Identity, Bilingualism, and the Presence on Virtual Social Networks: Case Study, Students of Kurdistan University, Iran

Abstract

The present study, entitled "Identity, Bilingualism, and Presence on Virtual Social Networks", was conducted among students of the University of Kurdistan, who were studying at the university in the academic year (2019–2020). This study seeks to investigate the identity of virtual social network users and the impact of presence rate on social networks and the diversity of use of different topics in the four dimensions of social identity (personal, communication, social and public identity) as well as the role of bilingualism on their social identity. The research method in this study is survey and data collection technique are standard questionnaire of identity (Cheek, J. M. & Briggs, S. R. (2013). Questionnaires were distributed among 400 students who were selected by stratified random sampling. The theoretical framework for the research is inspired by the theories of Giddens, Berger and Castells. The results of this study showed that there is a positive relationship between social, personal, communicational, collective and public identity with the amount of use of virtual social networks and the variety of use of different topics in different virtual social networks. Bilingualism also has a negative impact on social identity.