A picture tells a thousand words: what Facebook and Twitter images convey about our personality

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), EP/J004995/1: An Exploration of Superidentit

Getting Acquainted with Groups and Individuals: Information Seeking, Social Uncertainty and Social Network Sites

This study examined whether the relationship between information-seeking and social uncertainty differed when information was sought about a specific individual (e.g. a new housemate) or a group (e.g. a group of new housemates). An online experiment recruited 488 first-year undergraduates in the weeks immediately before starting a new university. Four information-seeking strategies (Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon & Sunnafrank, 2002) successfully modeled how students sought information about each other using Social Network Sites. Whereas an interactive strategy predicted lower social uncertainty about individuals than groups, a passive strategy predicted higher social uncertainty for indi- viduals and lower social uncertainty for groups. Findings are discussed in the context of impression formation, specif- ically Entitativity (Hamilton & Sherman, 1995)

Image Choice to represent the Self in Different Online Environments

This paper draws from 'impression management theory' to examine the choices individuals make to visually represent themselves on Facebook and Twitter. We interviewed 20 participants about their image choice and the sorts of inferences others make about their identity. Participants were asked whether they believed their image influenced the types of people who connect with them, and whether their pictorial representation affected the topics and type of communication they have with other people. Contrary to previous research on online impression management, we found that few individuals were motivated to create a specific impression by playing with different images and instead individuals were motivated to appear genuine and authentic. Only a few desired hiding behind an avatar in order to feel freer to selfdisclose. We found that Facebook and Twitter were perceived as very different spaces with different affordances and that these perceived affordances influenced participants' choice in image

Individual differences in cyber security behaviors: an examination of who is sharing passwords

In spite of the number of public advice campaigns, researchers have found that individuals still engage in risky password practices. There is a dearth of research available on individual differences in cyber security behaviors. This study focused on the risky practice of sharing passwords. As predicted, we found that individuals who scored high on a lack of perseverance were more likely to share passwords. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found younger [corrected] people and individuals who score high on self-monitoring were more likely to share passwords. We speculate on the reasons behind these findings, and examine how they might be considered in future cyber security educational campaigns