D9.1: A Specification for FIDIS Journal

Title: THE STATE OF THE ART IN IDENTITY RESEARCH

The State of the Art in Identity Research

After compiling a list of the major existing journals, a review of the literature was undertaken in order to assess the state of the art in identity research.  Initial searches were carried out using major databases chosen to give coverage of relevant major fields, including technical sciences, social sciences, humanities and law.  These searches revealed a vast literature covering the identity domain in general.  Restricting the search to work more closely linked with Information Society issues allowed us to compile 400 articles published over the last decade (between 1995 and April 2005).  Figure 1 below shows the distribution of these articles over the years 1995-2004.  From January to April 2005, 17 such articles were published, but these are not represented in Figure 1 since these figures only represent one quarter of 2005.  

Figure 1.

It is clear from Figure 1 above that there has been a steady rise in interest in the domain of identity across all disciplines over the last decade.  For the purpose of the current analysis a total of 70 articles were randomly sampled and reviewed.  The analysis yielded several categories representing the range of perspectives in the study of identity in the Information Society.  The categories were political, social, legal and technological, with sub-categories in the social domain, characterised as socio-political, socio-cultural and socio-organisational.

Figure 2.

Figure 2 above demonstrates that the weight of research in this sample is dedicated to the technical disciplines, followed by the social science and legal disciplines, with the political perspective being the least popular.  The sub-divisions of the social science papers are roughly equally split between the socio-political, -cultural and -organisational.

The political perspective encompassed articles dealing with identity in the national or international context, with focus typically placed on power relations among nation states.  

The next category was broadly defined as the social perspective.  Given the scope of this perspective, a set of sub-categories was further identified so as to allow a more nuanced analysis.  Among these was a socio-political perspective.  Whereas the political perspective described above focuses at the national level, the socio-political perspective considers other social groups and issues related to the power relations between different groups.  This body of work is quite diverse, encompassing a wide range of social groups such as women (Hoogensen and Rottem 2004), medical patients (Alpert 2003) and consumers (Hoffman, Novak et al.  1999).  Issues placed centre stage include, for example, the implication of anonymity and privacy in the context of health information.  

The socio-cultural perspective is the second sub-category within the social domain of identity research.  We differentiate it from the socio-political perspective because focus is not placed on power relations among social groups but rather on the creation and meaning of self and social identities in a broad cultural sense.  For example, Phillips (1998) examined public discourse in order to illuminate the processes by which issues of anonymity, surveillance, security, and privacy are integrated into public understandings of, and interactions with, consumer payment systems.  Prominent themes emerging from this body of work include the public discourse on anonymity (Phillips 1998), online identities (Hardey 2002) and consumer privacy (Tambyah 1996).  The final sub-category of the social domain of identity research is the socio-organisational perspective.  Papers in this sub-category typically discuss identity issues within organisational and managerial contexts.  

The legal perspective on the study of identity and IS emerged as a key category in the analysis of the literature.  A broad range of issues is addressed from the legal angle; foremost of these are identity theft (Terry 2000; Caughey 2004), identification and profiling.  Legal discussions on identity cover regulatory issues as well as the philosophical and ethical concerns, together with their consequences (see, for example, Robison 1997).

Finally, the technological perspective on identity and IS research clearly emerged as the dominant perspective, with security and privacy concerns being brought to the forefront of the analysis.  Whilst the label ‘technological’ seems to capture the core of this literature, a diversity of topics and themes is nevertheless apparent.  Revocation of identity (Bresson and Stern 2001), location privacy (Hirose and Yoshida 2001) and identification systems are but a few examples.

What emerges from this analysis is a sense of disciplinary fragmentation in the study of identity in the Information Society.  However, pervasive themes arise from the literature which cross disciplinary lines, signalling a community of interest.  These themes shall be used as the underlying logic of the proposed journal, which will be a rallying point for the promotion of holistic, multi-disciplinary research and the cross-pollination of ideas between disciplines.  This is what will set the FIDIS journal apart from other journals in the market and help to establish it as the premier publication for those involved with identity issues.