Munchausen by internet: current research and future directions.

The Internet has revolutionized the health world, enabling self-diagnosis and online support to take place irrespective of time or location. Alongside the positive aspects for an individual's health from making use of the Internet, debate has intensified on how the increasing use of Web technology might have a negative impact on patients, caregivers, and practitioners. One such negative health-related behavior is Munchausen by Internet

Self-presentation and emotional contagion on Facebook: new experimental measures of profiles' emotional coherence

Social Networks allow users to self-present by sharing personal contents with others which may add comments. Recent studies highlighted how the emotions expressed in a post affect others' posts, eliciting a congruent emotion. So far, no studies have yet investigated the emotional coherence between wall posts and its comments. This research evaluated posts and comments mood of Facebook profiles, analyzing their linguistic features, and a measure to assess an excessive self-presentation was introduced. Two new experimental measures were built, describing the emotional loading (positive and negative) of posts and comments, and the mood correspondence between them was evaluated. The profiles "empathy", the mood coherence between post and comments, was used to investigate the relation between an excessive self-presentation and the emotional coherence of a profile. Participants publish a higher average number of posts with positive mood. To publish an emotional post corresponds to get more likes, comments and receive a coherent mood of comments, confirming the emotional contagion effect reported in literature. Finally, the more empathetic profiles are characterized by an excessive self-presentation, having more posts, and receiving more comments and likes. To publish emotional contents appears to be functional to receive more comments and likes, fulfilling needs of attention-seeking.Comment: Submitted to Complexit

Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life

Part of the Volume on Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook serve as "networked publics." As with unmediated publics like parks and malls, youth use networked publics to gather, socialize with their peers, and make sense of and help build the culture around them. This article examines American youth engagement in networked publics and considers how properties unique to such mediated environments (e.g., persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences) affect the ways in which youth interact with one another. Ethnographic data is used to analyze how youth recognize these structural properties and find innovative ways of making these systems serve their purposes. Issues like privacy and impression management are explored through the practices of teens and youth participation in social network sites is situated in a historical discussion of youth's freedom and mobility in the United States

Psychological aspects of information seeking on the Internet

Two studies are presented that investigate information seeking behaviour on the Internet. In Study One, soccer fans’ information seeking on the World Wide Web (WWW) is investigated. In Study Two, access rates to a cancer information website are analysed. It is tentatively argued that there is a tendency for people to access information more commonly avoided in ‘real life’, although in the case of football fans, the tendency to ‘bask in reflected glory’ remains when online, while cutting off reflected failure is minimised. Implications for understanding and researching psychological processes of web browsing behaviour are discussed

Motivations for Providing Social Support on Social Media

Social support provision plays an important role in the mechanism of exchanging social support on social media. Support provision can be beneficial to both receiver and provider. Grounded in the empathic-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al., 2011), negative-state relief model (Cialdini et al., 1987), need to belong theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and work on impression management, this study sought to examine how altruistic traits (empathic concern, perspective-taking), egoistic traits (need to belong, negative affect, impression management), belief in altruism, and outcome expectations play a role in support provision on social media. College students (N=418) completed an online survey. Hierarchical multiple regressions tested how altruistic and egoistic traits predicted support provision on social media and offline, and whether belief in altruism moderated the relationship between altruistic traits and support provision on social media. A scale was developed to measure altruistic and egoistic outcome expectations for providing support on social media. Structural equation modeling (SEM) examined outcome expectations’ potential mediator role between altruistic and egoistic traits and support provision on social media. Neither altruistic trait (empathic concern, perspective taking) predicted support provision on social media, but when belief in altruism was included as a moderator, perspective-taking was associated with greater support provision for respondents who held a stronger belief in altruism. Further, the SEM analysis found an indirect positive relationship between empathic concern and support provision on social media, mediated by altruistic outcome expectations. Regarding egoistic traits, impression management positively predicted support provision on social media, but affect balance and need to belong did not. However, when negative affect and positive affect were examined separately, both were positively related to support provision on social media. Similar analyses examined predictors of providing social support offline, to explore differences to the social media context. The finding of this study broadened understanding of the factors that motivate individuals to provide social support on social media and offered deeper insights into the role of empathy and emotions in the context of support exchanging mechanisms on social media. This study concludes by addressing its theoretical contribution, practical implications, as well as the limitations and future research directions

The Role of Regulatory Foci and Information Seeking Behavior on Self-Disclosure on Social Media

This paper aims to explore the role of Regulatory Foci and Information Seeking Behavior on Self-Disclosure on social media platforms. This research used quantitative research methodology, a self -administrated survey was conducted among generation Y college students. Participants answers were recorded using Google forms and the results were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The Results showed that there was a significant relationship between the Regularity Foci and the Self disclosure. Moreover, the results showed that there was a mediating effect of the Information seeking behavior between Regularity Foci and Self disclosure. The limitation of this study is the sample size (150) and generalizability of the results

Hashtagging Your Health: Using Psychosocial Variables and Social Media Use to Understand Impression Management and Exercise Behaviors in Women

Our society has become heavily reliant on social media, especially in the health and exercise domain. Social and environmental factors impact females’ body image perceptions and create body image disturbances, yet little research is dedicated to the exploration of how social media, and social comparisons through social media exposure, impact exercise behaviors and body image perceptions in females. Considering Perloff\u27s (2014) theoretical model, the current study explored how the interaction between individual psychosocial variables and social media use predict exercise behaviors and engagement in impression management in women. Using a mixed methodological approach, the specific aims of this study were to explore (1) how psychosocial behaviors and social media use predict exercise behaviors and engagement in impression management; (2) the relationship between exercise behaviors, frequency of social media use, and content posted to social media; (3) how social media influences women’s thoughts, perceptions, and conceptualizations of a healthy body and healthy exercise behaviors. Two studies were conducted using both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore associations in recreationally active women. The results of these studies provide insight into the complexities of social media and its influence on exercise behaviors and impression management, providing information that may be used to develop future interventions to increase body positivity on social media and improve exercise experiences