Digital Identity Construction and Personal Branding on Facebook from an Information Resilience perspective

Abstract

Purpose: This study examines how digital identity is represented and developed into personal branding on Facebook, and how these practices relate to information resilience and the socio-cultural dimension of national resilience.

Method: A qualitative single-case study supported by a virtual ethnographic approach was conducted on Awan Gunawan’s Facebook account. Data were generated through prolonged online observation, digital documentation, and in-depth interviews, then analysed using Cyber Media Analysis across media space, media archive, media object, and experience.

Findings: Awan Gunawan’s digital identity develops through three interrelated phases: a failed entrepreneur who refuses to give up, a happy noodle seller, and a fortunate and inspiring figure. Across these phases, perseverance, humility, humour, family orientation, spirituality, and social concern remain recognisable. Personal branding develops through distinctiveness, relevance, and consistency, reinforced by reciprocal interaction between self-representation and audience recognition.

Implications: Credible, consistent, and socially connected digital communication can strengthen trust, shared meaning, and community cohesion. These findings are relevant to information resilience and the socio-cultural dimension of national resilience, although the relationship is indirect and contextual rather than causal.

Originality: This study extends personal branding research by showing how a non-celebrity individual develops public recognition through long-form autobiographical narratives on Facebook and by linking identity construction, audience recognition, and personal branding with information resilience and socio-cultural resilience.