Aarhus University Seal

Parents use social media platforms as tools to perform identity

Findings from the CHiP project provide insight into the way parents choose to share content on certain platforms depending on the audience.

Findings from the Childhood, Intimacy and Surveillance Practices (CHiP), a research project conducted by CENSUS, have showed parents share different content on the various social media platforms they participate in, as part of a complex construction of family identity. 

Interviews with parents found that they saw certain platforms as having particular qualities, being targeted towards specific audiences, and considered these factors in their decisions about sharing information about their children online. Parents used the range of platforms available as tools to curate their social media narratives, to limit what information some social groups were exposed to and drew on the capacities of each platform to do this.

Further findings about photo sharing from the project will be published in our forthcoming book chapter.