1 Naima el Bezaz on Facebook. A case study. Martina Vitackova, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic The writer Naima el Bezaz is the first woman of Dutch-Moroccan origin to be published in the Netherlands. From the publication of her first novel onwards, her work and the way she expresses herself in the public have caused a lot of controversy. The writer self works actively with the attention she gets in the media, both r in her Spits column and on Facebook where she challenges Dutch society while at the same time promoting her person and her work. Naima el Bezaz posts a new status on Facebook approximately once a day and gets tens of comments on each, mainly from the same followers. The most frequent topics are Dutch politics and society and the writer´s personal life. She often comments on racist prejudices in the Netherlands and her personal experiences of them. Based on Bezaz´ published posts in a period of time, as well as the reactions on these, the paper analyzes the mechanisms of identity forming on Facebook. With the concrete example of Naima el Bezaz´ Facebook followers from different groups I will show how both the liberal as well as conservative Moroccan-Dutch and the Dutch establish their identity as members of one or another group and how an important role this medium plays in the process of acquiring a sense of belonging. Keywords: Naima el Bezaz, Facebook, Dutch society, Moroccan-Dutch, identity, “They study, work, write and interact with each other in ways that are very different from the ways that you did when growing up. They read blogs rather than newspapers. They often meet each other online before they meet in person. (...) They get their music online (...). They are more likely to send an instant message (IM) than to pick up the phone to arrange a date later in the afternoon. They adopt and pal around with virtual Neopets online instead of pound puppies. And they’re connected to one another by a common culture. Major aspects of their lives – social interactions, friendships, civic activities – are mediated by digital technologies. And they’ve never known any other way of life” say a somehow saddened Palfrey and Gasser in the introduction to their book Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Palfrey, Gasser 2010: 2). Their definition sounds indeed very recognizable and typical ofsociety nowadays. Apart from using the notion of the Digital Native 1 , they also coined the term Digital Settler to which group most of the readers of this paper probably belong. We still remember not being able to let our waiting friends know that our train is delayed, we have sent love letters written by hand, on paper. And we would eventually still do 1 The term Digital Native was mentioned for the first time by Marc Prensky in 2001. As an opposite term to Digital Natives uses Prensky the term Digital Immigrants. See: Prensky, M. 2001. On the Horizon. MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001.