Youth and intimate media cultures: gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire as storytelling practices in social networking sites

This paper investigates how young people give meaning to gender, sexuality, relationships, and desire in the popular social networking site (SNS) Netlog. In arguing how SNSs are important spaces for intimate politics, the extent to which Netlog is a space that allows contestations of intimate stories and a voicing of difference is questioned. These intimate stories should be understood as self-representational media practices; young people make sense of their intimate stories in SNSs through media cultures. Media cultures reflect how audiences and SNS institutions make sense of intimacy. This paper concludes that intimate stories as media practices in the SNS Netlog are structured around creativity, anonymity, authenticity, performativity, bricolage and intertextuality. The intimate storytelling practices focusing on creativity, anonymity, bricolage and intertextuality are particularly significant for a diversity of intimacies to proliferate

How Does Self-Presentation Concern Relate to Language Use in Online Social Networking?

Millions of people worldwide use online social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter for interpersonal interaction and self-presentation. Theories of computer-mediated communication suggest that SNSs offer unique affordances and pose complex challenges to self-presentation (particularly in audience management) compared to face-to-face settings. One of the most fundamental ways in which people present themselves to others is through the use of language. The goal of the present work is to better understand language use in online self-presentation by exploring how the degree of concern people have about their self-presentation relates to their word choices in SNS posts (i.e., status updates and tweets). This study addressed three specific research questions. First, do people with greater self-presentation concern (SPC) differ from people with lower SPC in their use of words related to style, affect, and specific topics? Second, how do personality traits (i.e., the Big Five) mediate the relationships between SPC and language? Finally, does reminding people about specific types of audiences in their social networks (i.e., social vs. professional audiences) influence their language use and the amount of time they spend creating a post? To address these questions, I recruited Facebook and Twitter users to complete an online survey where they shared their most recent SNSs posts and wrote a new post under different audience reminder conditions. They also completed measures of SPC and personality. I used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2007) to measure the language in participants\u27 posts along dimensions of style (i.e., pronouns), affect (i.e., emotion words and swear words), and topic (i.e., achievement, money, religion, and sexuality). The results revealed that SPC was not significantly related to language use along these dimensions. Although SPC was related to certain personality traits, these traits did not mediate the relationships between SPC and language use. Finally, reminding participants about social and professional audiences did not affect their language use or the amount of time they spent creating their posts. These results carry important implications for theoretical frameworks of online self-presentation and provide directions for future research on SPC and language use

Self-presentation and gender of chinese overseas students on social media : a case study of Sina Weibo

Chinese micro-blogging sites have been developing dramatically in the past 5 years. Therefore, China is an interesting context in which to study Chinese young adults’ self-presentation and gender identity on the most popular social media, Sina Weibo. This is a master thesis about self-presentation and gender on Sina Weibo. Six Chinese overseas students and their Weibo accounts were under investigation in this research and four participants were also interviewed. Three of the participants are female users and the rest are male users, including two homosexual participants. The data was collected in November-December 2013 which consists of 6 Weibo accounts and 4 interviews. Content analysis was applied as the main methods in this research. An affordance perspective of social media was utilized as theoretical framework and three affordances were focused on in particular: visibility, interactivity and individuality. The results from the analysis of three affordances of Weibo reveal that Sina Weibo serves as an open and dynamic platform for Chinese youngsters by encouraging social connection and enabling them to multimedia self-expression. However, social connection on Weibo was found not tight between participants and their audiences. The gender differences in use patterns and preferences were also found on Weibo. However, there is a big gap of social media skill among users, only quite a few users can drive this vehicle well and become opinion leaders. Additionally, Weibo serves as an open virtual community for non-heterosexual group, but it cannot replace the reality from where non-heterosexual group still suffer

Catharsis affordance of social media in a brand crisis

On social media, consumers may react to brand transgressions with negative sentiment and intentions to stop purchasing. However, there may be a gap between consumer attitudes, intention, and purchase behavior. This research explores the role of social media in this attitude-behavior gap to help explain why consumers purchase brands after a brand crisis or a brand transgression. With qualitative interviews (n=18) of social media users, the emerging grounded theory is that of “catharsis affordance”. Catharsis affordance is defined here as consumers’ emotional outcomes resulting from their social media behaviors of: a) exploring information on the issue facing the brand, b) connecting with other consumers, and c) sharing reactions to these brand issues. Vicarious catharsis effects can occur via by simply watching other consumers’ reactions towards brand issues, brand crises, or brand transgressions. Therefore, catharsis affordance helps reduce consumers’ negative feelings toward purchasing branded products and services in light of a negative issue facing the brand.Advertisin

How Do You Handle It? An Investigation of Facebook Affordances and Envy

Facebook and other social network sites (SNSs) provide over one billion users with affordances not realized in traditional interpersonal interactions. With a single online post (a comment, a picture, a like, a tag, a status update, etc.), SNS users across the planet can instantly share personal information with their entire network of friends. Some of these posts stimulate feelings of envy on the part of the reader, though the envious feelings (and the reactions to envy) may be different than those felt by individuals who learn of enviable news through traditional ( real world ) interactions. Under certain conditions, envious feelings experienced while visiting a SNS have been shown to be linked to depression and a lower sense of wellbeing. Our research reviews relevant literature on envy and social media affordances and builds a theory which relates the impact of SNS affordances to envious feelings. We present propositions to guide future research efforts that may seek to investigate the direct causes, moderators, and dispositional and situational factors that lead to feelings of SNS envy and its outcomes

Rooted Muslim Cosmopolitanism: An Ethnographic Study of Malay Malaysian Students’ Cultivation and Performance of Cosmopolitanism on Facebook and Offline.

This thesis analyses the potential of Facebook as well as offline social interactions and experiences in cultivating cosmopolitan sensibilities and the performance of cosmopolitanism in both online and offline spaces. Cosmopolitanism has received immense attention in academia but its discourse is slow to incorporate everyday online experiences. In today’s world, when the use of social network sites such as Facebook have become commonplace, it is imperative that use of such a site, and its ensuing experiences, be included in the field of cosmopolitanism studies. This thesis contends for its inclusion and has chosen Facebook as the site from which to study UK-based Malay Malaysian students’ online experiences, in order to investigate the potential of the site in cultivating the students’ cosmopolitan sensibilities and cosmopolitan performances together with the students’ offline experiences. This thesis emphasises the need for the voices of the individuals to be heard, and their experiences to be understood within their own contexts. By capturing their voices, the nuances in their use of the site, their cosmopolitan sensibilities and performances could be obtained. To achieve this, an ethnographic approach that employed semi-structured interviews and online observation is used. This research has captured the voices of the respondents and found a specific form of cosmopolitanism that is influenced by their dominant Malay Muslim context, so creating what this thesis author has labelled as rooted Muslim cosmopolitanism. This concept refers to a form of cosmopolitanism rooted in the students’ Malay Muslim identity; the online and offline contexts they are in which are a replication of the host society’s contexts and their own home contexts. The discussion centres on the students’ negotiation of Malay Muslim identities in both online and offline contexts. This thesis contributes a different angle to the understanding of cultural religious cosmopolitanism for Malaysian and the general cosmopolitanism discourse, through a number of elements including: online experiences, international students as cosmopolitan actors and everyday experiences. An analytical framework was employed that separates cosmopolitan sensibilities and performance by using the six dynamics of online cosmopolitanism: self-reflexivity; motivation; affordances and features; self-disclosure and self-censorship; collapsed contexts and audience; and privacy, as well as a call for rethinking what cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan are

Unraveling Social Media Effects:How the Intertwinement of Online Content and User Behaviors Guides Mental Health and Body Image

The rapid growth in popularity of social media platforms has fueled concerns about the possible negative effects of social media use on young people’s mental health and body image. To unravel social media effects, scholars argued that social media activities should be divided into active and passive social media use. It has been hypothesized that active social media use (i.e., creating content) leads to positive effects on mental health and body image, whereas passive social media (i.e., viewing content) leads to negative effects. In some cases, however, active social media use appeared to also lead to more negative feelings about oneself and one’s life, while passive social media use can lead to more positive feelings about these matters. Hence, the active-passive dichotomy seems a rough division that needs further specification. What types of content do young people post online, and what do they passively consume? And how does that affect their mental health and body image? To advance our knowledge and insights on these matters, the overarching goal of this dissertation was to investigate if, when, and how social media use affects young people’s mental health and body image. In Chapter 2, findings of a systematic literature review indicated that how social media use coincides with mental health and body image largely depends on the content of the self-presentation created or passively consumed. For example, sharing negative life events was generally linked to decreased subjective well-being. In contrast, sharing authentic self-presentations was linked with increased subjective well-being. The second study (Chapter 3) examined how ethno-racial identities may predispose differences in publicly posted selfies. Facial recognition was used to classify the selfie-takers’ ethno-racial identity on over 3000 publicly posted selfies. Findings revealed that individuals varying in ethno-racial identity generally differed in their online self-presentations. For example, Asian and Hispanic selfie-takers posted more of their context and less of themselves than black and white selfie-takers. The third study in this dissertation examined how the prevalence of posting and seeing different photo-types was linked with mental health and body image (Chapter 4). This study included more than 400 adolescents. Findings of this study indicated that, for example, posting more authentic photos of oneself is associated with higher levels of mental health, whereas posting edited photos is associated with more body shame. The last study examined the potential longer-term impact of social media use (Chapter 5). This study included more than 400 Japanese adolescents and more than 500 Dutch adolescents. The adolescents completed three online surveys, with one-month intervals in between. Findings of this study indicated that both a higher frequency of posting and being exposed to authentic photos can induce positive outcomes for mental health and body image, whereas both a higher frequency of posting and being exposed to edited photos of others was found to relate to negative outcomes. Results were, however, different between Dutch and Japanese adolescents. The results of the studies in this dissertation generally conclude that time-based approaches of social media use reflect an oversimplification to interpret the possible effects on mental health and body image. The findings of this dissertation all advocate that there is a need to apply an integrated content-specific and behavior-specific approach. Moreover, social media effects are conditional, meaning that social media effects cannot be attributed to all adolescents and may vary across cultural context. Hence, if and when social media impacts mental health and body image largely depends on how and why they use social media as well as the way they respond to their social media use

Instagram

Overview: Capturing pictures helps to preserve memories that will be saved forever, and looking at them allows someone to take a journey back in time to when any given picture was taken. In this day and age, smartphones such as Androids and iPhones help to make picture taking quick and easy. With the swipe of a finger and a tap on the screen, a picture can be taken and saved on a camera roll in mere seconds. But it doesn\u27t stop there, with the smartphone application (app) called Instagram, photography can be taken to the next level. Instagram is a website, and also a free app, compatible with most smartphones. It is a form of social media in which users create a profile, including their name and a small biography about themselves. It allows them to upload and post pictures or short fifteen-second videos of anything they please and include a caption that goes with it. Both gender and age play defining roles in how the user actually uses the app. When looking at gender, it is interesting to explore the differences between what men and women post and how often they post. It is suspected there are differences in their usage because of cultural context. In general, women like to share with others what is going on with their lives and men are usually more reserved. This could potentially explain why women post more often, so their followers know what they are experiencing. Age is also something that impacts usage. When looking at the younger generations compared to the older, there is a difference in what and how often they post as well, so it would be interesting to explore why in fact there is this inconsistency in posting rates. Different ages have different audiences, so this could play into why they post what they do. Maybe the younger generation posts more to look cool, and maybe the older generation does not post as much, because they are consumed with more important things, such as work or school. I want to illustrate a clear picture about why there is this split through asking questions about purpose of usage, why they post, and why they post what they post. In summary, I want to uncover what kind of identity they are forming for themselves based on their Instagram activity, and how what they post and like shows others who they are in the social media world