Presenting yourself as good as possible
If you are surfing the internet, you can almost get depressed of all the beautiful and nice things you can find there about others. Everyone looks so great and kind on the internet: people share the prettiest vacation pictures on Instagram; they share what they have all reached in their lives on Facebook; they are really funny and sharp on Twitter; they have the best CV on LinkedIn; and they have the nicest friends and are always partying, what you can see on Snapchat. People only share the best sides of themselves and it looks like they never feel bad or go through bad things. People always present themselves better than they are on social networking sites and I think the reason for this is that people can actually influence how other people perceive them. In face-to-face interactions we cannot always control this, because we are also communicating by our nonverbal behavior and sometimes we send nonverbal signals which are different from the way we want to be perceived (Hargie, 2011).
Most of the time I catch myself on doing it, on presenting myself in a good way on social networking sites. All the things I have described above, I am doing it myself. I post pretty (vacation) pictures on Instagram; I share that I have got my driver’s license on Facebook; and I share partying pictures with my crazy friends on Snapchat. Just like everyone else is doing. I am noticing that if I am having a busy period on school and because of that, not doing many nice things, I remain silent on social media. So when I had vacation, I was posting regularly on Facebook and Instagram. I think I was doing that, because I wanted to show other people what a nice time I was having on my vacations with my friends and family. Besides that, everyone is always sharing their vacation pictures and stories, so I didn’t want to stay behind and didn’t want to let it look like I wasn’t having a nice vacation. This also has to do with the shared context of Facebook and Instagram. Shared context is one of the three key factors associated with computer-mediated communication and consists of norms, rules, procedures and languages, which are known by each member of a community, in this case a social networking site (Ellison, Hancock & Toma, 2011). In the case of Instagram the shared context is beautiful pictures that can be made even prettier by some filters. So as a result of this shared context everyone, and also me, is presenting themselves in a good way, or perhaps even in a better way than they really are.
Besides the fact that I am sharing nice and fun moments on my social media, I (unconsciously) share sometimes things where I stand for or what describes my identity on my Facebook page. I share these things by liking Facebookpages and I have written unconsciously between brackets, because I like these pages most of the time to receive more information about the topic and not because I want to let other people know that I like that kind of stuff. Some good examples are the pages Stichting StopALS.nu, de Viergang (my gym), Frustraties van Kassamedewerkers (Frustrations of cashiers) and JaofNee. Even though it was not my intention, I reveal a lot about my identity by liking these pages. Individual identities are constructed around roles and I show some roles that I am with these pages. I show for example that I am a cashier at a supermarket and that I am a donor.
So now I have told about how I present myself on social media and the reasons behind these presentations, it is your turn to think about how you present yourself! Do you share only nice things on social networking sites or do you also share the moment you are feeling bad?
Sources:
Ellison, N. B., Hancock, J. T., & Toma, C. L. (2012). Profile as promise: A framework for conceptualizing veracity in online dating self-presentations. New Media & Society, 14, 45-62.
Hargie, O (2011). Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice. London: Routledge