Category Archives: Identity through Anonymity: The Role of Audience in a Blogger’s Construction of Narrative. Meghan Hancock.

Identity Through Anonymity: The Role of Audience in a Blogger’s Construction of Narrative

 
            Sarah Wu started her blog, “Fed Up With Lunch” in 2009.  Wu’s blog was originally part of a project that was meant to bring awareness to the issue of school lunch nutrition—a topic Wu felt strongly invested in not only because she was a mother, but because she was an educator herself.  In its early stages, the blog would document Wu’s experience eating the food her students were eating through daily posts where Wu would photograph her food, comment on its potential nutritional value and taste, as well as discuss issues of debate concerning the general topic of school lunches.  Up until when she “came out,” revealing her off-line identity of Sarah Wu, she was known on her blog as her chosen pseudonym, Mrs. Q.  From the beginning, Mrs. Q was open about her occupation as a speech and language pathologist in the public school system, but chose to remain under a pseudonym for fear of getting exposed to her school district and possibly fired for her blog’s crticisms.  Mrs. Q’s decision to use a pseudonym as a blogger (for the first two years of her blog’s existence) was central to constructing her blog and helping her discover her identity as a writer.  Her decision to remain anonymous was freeing in giving her the confidence she needed to take on such a controversial project, as well as to slowly (over the span of three years) explore and discover that she did have a place in a conversation usually reserved for those with higher “authority” (school administrators, those in government positions in charge of funding for school lunches, etc). 
            As Mrs. Q unfolds the narrative of her experiences, her interaction with her readers becomes key in helping her develop this kind of authority and confidence.  Since her readers did not initially know who she really was or what specific school she taught in, Mrs. Q. was every teacher and no teacher at once.  Her audience could therefore relate to her experiences and aid her in constructing her story because her perspective made general by her anonymity gave her posts a kind of universal appeal.  Her broad discussions of school nutrition that are still tied to specific (though, again, anonymous) examples from her day-to-day experience eating lunches allowed her audience to apply these issues to their own experiences, which they then shared with her and with each other via her blog’s comment sections.  In commenting, parents and students add to Mrs. Q’s thoughts and stories, and their voices become more and more central to the construction of her project as the blog progresses.  Mrs. Q invites guest bloggers to write about their own experience on her blog’s topic.  These guest blog posts seem to function as an extension of Mrs. Q’s own voice.  While she is not the one writing these posts, they still play a role in continuing the narrative she has started.  When Mrs. Q. writes, it is also often from the point of view of “we” instead of simply “I.”  For example, in the following passage from her blog post in March of 2010 concerning the amount of funding given to school lunches, Mrs. Q uses the pronoun “we”:
              Why can’t we give all children the best possible food we can find while they  
              are at school?  Why do they have to get the cheapest stuff? If their health and  
              wellness is truly a priority, then we need to pony up and find a way to feed 
              them as if they matter. Children are not ‘little adults.’  (Wu)
              Mrs. Q addresses her readers as part of the conversation instead of simply reading from the sidelines, an act they are comfortable doing as they also do not need to take the risk of putting their own jobs in education in jeopardy by the use of pseudonyms themselves (commentors very often share that they are teachers or administrators within the body of their posts).  Their comments lend support to Mrs. Q, sympathizing with her situation, echoing her experiences, and adding to the discussion in her post.  Mrs. Q often constructs her future blog posts based on the audience’s commentary, and even begins to respond to requests to reveal small personal details about herself, giving her the confidence she needs to reveal parts of her identity. 
            As Mrs. Q’s posting progresses, she is eventually able to reveal multiple identities instead of the one identity she initially establishes as Mrs. Q, the teacher.  Soon she is comfortable enough to reveal her role as a mother (bringing in side narratives about her son and how she monitors his nutrition and education), as well as her role as a wife (bringing in side narratives about her disagreements with her husband and how she balances her career and her extensive time spent blogging—a factor that increases with the increase in her blog’s popularity—with time spent on her relationship with her husband).  One year after her project starts, she shares with her audince that she is pregnant.  On August 9, 2012, she shares with her audience that she has resigned from her teaching position (for the reasons of commute time and wanting to spend more time with her family), and on October 8, 2013, she implies, in a post with an uncharacteristically confused and melancholy tone entitled “The Search for Meaningful Work, Post ‘Mrs. Q’”-Advice Please,” that she is feeling depressed and trusts her audience enough to ask what her next steps should be professionally.  A passage from this post can be read in the following:
            What to do with myself professionally now?  That is the question that only I can 
            resolve, but I have not been successful in my search for an answer.  Of course, I 
            am working as I have been trained:  a school-based speech pathologist.  I love my  
            job, the kids, and schools.  
            But there is something missing and I’m trying to figure out what that is.  I expect  
            this to take some time to sort through, maybe years.
            I’m throwing this out to you, my readers.  You have seen me through all these  
            years.  What now?  Hypothetically, if you were me, what would you do next 
            professionally? (Wu)
            Blogging has made Mrs. Q unsatisfied with only seeing herself as a mother and a teacher.  These two roles are no longer enough for her, and with the conclusion of her project, she feels like she is meant to do more than what she was doing before she started writing.  This realization regarding who she is and what else she might be capable of may not have happened had she not started a blog.  Writing provided her with a sense of purpose, a sense of authority, and the feeling that she was contributing to a conversation being debated internationally.  Also, in writing such a post, she asks her audience to help her continue her narrative for her.  Her audience functions as a way for her to find a new way to fulfill her professional goals and aspirations.
            Though Mrs. Q. benefited from the advantages of staying anonymous during the beginning stages of her blog due to factors like universal appeal, the limitations of anonymity start to reveal themselves as Mrs. Q’s most recent posts show her reflecting upon her past decisions.  Mrs. Q’s blog becomes what Jens Brockmeier would call a “circular narrative” as she rethinks her decision to remain anonymous, associating it with a sense of shame (because she had to hide it from her colleagues and superiors) and “toxic emotions” in her post, “The Search for Meaningful Work, Post ‘Mrs. Q’-Advice Please”:
            While some considered me as “famous” because of this blog, I feel more 
            “notorious.” I have not been able to shake that feeling of shame that came along 
            with doing the whole thing anonymously. It was like a big scary secret for 18 
            months and even though I felt a ton of relief when I came out, I am left with 
            some toxic emotions even now. Secrets aren’t healthy for people. I probably 
            need therapy.  (Wu)
            In this post, she reflects upon her identity as a writer at the outset of her project, regretting her anonymity, a position she is now ashamed of as it presents her past self as someone who was too afraid to inform her colleagues of her project, hiding alone in her office while she eats her lunch and documents her experiences.  She acknowledges that her audience calls her “famous,” now that she has had so much media attention (radio interviews, television appearances, online interviews, publishing a book on her experiences), but she disagrees, instead calling herself “notorious.”  Mrs. Q’s audience steps in, however, to reassure her, inspiring her to start a new blog elsewhere, focusing on her identity outside of her original project.  Though Mrs. Q struggles (as can be seen in her attitude in the previous passage), she is still confronting what makes her unsatisfied in her life, working through these issues in her writing.  One might argue that she may not have come to this realization had she never tried blogging (simply writing, for example, wouldn’t have given her the kinds of audience interaction that was so pivotal to her in developing confidence and authority both as a writer and as a public spokesperson for school nutrition).  She then embraces and seeks the advice of her audience, who in turn, inspire her to start another blogging community.