internet, Social Network Sites and instant messaging. Five tools were used to collect the data: a questionnaire regarding the uses of Internet, an open-ended question « Who Am I? » (Rodriguez-Tomé & Bariaud, 1980), the Self-Consciousness Revised Scale (Pelletier & Vallerand, 1990), the Toulouse Scale of Self-Esteem (Oubrayrie, De Léonardis, Safont, 1994), and the Groningen Identity Developmental Scale including a semi structured interview (Bosma, 1985, 1994; Lannegrand-Willems, 2008). According to our results, self-expression responds to three interrelated needs of teenage girls: 1/ to maintain contact with peers and to observe theirs practices; 2/ to obtain the approval of peers through online personal publications; 3/ to write their history for themselves. Girls which have high levels of social and public self-concepts are regularly practicing self-expression online (59.6%). Publication contents are focused on themselves. These girls want peer comments and approval, and write a part of their personal story for themselves. High levels of self-esteem and identity commitment are related to peer positive reactions on publications. Topics of identity development and self-concepts are closely related with self-expression online and peer relationships. Our analysis underlines an intersubjective balance between self and other. This research is exploratory in nature because of the lack of French studies in this area, and the limited sample. Nevertheless, it provides longitudinal and comparative promising perspectives.