Self-presentation Practices Research Articles

Investigating how AI Technologies Influence Changing Social Norms and Behaviors on Social Media, Particularly in Areas like Communication and Self-Presentation

Every community This study investigates the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on communication styles and self-presentation on social media platforms. The primary objectives include examining how AI tools impact user behavior and measuring their effects on engagement metrics. A quantitative analysis of 350 participants revealed a significant positive correlation between AI filter usage and engagement, with correlation coefficients of 0.65 for likes and 0.58 for comments. Additionally, the reliance on AI-driven communication tools was associated with a decrease in spontaneity, reflected by a regression coefficient of -0.65. Demographic analysis showed significant variations in AI tool usage across age and gender groups, suggesting that younger users and females are more inclined to utilize these technologies. The findings highlight the dual role of AI in enhancing user engagement while raising concerns about authenticity and social norms. The study concludes that while AI tools can significantly boost interactions, they may also diminish the richness of social connections. Recommendations for promoting authentic communication and diverse self-presentation practices are discussed, alongside the necessity for further research into the long-term effects of AI on social behaviors.

Image-centrism in Africa’s political communication: a social semiotic analysis of self-presentation practices by women political candidates in Kenya’s social media space

ABSTRACT This study explores self-visual presentation practices by female political candidates on Facebook during Kenya’s political campaigns that culminated in the national elections of 2022. The unit of analysis is the Facebook profile image of the women leaders. Image-centrism is operationalized as the extent to which ‘the image’ becomes the primary mode of self-presentation in political communication discourse. The study adopts a social semiotic approach to image interpretation postulated by Roland Barthes (1972. Mythologies. (A. Lavers. Trans) (Original work published 1957), 1977. Rhetoric of the image. In Image, music, text (pp. 32–51). Hill and Wang) and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge, 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Routledge). Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s approach, images are studied as ‘linguistic codes’ that have their own ‘grammatical’ structure. Barthes’s approach explores the cultural dimension of the images. The argument here is that visual communication is context-bound, and the theoretical premise laid is that politics is given direction, shape, and impetus by the culture of a people. In order to understand visual political communication in Kenya, therefore, the study analyses and interprets images from the lens of the wider African cultural contexts within which this communication takes place. The overarching questions in this study include: How did female politicians in Kenya strategically use Facebook images for self-representation during the political campaigns in 2022? How have women politicians in Kenya interwoven cultural ideology with visual political communication on their Facebook pages? The ultimate conclusion is that political images not only serve as discourses for communicating political ideas and making political statements, but they also serve as self-representation modes as well as cultural manifestation codes that illuminate specific societal concepts.

The influencer in the age of climate change: the authentic role model for sustainability

ABSTRACT In the age of climate change, the Instagram influencer is still a popular role model for ways to navigate the modern world, and they present us with their visual practices of self-presentation as well as their activism, lifestyle, and business model. However, conspicuous consumption – once a hallmark of success – is now being challenged, and perhaps a paradigm shift is building with the new breed of climate influencers with engaged expertise and ethical vigilance. The aim of this paper is first to identify climate celebrities and then to focus specifically on macro influencers, such as activists or actors, and on micro-influencers, such as entrepreneurs. The article examines how they communicate climate change applying different strategies on Instagram while remaining authentic, using concepts from research on social media within studies of celebrity culture and in climate celebrity communication Second, we demonstrate a shift taking place in the way climate change is communicated: from traditional legacy-media advocacy by celebrities to activists and entrepreneurs performing sustainable everyday practices on social media. This work will contribute directly to how we analyse both the macro and micro-climate influencer as a role model in the age of climate change, providing solutions for coping, engaging and taking action.

THE PERM INTELLIGENT VIEWER AT THE MEETING WITH HIGH MUSICAL ART (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN PERM)

The article examines the image of the Perm musical theatrе's viewer, formed in the theatrical environment of the regional center in 2011-2019. It was established that the myth designed by the artistic director of The Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre allows the neophyte to enter the traditionally closed world of classical music by building a specific plot (the logic of the fairy tale). The methodology is based on the concept of V. Ya. Propp. Using its language, the author indicates the stages of the intelligent viewer’s entry into the world of musical theatre. The process of becoming the viewer is based on the concept’s key elements (rite of passage - the madness of the neophyte - mastering the “cunning science”), which exist in the form of the plot’s “embryos” in the personal mythology of T. Currentzis. The main mythological motifs and images read by viewers influence the formation of their own practices of self-presentation. Focused interviews with viewers in Perm, which were conducted by the author in 2016-2019, are used as a source.

Working from paradise? An analysis of the representation of digital nomads’ values and lifestyle on Instagram

Digital nomads (DNs) are highly mobile professionals who work while travelling and travel while working. Their lifestyle has gained increasing academic attention, also from a communication perspective. Despite initial work on the topic, little is known about the self-presentation practices of DNs on social media. To address this lack of evidence and focusing on Instagram as a key platform for this group, we adopt a Goffmanian perspective. By using semi-structured interviews, we provide an in-depth analysis of their self-presentational practices, specifically their content strategies, imagined audience and use of platform affordances. The interviews included photo elicitation as a central element. The findings show how DNs highlight independence and freedom, de-emphasize work in favour of leisure and travel, develop audience management strategies that are mindful of the imagined audiences’ situation, while trying to foster reliability and authenticity and greatly value the flexibility and ephemerality of the Stories feature.

Filtering the I From the Ideal: Examining Preadolescents’ Online Self-Presentation in Relation to Their Perceived Attractiveness

Social media use among preadolescents continues to increase each year. The current cross-sectional study examined how preadolescents’ different (i.e., authentic and inauthentic) online presentation strategies, as well as the social feedback these representations receive, are associated with their perceived attractiveness. The results of our study ( n = 638; 52.4% girls, 9–13 years, Mage = 10.94, SDage = 0.85) showed that more truthful online self-presentation practices coincided with feeling more positive about one’s appearance. A significant moderation effect was found for social feedback, with the association becoming stronger as levels of online feedback (e.g., online popularity, likes, comments, and tags by other users) increased. Contrary to our expectations, inauthentic self-presentation was negatively related to preadolescents’ perceived attractiveness, while no significant interaction effect with online feedback was found.

Reclaiming agency in the digital neighborhood: an ethnographic exploration of ethno-religious minority youths’ performances of the masculine self

AbstractSelf-presentation has been identified as a key practice within digital youth cultures. The scholarship on youths’ self-presentation has extensively investigated how young people negotiate affordances in ways that optimally support their transitions into adulthood. However, the scholarship’s focus on identity development and technological affordances risks constructing a homogeneous, de-contextualized, and media-centric representation of digital youth cultures. To unveil how self-presentation practices are embedded within a broader socio-cultural context, I conducted a 15-month hybrid ethnographic study with 23 ethno-religious minority young men living in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The observations illustrate that these young men attempt to reclaim agency over their identity representations by performing “masculine ideals” of the self in response to racialized discourses. Overall, the results underscore the necessity of adopting an intersectional perspective that considers the interplay between self-presentation on social media and the threats and opportunities within youths’ (digital) neighborhoods.

Talking to the State: Interviewing the Elites about What’s Not to Be Said

Abstract How can researchers conduct interviews about sensitive topics the interlocutors are unwilling to discuss? This article contributes to the ongoing debates on interviewing. While we are observing a growing interest in this research method among international relations scholars, we lack formalized advanced practices for overcoming interview-related challenges. Drawing on elite interviews conducted in Israel and the UK, the article introduces two research techniques particularly useful in discussing controversial or sensitive matters: in-situ texts and adaptable self-presentation practices. It first presents the types of challenges I faced seeking answers as to why secure and powerful states like the UK and Israel employ narratives of vulnerability in wartime public communication. Then it analyses how the use of in-situ texts during interviews assists in introducing sensitive topics into the interview. I illustrate how they allow me to quickly establish the importance of the research phenomenon as well as to facilitate more open conversations. Finally, I show the benefits of the adaptable self-presentation technique. The goal of this practice is to conduct a responsive interview. One in which the researcher builds trust with the participant by bringing out its own biographical aspects that emphasize either its outsider or insider status.

Navigating visibility and risk: disabled young women’s self-presentation practices on social media

ABSTRACT Visibility is a requirement of neoliberal postfeminist girlhood and social media is often attributed with the capacity to provide disabled young women with visibility that they lack elsewhere. While some attention has been paid to the intersections of gender and disability through the self-presentations of disabled young women who are known as disabled content creators, such as bloggers and YouTubers, this article goes beyond this to examine how disabled young women represent themselves on social media as part of their everyday practices. Using a combination of discursive textual analysis of Twitter and Instagram accounts and semi-structured interviews with five disabled young women, I explore how affordances such as Twitter retweets play a key role in how disabled young women navigate their visibility online as part of their self-presentation practices. I argue that visibility is potentially risky and disabled young women’s social media use is shaped by concerns about harassment and questions about the ‘legitimacy’ of their disabled identities that operate at the intersections of gender, disability and race, stemming from their experiences of ‘systemic disbelief’. Finally, I situate these self-representation practices within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Juggling identities: Identification, collective memory, and practices of self-presentation in the United Nations General Debate

The concept of collective memory receives increasing attention in international relations. This burgeoning scholarship, however, mainly centres on its role as a strategic tool in foreign policy, binding it to national context. This research uses collective memory as an analytical framework to gauge identification processes at the international level. Specifically, we examine how states self-present themselves with various collective We’s and against multiple others. Contingent upon exclusive biographical narratives, we show how states transform and present collective memories in ways that resonate with their particular identity combination. Using inductive comparative analysis of speeches delivered by heads of state of Germany, the United States, and Israel during United Nations General Assembly sessions (1991–2017), analysis demonstrates how states evoke the past to narrate who they are, as states. Expanding understanding regarding how historical events are utilised in foreign policy, findings illustrate the dynamic juggling process states perform with various elements of self.

Общителността като сфера на емоциите в Mail – Jazz на Олга Шурбанова и Кръстю Пастухов

The article is dedicated to reflection on the selection of email correspondence of two Bulgarian intellectuals, Olga Shurbanova and Krystju Pastuhov, entitled Mail–Jazz (2011). A hybrid form and character of mnemonic strategies used by the authors result in a specific repertoire of self-presentation practices, typical of “noble misfits” who, in their behaviour, display the common environmental (emotional, aesthetic and intellectual) opposition to the dominant culture. The analysis uses Simmel’s category of “sociability”, which became a point of departure for deliberations on the lifestyle and performative identity of the generation and the environment in the years of youth, which refused to be homo sovieticus and after the breakthrough of 1989 remained an attentive and critical observer of changes.

Analysis of Digital Self-Presentation Practices and Profiles of Spanish Adolescents on Instagram and TikTok

This study analyses self-presentation practices and profiles among Spanish teenagers on Instagram and TikTok. Both of these online spaces prioritise and promote visual publications, are structured to allow feedback on self-presentation, and offer the user filters both to control self-image and to target specific audiences. Three research questions guided the methodological process for the twofold analysis of self-presentation practices on social networks: an exploratory factor analysis to identify latent factors among these practices; and a descriptive analysis of the profiles identified by gender and age. Results indicate that adolescents’ self-presentation practices were related to three different factors: social validation; authenticity; and image control. One of the most outstanding results is that self-presentation practices could be less guided by social feedback, since the number of followers or likes was irrelevant for most adolescents, and that adolescents increasingly tend to be guided by innovative predispositions of truthfulness. In turn, conclusions suggest that teens need to be equipped with suitable self-representation practices for safe and sustainable identity narratives on social networks, since the global COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially increased both the usage and the time spent on social networking sites, enlarging the availability of spaces for adolescents to express themselves and build their identities through different self-representation practices.

Pokolenie pojednanej tożsamości? Olgi Szurbanowej i Krystio Pastuchowa Mail – Jazz

The article is a study on the selection of email correspondence between two Bul­garian intellectuals, Olga Shurbanova and Krystju Pastuhov, entitled Mail–Jazz (2011). The hybrid form and character of mnemonic strategies used by the authors result in a specific repertoire of self-presentation practices, typical of the so called “noble misfits” whose behavior expresses opposition to the dominant culture, a re­sponse common for the artistic milieu. The analysis uses Georg Simmel’s category of “sociability” which is a starting point for a study of the lifestyle and performa­tive identity of the authors’ generation and the social circles of their youth. These groups refused to accept the homo sovieticus identity, and remained remained attentive and critical observers of the changes following he 1989 breakthrough.

Microhistories of Jewish Clandestine Performance, Self-Orientation and Survival during the Holocaust

Following the Nazi occupation of much of Europe, millions of ordinary citizens found themselves cast in unfamiliar, sometimes wholly clandestine roles. Many of these roles came to be life- and death-defining. For Jews and other targeted minorities, going undercover became a matter of everyday resistance and survival. In what were previously spaces of co-existence, they routinely risked being attacked, blackmailed or exposed—at times by former neighbours or by people offering shelter. For Jews in hiding or seeking to ‘pass’ openly under another identity, the breakdown of all norms turned habitual, daily acts—including of self-presentation and self-orientation—into what the sociologist Stanisław Ossowski called an ‘endless surviving’, a ‘temporary eternity’. The unbounding of past experience drove a radical reshaping of agency among people struggling to survive. According to many of their first-hand testimonies, this adaptive agency was largely defined by performance. Their recollections offer distinctive performance vernaculars that detail the covert ways of being that emerged in this world of pervasive observation and threat. This article draws on the postwar concept of Alltagsgeschichte—‘everyday history’ or ‘microhistory’ from below—to analyse a range of sources relating to occupied Poland. It investigates accounts of performing, improvising and cultivating know-how in extreme circumstances—from Jewish children masquerading as non-Jewish adults to Jewish activists passing within the Polish underground. It examines practices of self-presentation articulated by Jews living undercover, including how they interpreted changing modalities of space and unfamiliar cultural repertoires. It traces how they adapted by means of performance not only to abrupt, catastrophic situational shifts, but to changes that unfolded over years, forcing individuals to keep improvising, keep repeating—without missteps—even as conditions deteriorated beyond recognition. Finally, it suggests the everyday histories of Jewish passers constitute a cultural remembering that is increasingly vital today, as others fleeing contemporary atrocities are compelled to perform to attain refuge.

Context Collapse: Social Psychology and New Media Perspectives

The communication between individuals has been changed and transformed by the use and popularization of mass media. The use of social media profoundly influences the mechanics of daily life by affecting the informal interactions of individuals, as well as institutional structures and professional routines. With the widespread and increasing use of social media platforms, the effects of these platforms on individuals and society have also formed a vital research ground. The concept of context collapse can be considered one of these effects and refers to the fact that different contexts, which are an essential determinant in face-to-face social relations, collapse in virtual space. Social media platforms are open to anyone and transfer communications in different contexts in physical places into one single space. That fact causes a context collapse. Social media, where different contexts collapse on each other, remove the reference points of individuals by making their self-presentation practices more complex. This study aims to discuss the theoretical foundations of the context collapse and present a multi-disciplinary perspective by addressing social psychology and new media disciplines. For this purpose, first, the importance of context in daily life practices was emphasized within the framework of these disciplines. Afterward, theoretical debates and empirical studies on context collapse have been reviewed. Finally, the relationships between the context collapse and gender roles and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed. Keywords: Context collapse, self, social cognition, social roles, gender, COVID-19

#reimagining Arab Women’s Social Media Empowerment and the Postdigital Condition

Social media intersects across physical spaces, digital infrastructures, and social subjectivities in terms of what is being called the “postdigital,” in an increasingly merging offline/online world. But what precisely does it mean to be “postdigital” if you are an Arab woman or social actor in the Global South? How does access to social networking sites, while increasing visibilities, also provide potential for increased agency? This study is concerned with the extent to which Arab women’s self-presentation practices on Instagram could be considered as empowering, or otherwise, within the postdigital condition. First, the study takes Instagram as a case to develop a theoretical framework for considering social media as a tertiary artifact, involving material, routine-symbolic, and conceptual affordances. Second, it applies the artifact framework to explore a corpus of self-presentations by five Arab women influencers. Feminist postdigital theorizing offers unique contributions to problematizing normative, ethnocentric, and neoliberal conceptions of Arab women’s empowerment. The application of the novel framework leads to an interpretative discussion of Arab women’s influencing practices across merging offline/online and transnational boundaries. Overall, the critical perspective begins to reimagine Arab women’s empowerment, not simply as individualized or material processes, but as agencies that are interwoven within the commercialized and conceptual dynamics of visual social media.

Becoming #Instafamous

AbstractDrawing onGoffman’s (1990 [1959])metaphor of stage, this paper considers Instagram a frontstage environment where users are cautious of being watched and attune their performance to how they want to be perceived via strategic self-presentation. This understanding of online performance is particularly pertinent in the discussions of bloggers who turn to Instagram to promote their work to new audiences. Examining the self-presentation practices of three fashion bloggers, this paper argues that to gain popularity on Instagram, bloggers utilize the features of formality and informality in the construction of an authentic and likable self-image. Since in the photographs the bloggers’ professional life is usually depicted as distant from their audience’s reality, the accompanying textual caption serves as a means of providing balance for the overall image the poster seeks to present. Consequently, the caption abounds with features of informality, which connote linguistic immediacy and imitate an intimate conversation with peers.

How to construct corporate identity and reputation. Is the ‘about us’ page a micro-genre?

Multimodal resources and digital multimedia technologies have been modifying and remodelling social practices in any field over the last decades. In business communication, histories of business, corporate vision and mission are today instantiated by the ‘About Us’ webpage, a sort of multimodal self-portrait or short autobiography created by the company itself. From a discursive perspective, this webpage typology has always been disregarded if compared with the crucial role played by the homepage that, according to the Usability guidelines, is to present the company, its business and market value. Only recently, web marketers have focused on the strategic function the undervalued ‘About Us’ page fulfils. It has revealed itself to be a goal-oriented sales page which focuses on highlighting the most relevant credentials of a company, its brand, and on making a strong impression on potential customers. Its aim is to remodel practices of Self presentation into practices of Self branding and this process takes place thanks to the co-deployment of different semiotic resources which, in turn, make use of different digital media technologies. This contribution will show how the specialized discourses of marketing and branding are translated, or rather transducted, into multimodal artefacts, the corporate ‘About Us’ pages, and how persuasive discursive strategies are embedded in a well-defined digital text pattern. Through the analysis of a small sample of corporate ‘About Us’ pages, we will demonstrate that these pages are the loci where business reputation and corporate identity can be constructed more effectively.

Spontaneous, Yet Studious

Esports commentating, the practice of reporting, explaining, and elaborating live competitive gameplay to spectators, is a centerpiece of esports as a rapidly growing spectator sport and an essential component of today's growing gaming/live streaming ecosystem. In particular, esports commentators face three unique challenges: the preparation for conducting real time commentating on highly dynamic esports games; the complexity of in-the-moment decisions during the game's broadcast; and the balance between personal self-presentation and professional content presentation. Yet this emerging and novel sociotechnical practice and how these challenges affect esports commentators' live performance and self-presentation practices has received relatively little research attention in HCI and CSCW. In this paper, we endeavor to address these limitations by empirically analyzing 19 esports commentators' sociotechnical practices. Our findings highlight the complex interaction dynamics involved in esports commentating as well as the importance of professionalism and social presence in esports commentators' self-presentation. In order to execute seamless and spontaneous commentary, commentators must be studious and engage in much prior research and have a clear sense of self. We contribute to the growing CSCW literature on esports commentating practices by revealing esports commentators' unique decision making process presenting information and their self-image.

“Elegant, ferocious, witty”: The Professional Glamour of Journalist Barbara Moon (1926–2009)

This paper explores the writing and self-presentation practices of Barbara Moon, a respected journalist and magazine editor who worked in Toronto between the 1950s and 1990s. The entry point into this study was a selection of garments donated by Moon to Toronto’s Ryerson Fashion Research Collection in 1997. With a research approach combining material culture, textual, and discourse analyses, connections were drawn between the themes Moon explored in her work, the collection of clothing she chose to archive, and the public commentary around her elegant self-fashioning. Using Moon as a historical case study, this project provides insight into how glamour can be performed, including negotiating gender norms in a male-dominated workplace through fashion and personal appearance.