FLUID IDENTITIES IN DIGITAL SPACES: PAKISTANI INFLUENCERS’ ONLINE NARRATIVES THROUGH THE THEORY OF ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

Abstract

This study aims to explore the ways in which Pakistani social media influencers create and enact their identities in the virtual world. The significance of the topic is that the phenomenon of influencer culture has emerged as a major arena of identity construction in the contemporary world of digital media and information technologies, while sociological inquiries into the phenomenon of digital identity in non-Western societies have not received much attention. In this regard, the present research project undertakes an analysis of the online discourses of Pakistani social media influencers on Instagram and TikTok platforms over a period of five months (May-September 2025). The aim of the project is to explore the ways in which Pakistani social media influencers enact their identities in the virtual world through the medium of online discourses. The project is informed by the theoretical perspective of Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity, in which identity is constructed as a fluid and unstable concept that is continually reconstructed in the rapidly changing world of modernity. The findings of the project reveal that the identity of Pakistani social media influencers is constructed as a fluid and multiform concept.