Due to technological affordances, workers can change their self-presentations while online, expressing their identities in a much more nuanced way. However, workers may experience material changes to their identities, both within a platform over time as well as while navigating multiple platforms. People seek to verify their self-views and present their identities in a coherent manner. As such, how do people manage coherence in their selves in the face of material changes? To examine this question, I undertake an ethnography within the context of a global, remote non-profit organization, whose volunteers and staff work with one another via a variety of virtual contexts, ranging from use of a virtual messaging platform to interacting within several different social virtual worlds. Approaching the study utilizing an inductive, grounded theory approach, data since June 2023 indicate that volunteers and staff engage in a variety of multiple self-presentations that are enabled by technology. Because these identities may vary across and within platforms, volunteers and staff’s identity markers and behavioral cues may change over time. As such, to establish coherence among their identities, volunteers and staff utilize two tactics for self-verifying: Identity Sharing and Identity Preserving. This research yields insights regarding organizational members’ management of their self-presentations within virtual contexts, specifically when technological affordances shape options available for identity expression. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed accordingly.
