The 'like' generation: an exploration of social networking's influence on adolescents' productions of gender, identity, (virtual) capital and technological practices

This thesis explores how social networking platforms influence the production of identity, status and capital amongst adolescents. This includes an exploration of how some digital communication platforms have negatively impacted on the social experiences of some teenagers and resulted in these users adapting their digital communicative practices to overcome communicative challenges. The study draws upon data collected via 9 semi-structured interviews, 9 focus groups and 84 surveys with boys and girls aged 11-16 from three schools in England. It explores specific social norms which relate to gender, and how they are negotiated within both masculine and feminine interactions through the respective practices of banter and gossip or stalking. These interactional processes are used as a means of negotiating status and of in-group inclusion and out-group rejection (Goffman, 1963). Furthermore they are important elements in the formation of relationships, identity and social capital. For Bourdieu social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition (1980, 2). The production of social capital is linked to an individual s capacity to manage group norms and approved values. This study demonstrates that online displays of gender are part of adolescents attempts to generate social capital through gaining positive public affirmations (for example in the form of likes). This has led to a new form of capital which has been titled virtual capital , and which is revealed to be a crucial element in adolescents self-worth and status. Although social networking sites can facilitate the creation of these capitals, they can also simultaneously hinder their creation. Facebook s system of widespread automatic information sharing, alongside a lack user of control in managing the flow of data which is received and shared, has led to many teens experiencing challenges in how they produce identity and gain popularity. This has led to negative social experiences, a growing disillusionment with Facebook, and increased use of more contemporary platforms such as Snap Chat which offer a solution to these problems. Therefore this thesis presents findings on how adolescents use social networking to negotiate gender and identity, produce social status and how these attempts can be confounded by the very technology that facilitates their production

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

The Role of Social Media in Negotiating Gender Identity among Young Thai Women

This study explored how 18-year-old women in Bangkok used social media to negotiate and express their gender identities online. In Thailand, prevailing cultures and traditional public discourses on hetero-normative sexualities constrain young women’s gender performance both offline and online. The study interrogated processes of adaptation and resistance of traditional mainstream discourses through the consideration of social media as an alternative and flexible space for young women to negotiate and communicate diverse, autonomous gender performances. A gap was identified in terms of the ways in which identity was tactically managed and constructed within different class structures. To investigate these, young women were recruited from three socioeconomic backgrounds: lower class, middle class, and upper class. Data were gathered through interviews, focus groups, and online ethnographies, such as posted pictures, shared contents, and comments on profiles, and interpreted through a multimodal and social semiotic lens to gain deeper understandings of women's classed and gendered social media practices. By examining and cross-referencing qualitative data and the construction of online profiles deriving from different social backgrounds, insights were yielded and a snapshot of the everyday identity work of Thai young women captured as they responded to and resisted traditional forms of feminine conduct

The Dangerous Side of Social Media: Manipulating Bystander Aggression and Support to Cyberbullying Victims Through an Application of Side

Cyberbullying constitutes a complex social problem that is understudied among college students. A crucial factor contributing to the severity of cyberbullying is the level of bystander (un) involvement, or individuals who witness cyberbullying. A possible explanation for the different behaviors of bystanders is found in the theory of the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE), which suggests that CMC alters perceptions of the self and others. The current investigation (n = 442) employs an experimental design testing the SIDE model and predicted that individuals in more anonymous conditions would be more likely to adopt a disconfirming or a confirming group norm in the context of an online discussion group. A total of 442 college students participated in the study. Results suggest that the group norm significantly impacts how individuals respond to a cyberbullying victim. Implications of this result and information on the prevalence of cyberbullying in college are discussed. Suggestions for cyberbullying interventions based on these findings are offered

Exploring young Saudi women's engagement with social media : feminine identities, culture and national image

PhD ThesisWith the rising popularity of social media in the last decade and a half, young women in Saudi Arabia have been utilising these platforms to negotiate values and norms in relation to issues such as veiling, work, their place within the private sphere, and their relationships with the opposite-sex. The aim of this thesis is to understand how the rise of social media engagement is impacting long-held traditions and values about Saudi women, and how their social media use is impacting on their public national image. The research addresses the interplay between Saudi conservative nationalists, who wish to preserve a traditional image of femininity that is highly tied to notions of piety and deference, and the Saudi women who, through social media, are actively challenging these longstanding views on how women should behave in society. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s notion of counterpublics (Fraser 1991), this research argues that the democratic potential of social media platforms, independent of cultural and state laws that serve to direct, control and determine the attitudes and behaviour of young Saudi women, has facilitated the emergence of a counterpublic in which alternate contemporary identities are expressed and represented. By employing a triangulation approach for collecting data within a constructivist research paradigm, this research draws on four sets of data. Firstly, it uses netnography to observe the public accounts of seven female social media influencers. Secondly, it observes the personal accounts of nine Saudi women. A third set of data consists of six one-to-one interviews. Finally, a fourth set of data entails seven focus groups involving an overall sample of 36 participants. Using thematic analysis, this research argues that Saudi women, particularly younger women, using social media are adopting a more critical view of traditional customs surrounding femininity and women’s place in a society constructed through a collectivist ideology towards more individualistic values, norms and social ties that emphasise agency and autonomy (Giddens, 1991). I also argue that Saudi women active on social media are modernising the national public image of Saudi women. By engaging with Dobson’s (2015) study of post-feminist digital culture, I explore the contemporary ideals of Saudi femininity that are portrayed on social media by the young Saudi women I observe in this research and I document the complex and many ways these women can now be in the world. I find that women’s engagement with social media is challenging traditional values and norms and performing a vanguard role in reimagining the public national image of Saudi women today

Facebooking for Feminism: Social Network Sites as Feminist Learning Spaces

Social media such as Facebook have become a significant space where social interactions increasingly take place. Within these spaces, users construct and engage with information that may facilitate social movements such as feminism. This study explored ways feminists learn, challenge, and reproduce discourses related to gender and feminism through Facebook. This research is positioned within current literature and theory related to gendered contexts of social media engagement and feminist social movement learning. Using qualitative interviews and a digital focus group, I investigated the experiences of 9 women who either learn about or engage with feminism through Facebook. Using critical feminist discourse analysis, I coded and analyzed themes that related to ways feminism is represented, constructed, navigated, and limited through Facebook. Specifically, I considered ways in which feminism can be learned, ways Facebook can be used as a learning platform, and ways gendered power relations can influence feminist engagement online. I advocate for continued exploration of and engagement with feminist uses of Facebook

Defining the ‘authentic’: identity, self-presentation and gender in Web 2.0 networked social media.

As the Internet has become increasingly integrated into people’s everyday lives, it has become increasingly important to consider the opportunities it provides for social interaction, self-presentation and self expression. Online spaces have often been considered to be quintessentially postmodern in potentials, allowing for play and experimentation detached from local geographic contexts and disconnected from visual markers of difference such as gender and ethnicity. Debates about affordances and potentials of online interaction have been reframed by several emergent trends in Internet usage encapsulated in the term ‘Web 2.0 networked social media’- including social networking and media sharing sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. These sites represent a renewed focus on the production of an ‘authentic’, often visually represented self online, strongly grounded in both offline and online networks of experiences, locations, relationships and contacts. These occupy a differing, interesting set of positions with respect to theories of contemporary identity and sociality, emphasising authenticity and permanence and embedding the individual in local contexts rather than emphasising anonymity and fluidity. This PhD investigates the impact of these trends, broadly examining gender, self-presentation, identity and interaction in the context of contemporary online spaces. Examining self-presentational and interactional practices and the display of taste online, this thesis will argue that the concept of ‘authenticity’ is a crucial structuring factor across all aspects of contemporary online interaction. The thesis will explore and examine the implications of this discourse of authenticity which delineates the boundaries of acceptable online self-presentation and interaction, and yet lies in tension with the complexities of impression management across the complex merged audiences brought together on social networking sites. The uncertainties and ambiguities of the merged audience here provoke a reflexivity which leads to a reaffirmation of an essentially unreflexive, pre-social self as ‘authentic’. Taking into account the need to account for agency and reflexivity the thesis will work towards an understanding of online self-presentation, gender and identity which incorporates the multiple narrative, performative and aesthetic aspects of identity

Facebook as an implied author: an investigation into the characterization techniques employed by users of the social networking site, Facebook, through a comparative study with Jane Austen's Emma

Abstract This research investigates how Facebook guides its users to characterize themselves. By using Jane Austen, and specifically her characterization techniques in Emma as a framework, Facebook is shown to use many of the same techniques to guide its co-authors into certain characters. Comparing a 21st century social networking site to a 19th century novel is unusual, but will show how in many ways Facebook functions as an implied author. The comparison is also used to suggest that, contrary to previous research into online social networking which focussed on profiles being used as an expresson of a users identity, Facebook profiles are a fictionalised version of the users and their lives. A case study, a young female studying at a private university in Johannesburg, South Africa, is used to illustrate this. She is shown to have created a fictionalised and idealized Facebook character for herself, mostly through the use of photographs. Using her photos as examples, the importance of photographic representation as a Facebook characterization technique, including accompanying skills such posing for photographs and editing photographs, is explored, as are the implications of this visually based representation, for example the difficulty in portraying depth of character or a believable inner life. The research employs Barthes’ writings on photography to guide these explorations