MBTI Assessment as Social Currency: A New Digital Cultural Phenomenon in the Meta-media Era.

The MBTI assessment has become a hot topic online and a common method for netizens to identify themselves across China’s social platforms. These netizens generally consider the results of their MBTI assessments as personal emblems suitable for public display, leading to a remarkably widespread cultural phenomenon. Through structured interviews, this study has found that Internet users are experiencing a psychological crisis of identity due to the dual influences of technological embodiment and the meta-media ecology revolution. Moreover, their behavior on social platforms can be regarded as an invisible form of affective labor. To date, researchers have not paid adequate attention to the immense popularity of MBTI assessment in China, and they have not fully investigated whether MBTI assessment is a symbolic representation of the current identity crisis in the context of meta-media and digital labor. This study has two purposes: First, this study aims to explore whether the dynamic interactions of the MBTI assessment are a form of social currency. Second, it aims to construct an MBTI topic production chain to help understand MBTI’s underlying mechanisms regarding the interactions, the reasons behind its popularity, and the reflection on broader social phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]