ABSTRACT
The popularity of social media platforms today makes them an important venue for self-presentation, but the unique affordances of these platforms challenge our existing models for understanding self-presentation behavior. In particular, social media provide multiple platforms on which the self may be presented, expand the role other individuals can play in one's own self-presentation, and expand the audience while often simultaneously providing less information about who is in that audience. This paper presents an affordance-based approach to self-presentation on social media platforms rooted in these three challenges and presents a systematic taxonomy for considering aspects of platforms that affect self-presentation. Results from an exploratory study of 193 users suggest significant variation in user perception of our proposed affordances across social media platforms, participant experience levels, and participant personality traits.
- Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Gideon Vinitzky. 2010. Social network use and personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 26, 6: 1289--1295. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marjolijn L Antheunis and Alexander P Schouten. 2011. The Effects of Other-Generated and System? Generated Cues on Adolescents' Perceived Attractiveness on Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 16, 3: 391--406.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Valerie Barker. 2009. Older adolescents' motivations for social network site use: The influence of gender, group identity, and collective self-esteem. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12, 2: 209--213.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Joseph B. Bayer, Nicole B. Ellison, Sarita Y. Schoenebeck, and Emily B. Falk. 2015. Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat. Information, Communication & Society, 19, 7: 1--22.Google Scholar
- Natalya N. Bazarova and Yoon Hyung Choi. 2014. Self-Disclosure in Social Media: Extending the Functional Approach to Disclosure Motivations and Characteristics on Social Network Sites. Journal of Communication, 64, 4: 635--657.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Michael S. Bernstein, Eytan Bakshy, Moira Burke, and Brian Karrer. 2013. Quantifying the invisible audience in social networks. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 21--30. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jeremy Birnholtz, Colin Fitzpatrick, Mark Handel, and Jed R. Brubaker. 2014. Identity, identification and identifiability: the language of self-presentation on a location-based mobile dating app. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services, 3--12. Google ScholarDigital Library
- danah boyd. 2010. Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Networked Self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites, Zizi Papacharissi (ed.). Routledge, NY, NY, 39--58.Google Scholar
- danah boyd and Eszter Hargittai. 2010. Facebook privacy settings: Who cares? First Monday, 15, 8.Google Scholar
- Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan. 1991. Grounding in communication. In Perspectives on socially shared cognition, B Rogoff (ed.). 127--149.Google Scholar
- Nicholas Diakopoulos. 2015. Algorithmic accountability: Journalistic investigation of computational power structures. Digital Journalism, 3, 3: 398--415.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Maeve Duggan. 2015. Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
- Maeve Duggan, Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Amanda Lenhart, and Mary Madden. 2015. Social Media Update 2014. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
- Chad Edwards, Patric R Spence, Christina J Gentile, America Edwards, and Autumn Edwards. 2013. How much Klout do you have? A test of system generated cues on source credibility. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 5: A12-A16.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe. 2007. The benefits of Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 4: 1143--1168.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Nicole B. Ellison and Jessica Vitak. 2015. Social network site affordances and their relationship to social capital processes. In The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology, S. Shyam Sundar (ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 205--227.Google Scholar
- Nicholas Epley, Boaz Keysar, Leaf Van Boven, and Thomas Gilovich. 2004. Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 3: 327.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Motahhare Eslami, Aimee Rickman, Kristen Vaccaro, Amirhossein Aleyasen, Andy Vuong, Karrie Karahalios, Kevin Hamilton, and Christian Sandvig. 2015. "I always assumed that I wasn't really that close to {her}?: Reasoning about invisible algorithms in the news feed. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 153--162. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Samer Faraj and Bijan Azad. 2012. The materiality of technology: An affordance perspective. In Materiality and Organizing: Social interaction in a technological world, Paul M Leonardi, Bonnie A. Nardi and Jannis Kallinikos (ed.). Oxford University Press, Oxford, 237258.Google Scholar
- William W. Gaver. 1991. Technology affordances. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 79--84. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Erving Goffman. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor, NY.Google Scholar
- Lewis R. Goldberg. 1990. An alternative description of personality: the big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 6: 1216--1229.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Samuel D. Gosling, Peter J. Rentfrow, and William B. Swann. 2003. A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in personality, 37, 6: 504--528.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Shion Guha and Jeremy Birnholtz. 2013. Can you see me now? Location, visibility and the management of impressions on Foursquare. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, 183192. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Eszter Hargittai and Yuli Patrick Hsieh. 2012. Succinct survey measures of web-use skills. Social Science Computer Review, 30, 1: 95--107. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt. 2013. New strategies for employment? internet skills and online privacy practices during people's job search. IEEE Security & Privacy, 3: 38--45. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bernie Hogan. 2010. The presentation of self in the age of social media: Distinguishing performances and exhibitions online. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 30, 6: 377--386.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Adam N. Joinson. 2001. Self-disclosure in computer-mediated communication: The role of self-awareness and visual anonymity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 2: 177--192.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Robert E. Kraut. 2016. CHI 2016 SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award: Robert E Kraut. Video. (11 May, 2016). Retrieved May 27, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCP5drJCuacGoogle Scholar
- Caroline Lang and Hannah Barton. 2015. Just untag it: Exploring the management of undesirable Facebook photos. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, . 147--155. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Alex Leavitt. 2015. This is a Throwaway Account: Temporary Technical Identities and Perceptions of Anonymity in a Massive Online Community. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 317--327. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Richard D. Lennox and Raymond N. Wolfe. 1984. Revision of the self-monitoring scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 6: 1349--1364.Google ScholarCross Ref
- LinkedIn. 2016. About us. Retrieved May 6, 2016 from https://www.linkedin.com/about-usGoogle Scholar
- Eden Litt. 2012. Knock, knock. Who's there? The imagined audience. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 3: 330--345.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Eden Litt. 2013. Understanding social network site users' privacy tool use. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 4: 1649--1656. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Eden Litt, Erin Spottswood, Jeremy Birnholtz, Jeff T. Hancock, Madeline E. Smith, and Lindsay Reynolds. 2014. Awkward encounters of an other kind: collective self-presentation and face threat on facebook. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 449--460. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yabing Liu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Balachander Krishnamurthy, and Alan Mislove. 2011. Analyzing facebook privacy settings: user expectations vs. reality. In Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, 61--70. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ann Majchrzak, Samer Faraj, Gerald C. Kane, and Bijan Azad. 2013. The contradictory influence of social media affordances on online communal knowledge sharing. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19, 1: 38--55.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ben Marder, Adam Joinson, Avi Shankar, and Kate Thirlaway. 2016. Strength matters: Self-presentation to the strongest audience rather than lowest common denominator when faced with multiple audiences in social network sites. Computers in Human Behavior, 6156--62. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Catherine C. Marshall and Frank M. Shipman. 2015. Exploring the Ownership and Persistent Value of Facebook Content. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 712--723. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Alice E. Marwick and danah boyd. 2011. I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13, 1: 114--133.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Andrew L. Mendelson and Zizi Papacharissi. 2010. Look at us: Collective narcissism in college student Facebook photo galleries. In The Networked Self: Identity, community and culture on social network sites, Zizi Papacharissi (ed.). Routledge, NY, NY, 251--273.Google Scholar
- Gregory J Meyer, Stephen E Finn, Lorraine D Eyde, Gary G Kay, Kevin L Moreland, Robert R Dies, Elena J Eisman, Tom W Kubiszyn, and Geoffrey M Reed. 2001. Psychological testing and psychological assessment: A review of evidence and issues. American Psychologist, 56, 2: 128.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Raymond S Nickerson. 1999. How we know--and sometimes misjudge--what others know: Imputing one's own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 6: 737.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Helen Nissenbaum. 2009. Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Donald A. Norman. 2013. The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic Books, NY, NY.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Andrew Perrin. 2015. Social Media Usage: 2005--2015. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
- Emilee Rader and Rebecca Gray. 2015. Understanding User Beliefs About Algorithmic Curation in the Facebook News Feed. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 173--182. Google ScholarDigital Library
- William Revelle and Richard E. Zinbarg. 2009. Coefficients alpha, beta, omega, and the glb: Comments on Sijtsma. Psychometrika, 74, 1: 145--154.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Morris Rosenberg. 1965. Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
- Tracii Ryan and Sophia Xenos. 2011. Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage. Computers in Human Behavior, 27, 5: 1658--1664. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Vivek K. Singh, Ramesh Jain, and Mohan S. Kankanhalli. 2009. Motivating contributors in social media networks. In Proceedings of the First SIGMM Workshop on Social Media, 11--18. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Manya Sleeper, Rebecca Balebako, Sauvik Das, Amber Lynn McConahy, Jason Wiese, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2013. The post that wasn't: exploring self-censorship on Facebook. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 793--802. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Helen Spencer-Oatey. 2007. Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 4: 639656.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Charles Steinfield, Nicole B. Ellison, and Cliff Lampe. 2008. Social capital, self-esteem, and use of online social network sites: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 6: 434--445.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Zak Stone, Todd Zickler, and Trevor Darrell. 2008. Autotagging facebook: Social network context improves photo annotation. In Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 1--8.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jeffrey W. Treem and Paul M. Leonardi. 2012. Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Communication Yearbook, 36, : 143--189.Google Scholar
- Zeynep Tufekci. 2008. Can you see me now? Audience and disclosure regulation in online social network sites. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 28, 1: 2036.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Tumblr. 2016. About. Retrieved May 6, 2016 from https://www.tumblr.com/aboutGoogle Scholar
- Sonja Utz. 2010. Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one's profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence impression formation on social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15, 2: 314335.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jessica Vitak. 2012. The impact of context collapse and privacy on social network site disclosures. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 4: 451--470.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Joseph B. Walther and Malcolm R. Parks. 2002. Cues filtered out, cues filtered in. In Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, Mark Knapp and John A. Daly (ed.). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 529--563.Google Scholar
- Joseph B. Walther, Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim, David Westerman, and Stephanie Tom Tong. 2008. The role of friends' appearance and behavior on evaluations of individuals on Facebook: Are we known by the company we keep? Human Communication Research, 34, 1: 28--49.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Yang Wang, Gregory Norcie, Saranga Komanduri, Alessandro Acquisti, Pedro Giovanni Leon, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2011. I regretted the minute I pressed share: A qualitative study of regrets on Facebook. In Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, 10. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Elizabeth Whittaker and Robin M. Kowalski. 2015. Cyberbullying via social media. Journal of School Violence, 14, 1: 11--29.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Donghee Yvette Wohn and Erin L. Spottswood. 2016. Reactions to other-generated face threats on Facebook and their relational consequences. Computers in Human Behavior, 57, April 2016: 187--194. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bin Xu, Pamara Chang, Christopher L. Welker, Natalya N. Bazarova, and Dan Cosley. 2016. Automatic Archiving versus Default Deletion: What Snapchat Tells Us About Ephemerality in Design. In Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 1662--1675. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shanyang Zhao, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin. 2008. Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24, 5: 1816--1836. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Platforms, People, and Perception: Using Affordances to Understand Self-Presentation on Social Media
Recommendations
"On Finsta, I can say 'Hail Satan'": Being Authentic but Disagreeable on Instagram
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsWe use personality theory to compare self-presentation between multiple Instagram accounts, investigating authenticity and consistency. Many studies claim social media promote inauthentic self-presentation focused on socially desirable traits. At the ...
Follow Me: Exploring the Effect of Personality and Stranger Connections on Instagram Use
Recent research suggests that the relationship between personality and Facebook use is mediated by the need for belonging and self-presentation. It is uncertain, however, whether these relationships also hold for other social networking sites SNSs, for ...
Why Do People Choose Different Social Media Platforms? Linking Use Motives With Social Media Affordances and Personalities
Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social media users exploit different media affordances to satisfy their motives and how such motives are shaped by their personalities. A cross-sectional survey among ...
Comments