Chapter 6. Mediated identities

In the previous chapter, I analysed the situated context of Soliya through its website, which represents its exterior public image that serves to promote and disseminate the project. Through this I showed how Soliya is intentionally designed to offer possibilities for doing ‘identity work’ on different levels, both in terms of situated identities (facilitators and participants) and transportable identities – with reference being made in particular to the identity categories of ‘Westerner’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘non-Muslim’, for these are the identities which the framing of the programme focusses on, and also imagined identities. Before exploring how participants orient to these situated and transportable identities through indexicality and relationality in Chapters 7 and 8, I am going to explore the affordances and constraints of the mediating technologies available for doing identity work in the situated context of this study.