SELF PRESENTATION ON THE INTERNET

1

• SELF PRESENTATION ON THE INTERNET
• Susan B. Barnes
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• sbbgpt_at_rit.edu

2

• Abstract
• Despite emerging visual technologies, such as
  the World Wide Web, many Internet environments
  remain pre-dominately text-based, such as e-mail.
  When people present themselves to others they
  use written communication.

3

• Abstract (cont.)
• Although text provides a limited number of
  visual and sensory cues, social presence can be
  established. Perceived sociable interaction with
  others, requires individuals to project a sense
  of self. This occurs when people use email
  addresses, signature lines, nicknames, and
  personal profiles.

4

• Online communication disconnects a person from
  his or her words. Separation of the physical
  body from the communication process enables
  people to create idealized descriptions, present
  alternate personas, and misbehave online. Thus,
  the Internet introduces a variety of new options
  for self presentation.

5

• Theory of Self
• George Herbert Mead (1932, 1934) argued that the
  self arises through social interactions with
  objects and other people.

6

• Theory of Self
• Consciousness awareness of the self and others
  leads to identity formation.
• Meads theories led to the idea of symbolic
  interactionism.

7

• Symbolic interactionists contend that the
  formation of social worlds involves
  inter-communicative symbolic interaction.

8

• Building on the ideas of symbolic
  interactionists, media scholars, such as Paul
  Levinson, Joshua Meyrowitz, Neil Postman, and
  Lance Strate, have studied media environments.

9

• Media as environments
• is an ecological view that considers how
  communication media influence human perception,
  understanding, feeling, and value.

10

• Symbolic Interactionism plus media ecology

11
See S. B. Barnes (2003). Media Ecology and
Symbolic Interactionism. Proceedings of the 3rd
Annual Media Ecology Conference, New York, June
2002 (located at www.media-ecology.org)
12

• The Internet creates a new type of social
  environment in which people can meet and interact.

13

• Example of a conversation
• gt From GMP
• gt
• gtActually, wed all do better
• gt reading books.
• Especially your book! -)
• --Joe

14

• Research on establishing a social presence
  through textual exchanges, now falls under the
  larger category of
• social presence theory.

15

• Social presence is based on how participants
  perceive their exchanges to be
• unsociable sociable
• insensitive sensitive
• cold warm
• impersonal personal

16

• In 1976, Short, Williams, and Christie explored
  the social psychology of telecommunication and
  argued that media have various degrees of social
  presence, which influence the ways in which
  individuals will interact.

17

• In reduced-cue situations
• (e-mail, chat, discussion lists) the
  communicators will modify their behavior and
  head-nods indicating agreement can be replaced
  with verbal statements such as
• I agree.

18

• From media ecological and social presence
  perspectives, Online participants creatively
  utilize language to create social presence.

19

• EMOTICONS
• U.S. European Japanese Emotions
• -) Regular smile (_) Regular smile
• -ll Anger (ogt) Excuse me
• -)) Very happy (o) Happy

20

• IRC Commands and How They Appear
• /invite command
• as seen by the inviter as
• Inviting Red_Fox to channel FuzzyAnimals
• as seen by the inited person as
• /RobBoy invites you to channel FuzzyAnimals

21

• Building Social Presence
• A sense of social presence can be established by
  referring to participants by name and by sharing
  activities both on and offline.

22

• Building Social Presence
• HBC Sally that was a very good answer to the ?
  Asked by the prof.
• Jim Is anyone going to happy hour at Bobs pub?

23

• Adding Playfulness and Humor
• Having fun with the text adds to the sociability
  of the communication exchange.

24

• Adding Playfulness and Humor
• Jim Quiet! Jane is doing a bang-up job here.
• Sally Shhhh . . . Its getting way too noisy in
  this room.

25

• Adding Non-verbal Cues
• Non-verbal textual cues, such as punctuation
  marks, and capital letters, can be used to
  express nonverbal communication.
• For example, TYPING IN CAPITAL LETTERS indicates
  shouting.

26

• Adding Non-verbal Cues
• HBC Hey was that a tough one!
• Tom ILL TELL YOU AGAIN IF YOU STILL HAVENT
  GOTTEN IT.

27

• Biocca, Harms and Burgoon (2002) state that the
  work of classic social psychologist George
  Herbert Mead is evident in early research on
  mediated social presence.

28

• Biocca, Harms and Burgoon (2002) say
• Symbolic interactionism assumed that symbolic
  representations were central to all social
  phenomena, that models of the other contributed
  to our conceptualizations of the social and
  helped form the self (p. 8).

29

• Presently, much of the current work being
  conducted on social presence explores
  visually-oriented mediated environments.

30

• Often the goal of this research is to make
  technological environments more realistic or
  increasingly social.

31

• In contrast, media ecologists are interested in
  how the characteristics of a medium influence the
  ways people symbolically communicate and behave.

32

• From a media ecological perspective people
  present themselves in the following ways
• e-mail addresses
• nicknames (screen names)
• personal profiles
• others

33

• Social e-mail addresses allow people to play with
  identity.
• Examples include
• PI_2002_at_hotmail.com
• SportsNews_at_earthlink.net
• KoolKid597_at_yahoo.com
• RecordMan1950_at_prodigy.com

34

• E-mail Addresses provide information about the
  person and the organization hosting the account.
  
• For example
• john_doe_at_wired.com
• smith_at_harvard.edu

35

• Screen names, nicknames (nicks), or pseudonyms
  are popular identity markers.

36

• Some screen names are neutral labels, while
  others are based on real names (SueBEE),
  locations (MrNewYork), or hobbies (GuitarMan).

37

• Personal profiles are often short descriptions
  that state age and sex or they can be more
  detailed profiles that describe physical features
  and interests.

38

• Personal profile
• Hi! Im Angie. Im an 18 year-old female who is
  five feet five with short curly brown hair. My
  hobbies are going to the movies and shopping.

39

• MUD Character Description
• Her eyes are green, TOTALLY green, with large
  black irises, her teeth and tongue startling
  flashes of color when she opens her mouth or
  smiles. She looks basically human, except for
  the multicolor of her skin, and her long, thin
  fingers (and are there more than 5 fingers there?
  Maybe. . . Its hard to tell)

40

• Signature Lines
• Harold Q.Smith (Professor Emeritus)
• Speech Communication
• Trade and Applied Books Editor, New York Press
• Editor, VCI Virtual Culture Inquiries
• ISSN 1069-0426. Send submissions to HQS at
  BFUVM.BFU.EDU
• Buffalo Falls University, Falls City, NY 16802
• Manuscripts are being accepted for the 2003
  volumes.

41

• Signature Lines
• Harold Q.Smith, Ret. Oh, dont the
  day seem lank
• and long
• Dealer in magic spells. \/ When all
  goes right,
• J. W. Wells 0.0 And nothing
  goes wrong?
• Everybody should get ( v ) /
• exactly what they deserve. \/ / And wouldnt
  life seem exceedingly
• / \ / flat.
• REAL HARD!!! / With nothing
  whatever to
• grumble at?
• HQS _ _
  Princess Ida, Act II

42

• Although online communicators can present a sense
  of self to others, the lack of physical
  co-presence introduces new for the online
  communication process.

43

• These include anonymity, the creation of
  idealized self descriptions, the presentation of
  alternate personas, and online misbehavior.

44

• Waskul and Douglasss (1997) research on
  cyberselves revealed that 22 of the screen names
  they analyzed did not have a profile. As a
  result, these individuals only exited as a screen
  name.

45

• Anonymity
• Text-only interaction allows Internet
  participants to choose their level of anonymity.

46

• Anonymity
• In addition to self expression and
  experimentation, anonymity can also enable
  teenagers to explore their real world identities
  (see Turkle, 1996).

47

• For example, New York Times reporter Jennifer
  Egan (2000) described the ways in which a 15-year
  old teen named Jeffrey discovered his gay
  identity through Internet correspondence.

48

• Misrepresentation
• Many of the personas that people present online
  are not real.

49

• Misrepresentation
• On the Internet, a 300 pound 49-year-old man
  described himself as a 17-year-old 5-9 blue-eyed
  stud.
• The deception was revealed in a face-to-face
  encounter.

50

• Misrepresentation
• In text-only Internet correspondence, physical
  features are separated from online identity,
  people can represent themselves as anyone they
  want to be.

51

• Despite misbehavior, social presence can be
  established through text-only correspondence and
  people can present credible cyberselves through
  text-only correspondence by spending time
  exchanging messages and interacting with others.

52

• Conclusion
• Text-only Internet communication has both
  positive and negative implications for actual
  self identity.
• The Internets influence on cultural ideas about
  self and the online presence of self are only
  beginning to be understood.

53

• References
• Barnes, S.B. (2001a). Online connections
  Internet interpersonal relationships. Cresskill,
  NJ Hampton Press.
• Biocca, F., Harms, C., Burgoon J.K. (2002).
  Criteria for a theory and measure of social
  presence, 44pp. Draft Online. Available at
  http//www.mindlab.msu.edu/Biocca/papers/2002_scop
  e_conditions_social_presence.pdf. (Downloaded
  May 15, 2003).
• Levinson, P. (1997). The soft edge. New York
  Routledge.
• Mead, G.H. (1932), The philosophy of the present
  (A. E. Murphy, editor). LaSalle, IL The Open
  Court Publishing Company.
• Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, self, and society
  (C.W. Morris, editor). Chicago The University
  of Chicago Press.
• Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place. New
  York Oxford University Press.
• Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly The surrender
  of culture to technology. New York Alfred A.
  Knopf.
• Short, J., Williams, E., Christie, B. (1976).
  The social pshycology of telecommunications.
  London John Wiley Sons.
• Sternberg, J.L. (2001). Misbehavior in cyber
  places The regulation of online conduct in
  virtual communities on the Internet. (Doctoral
  Dissertation New York University, 2001). UMI
  Dissertation Services, Number 3022160.