The Manipulation of Online Self-Presentation

Create, Edit, Re-edit and Present

A. Attrill

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137483416
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores psychological theories around the ways in which people present themselves online. The role of dispositional and situational factors along with the motivations that drive self-presentation across diverse Internet arenas are considered.

1

Introduction – Who Am I?

Abstract: Providing an introduction, this chapter outlines the main concepts that build the foundation of the book. It considers the reasons as to why we need to understand the different selves that people present on diverse websites across the Internet. In doing so, it also looks at the ways in which the Internet is constantly evolving, and how people use this to their advantage in ways that extend and enhance their offline self-presentations online.

Key words: cyberself; Internet landscapes; Internet tools; online self

Attrill, Alison. The Manipulation of Online Self-Presentation: Create, Edit, Re-edit and Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137483416.0003.

On welcoming you to this text on how we create and represent ourselves online, the easiest way to start the discussion around how we create versions of the self that we then use on the Internet is to have you ask yourself the question “Who am I?”. You may have asked yourself this question on numerous occasions relating to many different activities, relationships and across diverse social settings. It is the question of who we believe our core central guiding self to be, as well as how we believe ourselves to change depending upon factors such as time, situation and people with whom we are interacting. Mostly, we consider and ponder who we are when thinking about our offline selves and our offline interactions. At this point, let us denote offline as any behaviours or interactions that we carry out without any use of technology, including mobile phones, gaming consoles or smart TVs. All online behaviours are those carried out on any interconnected network that enables connecting to and interacting with people and other devices via a technological device. Such behaviours can include, but are not limited to, emailing, instant messaging, blogging, social networking, shopping, banking and gaming.

Of interest for the current text is how we represent ourselves online across these and many other different types of online behaviours. Returning to the “Who am I?” question, understanding who we think we are, who we believe our core selves to be becomes a rather more difficult question when we throw the Internet into the mix. Some might believe that they behave entirely differently online and offline. Others might perceive their online self to be a real representation of their offline self. Many individuals might think that how they present themselves online has little or no consequences to both their online and offline interactions, relationships and existences. This text outlines the theories and research associated with some of these considerations. In particular, it focuses on how humans behave online, how they create similar or distinct versions of self online compared to offline, and the possible consequences of these self-portrayals. In doing so, it explores whether the online self is the same as the offline self, an entirely different entity to the offline self, or an extension of the offline self. It focuses heavily on identity, how individuals create their self-identities, how they are constructed and manipulated to fit temporal and situational norms or behavioural requirements. Bearing this in mind, it is important to note that identity online can be understood in at least two ways. It can imply how one creates and represents the self online. It can also mean how one’s identity is revealed online by the self, other users and/or services, people to whom we have entrusted our information which they subsequently pass on to others. This text focuses more on the former, whereas the latter is more relevant to privacy and trust concerns relation to online behaviour. A further note is made to the use of our selves or our self as distinct words in this text. These words have different connotations to the use of ourselves or ourself with the former denoting the self as a distinct entity.

Before jumping straight in with these topics, it is important to first note that this text is not intended as a comprehensive literature review of all of the areas outlined. Rather, it reflects a starting point for anyone who is interested in any of these areas of how people present their selves online. There are a number of instances where information may be repeated throughout the text as it is relevant to different areas of consideration. This repetition was believed to be important to the flow and understanding of the material. Cross references have been included where possible between chapters and sections to help the reader follow the flow of the material and some of the arguments and statements made throughout.

At this point, you might also have noticed that the word Internet has been capitalised. In Cyberpsychology, the globally accessible World Wide Web is referred to as the Internet. An internet, identified with a small “i” is a localised network to which a select number of people have access. In other disciplines this might also be known as an intranet. The focus of this text is on the self as presented and represented via the Internet rather than localised internets. This can now be accessed via a multitude of devices, from personal computers to mobile phones, and from gaming consoles to smart televisions. The Internet is there. It is not going away and much of human life now assumes that we all have access to it and are able to competently use it. Although there is an ongoing debate about who uses the Internet, how and for what, the focus of this text is on how we construct our selves online. It is therefore beyond the confines of this work to discuss, for example, the existence of a digital generation in Internet use. The reader is referred to the recent book Cyberpsychology by Attrill (2015) for discussions around these and many more factors that also play a role in shaping online behaviours. Just before moving on to consider why we need to explore the ways in which people edit and possibly recreate different versions of self online, some of the key concepts that will be core to the understanding of this text will be briefly outlined, beginning with a description of the area of study that has become known as Cyberpsychology.

1.1Cyberpsychology

The word cyberpsychology is derived from the words cybernetics and psychology. The former refers to understanding systems and structures that can be operationalised and controlled, while the word psychology is most synonymous with the understanding of the interaction of the mind and behaviour. Cyberpsychology is a rapidly growing and ever-evolving sub-discipline of psychology that explores the underlying psychological processes, motivations, intentions, behavioural outcomes and effects of online behaviour on both our online and offline lives. It focuses on how the mind and body evoke and react to interactions with other human beings and services via technology. This is not the same as the study of human-computer interaction. This focuses more on the actual interactions that humans have with any form of technology with a view to designing new technologies and enhance existing technologies. As you might imagine, the rapidity with which online behaviours are growing, and how people are now using different types of services online for a variety of reasons, causes quite a difficulty for researchers being able to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the Internet. There might be times throughout this text where what might appear to be older research is cited. Other times, work that has considered offline behaviours might be applied to understanding online equivalents. This is not only a sign of the need for much more research in the area of cyberpsychology, but also of the need to consider the Internet as an ever-evolving tool for human behaviour. We will return to these notions throughout the text, but for now it shall be noted that the use of older or offline research in certain places in the book serves to illustrate certain points or underline arguments. Most of these will revolve around the core concept of the book that is the “self”.

1.2Online and offline selves

A major shift is occurring in which digital machines are beginning to adapt to humans. Through the refinements of eye-tracking, voice, and gesture control, the distinction between the physical and the digital self will no longer have an interface barrier. (Pak, 2014, p. 141)

If you are asked “who are you”, what are the first ten things that spring to mind? You could respond with your gender, age and nationality. You might say, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, lecturer, shop assistant or factory worker. You might reply that you are a student, that you like a certain type of sport, or that you prefer reading and playing computer games. Alternatively, you might focus on your attributes and describe yourself as a kind, well-rounded human being who likes to engage in charity work. Whatever your reply, you would be providing information about yourself that enables another person to build a picture of who you are, a sense of your self. All of the adjectives and nouns that you use to reply to the question of who you are reflect words that you use to create your own self identity. This is how you construct your own image and understanding of yourself. It is also how you want others to see you. You might hold a version of your self that you believe to be an absolute true reflection of who you really are, the parts of you that are consistent regardless of time or situation, or those people with whom you are interacting. This core self is however malleable. Sometimes, you might change your behaviour to suit the people you are with, or the situation in which you find yourself. To illustrate this point, consider your own behaviour across different situations. You would likely behave differently on a first date to how you would behave if you were out for a celebration with your closest friends. This shows a malleable aspect to the self. You can change your current self to suit the environment and any given situation in which you find yourself in much the same way as you may change your clothes or outfit to suit a situation. This occurs without distracting from the notion of a core self that remains situationally and temporally stable and consistent. We also use our knowledge about ourselves to assess, interpret and respond to other people. Think about the last time that you were in a restaurant. If you took a look around you at the other diners, you probably made assumptions about them based on their appearance and the social cues that they were using, such as facial expressions and body language. Your interpretation of these factors would have been influenced by how you think you should behave in that situation. Your self-knowledge thus guides how you construct your self, how you change and manipulate aspects of your character and behaviour depending upon a number of factors, and how you interpret others’ behaviour based on your own notion of self. Your self-knowledge is therefore probably one of the most powerful cognitive tools that you possess. Not only does it analyse yours’ and others’ behaviours along with situational cues, but it also places cognitive interpretation and responses on those behaviours. In other words, how you think and feel, your emotions and your overall sense of well-being are all somehow related to and

guided by your own self-knowledge. We are most often at the forefront of our actions and experience these from our own perspective, based on our own personal experiences and judgements.

There will be a number of points in the text in which the role of cognitions and cognitive processes in online self-representations and behaviours will be considered. To do so, interpretations of memory storage systems and processes from both cognitive and social psychological theories will be used (see Chapter 5). For the purpose of this introductory chapter however, let us consider the self as a flexible malleable construct that is influenced and guided by one’s own and others’ perceptions and interpretations of a range of external factors in the offline world. This brief definition of self focuses largely on the offline self. In response to the question of who you are, you would unlikely respond with aspects of your digital self, or cyberself, and yet for most inhabitants of westernised cultures, the Internet has become an integral part of daily living. Both of these terms are used to refer to the self that you present when engaging in any online activity. Although you can represent yourself digitally across a number of digitalised media, from virtual world technology to mobile phone apps, throughout the current work we will refer to the cyberself, online self or digital self as being the person you are online, regardless of the technology used to access the online world. Where the word self occurs, it is used to denote who you are offline.

1.3Self-presentation and impression management

As the title of this book suggests, people are able to present themselves online in any way they choose to. This is a process of self-presentation, which has been described by Leary (1995, p. 2) as “the process of controlling how one is perceived by other people”. Self-presentation occurs when people carefully monitor, manage and present the self in a certain way with the intention to maintain a certain image of oneself to another person(s) (Brown, 2007). This manipulated presentation in turn affects how people create their own image of themselves (Harter, 1998; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). Many factors influence how people present themselves to others, including the roles that they play in life along with the rules and regulations of the society within which they exist. There are many ways in which one’s identity, self-image and self-presentation come together to create an overall sense of self. Having a positive sense of self is very much linked to our psychological well-being (see e.g., Berzonsky, 2003a, 2003b; Luyckx, Schwartz, Goossens, Soenens & Beyers, 2008; Marcia, 1993; Meeus, 1996; Meeus, Iedema, Helsen & Vollebergh, 1999). It is therefore not surprising that we engage in impression management, that is the way in which we try to manage others’ perceptions and interpretations of our self in order that they see us in a positive light. Online, we can do this in a number of ways, from extending a true representation of who we are offline to our online activities to creating a completely different persona that provides us with a false sense of anonymity. It is worth noting that often the terms self-presentation and impression management are used interchangeably, both implying how we construct and represent the self to evoke a certain impression about us from others.

One of the questions that will be considered throughout this book is that of why we engage in impression management online. If you consider your own online interactions on popular websites such as Facebook, then you might post different content depending upon what you want to achieve from the post. It might simply be that you want to create a feeling of being liked or accepted by other people liking your post. Another reason might be that you experience a positive reward from the responses to your posts, from presenting certain aspects of your self, or presenting a certain version of yourself online (e.g., Leary & Allen, 2011). There are a multitude of reasons as to why people behave the way they do relating to the online self-presentations. Many of these will be explored in this text as will the notion of just how free we are to play around with the editing and presentation of our cyberselves. Some might argue that we have a lot more freedom online than offline to present ourselves any way we choose to, but that may not be the case for all types of online interactions. If playing an online game, for instance, a player might use a nickname, but if engaging in online dating with the real intent of finding a romantic partner, hiding or manipulating aspects of their self-presentation in order to appear in a more favourable light may not be the best way to create an impression that results in any long-lasting offline interaction.

1.4Ever-changing landscapes

Throughout this book, one of the underlying themes is the notion that most work carried out with the ambition of understanding online representations of self and associated behaviours is characterised by the absence of consideration for the wide and varied landscape that is the Internet. In our offline world, we attend different places and venues, meet with different groups of people and carry out a range of private and social activities throughout our lives, many with direct goals in mind, some with just an ambling social flare to them. Some events will be short-lived, others will be longer and have a more meaningful impact on our lives.

In the psychology of offline behaviour, there are a number of sub-disciplines that are utilised to understand diverse interactions. Indeed, there are theories that aim to explain our existence before we actually take our first breath in the world, theories that track our psychological processes, progress, developments and demise from birth to death, theories that explain the impact of adolescence on our social and personal lives, theories that explain how and why we do the jobs we do, the sports we engage in, why some people are more lonely, socially anxious, clinically depressed or more extravert, agreeable and open than others, as well as theories that attempt to categories us according to personalities and stereotypes, to name just some of the areas that offline psychology aims to conceptualise, theorise and explain. In its infancy, cyberpsychology appeared to ignore most of these areas in favour of a somewhat biased view towards applying social, social cognitive and personality theories to understanding online behaviour. This application occurred irrespective of the online behaviour being explained and was likely an artefact of the notion that most of the actions engaged in online are of a social ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction Who Am I?
• 2  Theoretical Considerations
• 3  Individual Factors and the Cyberself
• 4  Motivations for Sharing the Cyberself
• 5  The Social Cognitive Internet and the Cyberself
• References
• Index