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142 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
complains that, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the idea that the self is
decentred and made up of multiple identities was a marginal one – ‘a time
when it was hard to accept any challenge to the idea of an autonomous
ego’ (15). Turkle suggests that ‘the normal requirements of everyday life
exert strong pressure on people to take responsibility for their actions and
to see themselves as intentional and unitary actors’ (15). But, and with
some cause for celebration, the Internet has changed this situation.
Turkle argues that the Internet ‘is [an] element of computer culture
that has contributed to thinking about identity as multiplicity. On it people
are able to build a self by cycling through many selves‘ (178) – so much so
that ‘[n]ow, in postmodern times, multiple identities are no longer so
much at the margins of things. Many more people can experience identity
as a set of roles which can be mixed and matched, whose diverse
demands need to be negotiated‘ (180). In this account of identity-as-
subject, Turkle overcomes the widespread essentialist views of on-line
identity as some kind of deceptive or fictive representation of another
level of a ‘real’ identity. 10
Subject theory is a model of individuality which shares some simi-
larities with ‘role theory’ in that individuals are capable of taking on
many different kinds of roles. However, it departs from role theory in
proposing that there is no subjectivity outside of these roles. In medium
theory, therefore, comparing the behaviour of an Internet avatar with a
‘corresponding’ off-line identity, does not make sense. Conversely, an off-
line subject does not simply ‘use’ a medium to further communication
objectives.
Because a medium already presupposes subjects who are its conduits
just as much as the technological medium (print, wires, electromagnetic
waves) is, medium theory does not speak of ‘users’ of a medium. Indeed
McLuhan abandoned the reference to media participants as ‘users’ in his
later writings.
From the point of view of the medium itself, to seek to understand
the avatar’s behaviour by establishing a link between that avatar and an
off-line identity will tell us very little compared to understanding the way
identity is formed within the medium itself.
Demonstrating the link between different kinds of subjectivities and
different mediums helps clarify the nature of the mediums themselves.
We can recall McLuhan’s claim that the technical aspects of mediums
produced certain personality types: bookish, tribal, etc.
If we apply this idea to broadcast and network forms as mediums, it
produces valuable insights into the modern dynamics of communication.
The media audience is well known as a mass (mass media). In both cases
the individual is constituted by the medium itself. The Internet avatar is,
by definition, constituted in a contextless space from which the very sense
of knowledge and power is internal to the medium. However, it is also
possible to use the Net as a mirror site for relationships which simultane-
ously exist off-line.