ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1634395
Digital Identity among Bangladeshi Women Constructing Identity and Social Capital on Facebook: A Feminist Digital Sociology of Bangladeshi Women
Provisionally accepted
- School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Facebook has become a crucial digital platform for women in Bangladesh, facilitating novel avenues for interaction, support, and identity formation within a patriarchal societal framework. This mixed-methods study examines the role of Facebook activity in the construction of social capital and the development of identity among Bangladeshi women. The study utilizes survey data from 357 women, analyzed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), to investigate the relationships between Facebook usage, network size and diversity, bonding and bridging social capital, and self-identity outcomes. The findings indicate that increased Facebook participation is a strong predictor of both network variety (β = 0.72) and size (β = 0.55), which subsequently improve bonding (R² = 0.61) and bridging (R² = 0.43) social capital. These network-derived social resources enhance the dynamism of identity creation (R² = 0.425), particularly among women with varied digital connections. Qualitative insights derived from 15 comprehensive interviews elucidate these findings: Participants characterize Facebook as a dual-faceted platform broadening perspectives and facilitating selfexpression, while also limited by monitoring, conservative standards, and calculated selfpresentation. The research incorporates Social Capital Theory, Social Identity Theory, and Goffman's dramaturgical framework to illustrate how digital environments simultaneously replicate and challenge gendered power dynamics. These findings enhance feminist digital sociology and ICT4D literature by elucidating how social media platforms facilitate empowerment, connectivity, and identity for women in the Global South.
Keywords: Facebook use, social capital, identity construction, Bangladeshi women, digital feminism, Network diversity, PLS-SEM
Received: 24 May 2025; Accepted: 09 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Safa, Akter and Jahan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tahera Akter, School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.