Title

Students' Self-Presentation On Facebook: An Examination Of Personality And Self-Construal Factors

Keywords

Collectivism; Facebook; Individualism; Self-disclosure; Self-presentation; Social media

Abstract

The present research seeks to extend existing theory on self-disclosure to the online arena in higher educational institutions and contribute to the knowledge base and understanding about the use of a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook, by college students. We conducted a non-experimental study to investigate how university students (N = 463) use Facebook, and examined the roles that personality and culture play in disclosure of information in online SNS-based environments. Results showed that individuals do disclose differently online vs. in-person, and that both culture and personality matter. Specifically, it was found that collectivistic individuals low on extraversion and interacting in an online environment disclosed the least honest and the most audience-relevant information, as compared to others. Exploratory analyses also indicate that students use sites such as Facebook primarily to maintain existing personal relationships and selectively used privacy settings to control their self-presentation on SNSs. The findings of this study offer insight into understanding college students' self-disclosure on SNS, add to the literature on personality and self-disclosure, and shape future directions for research and practice on online self-presentation. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication Date

11-1-2012

Publication Title

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume

28

Issue

6

Number of Pages

2091-2099

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.06.013

Socpus ID

84865636086 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84865636086

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