UC Santa Cruz

My research focuses on understanding how self-presentation acts on media. In 3 previous projects, I have examined how people present themselves by comparing their offline personality with self-presentations on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Texting, and Video calls. I use mixed methods, combining Big-5 personality surveys and interviews to probe self-presentational differences between media. I have found reliable differences between media and offline self-presentations in those studies. In particular, that Neuroticism is always lower on media across multiple studies. Furthermore, some differences aren’t due only to the affordances of the media, but social norms on that media, which I found when looking at different types of Instagram accounts.

I expand on this work through two additional studies using new methods to explore different research questions. The first study examines how users of multiple media make decisions about where to make a post. I used scenarios to understand how users of multiple media decide between the media that they use and propose a mental model of media choice. First, if there is a quick match between an existing social norm on a medium and their intended post, they will post it there. If there isn’t, then the user must consider the affordances and other social norms of the media they use before deciding where to post.

The second study examines how outside observers interpret an Instagram profile. I presented observers with a dynamic webpage, similar to Instagram, to gather behavioral and survey data on how said observers looked at and interpreted these Instagram profiles. Based on the results, observers don’t see an Instagram specific self-presentation but are more accurate to the profile owner’s offline personality. I finish by presenting my doctoral research's technical and theory-based implications.