The Company You Keepand the Image You Project:

Putting Your Best Face Forward in Online Social Networks

Christine A. Kleck • Texas A&M UniversityChristen A. Reese • Pennsylvania State University

Dawn Ziegerer Behnken • Pennsylvania State UniversityS. Shyam Sundar • Pennsylvania State University

Personal websites:

•No longer just a business card or resume–new form of personal contact information–others may comment

•Types of social networking sites–dating–social–support (medical)

Construction

of identities

• Chandler (1998)

• Dőering (2002)

Hyperlink network analysis (HNA)

Social network analysis (SNA)

• Park (2003)

Impression Management & Self Presentation

• Social Information Processing Theory (SIP) Walther (1992)

• Impression motivation & impression constructionLeary and

Kowalski (1990)

• Face-to-Face vs. online Tanis and Postmes (2003)

• Feedback Morrison and Bies (1991)

• Nonverbal language DePaulo (1992) and Goffman (1959)

• Language of affiliation and technology is made up of a large array of channels. O’Sullivan, Hunt and Lippert (2004)

Basking in Reflected Glory

• accentuate the positive aspects of oneself by associating with specific others Cialdini (1978)

• associating with others who reinforce “glory” Snyder (1986)

• H1: The greater the size of a person’s online social network, the more positive the impressions formed of that person.

Torrie has 326 friends

Modality: an attribute or circumstance that denotes mode or manner, or a way of doing something.

the richer the modality, the more distracting it can beJensen, Farnham, Drucker and Kollock (2000)

provides additional ways to seek informationRamirez, Walther, Burgoon and Sunnafrank (2002)

significant differences in impressions conveyed by text-only vs. text with picture vs. text with video Sundar (2000)

nonverbal cues made available by modality richness significantly impact social judgments

Burgoon, Bonito, Ramirez, Dunbar, Kam & Fischer (2002)

Interactive Effect:• Certain modalities may be cognitively demanding.

• The distractive aspect of video modality may take attention away from noticing the size of a person’s social network.

• But, the vibrancy of video may additively combine with the size of social network and boost positive impression formations.

I may only have 17 friends, but

you may like me more after

seeing my video!

•H2: Impressions formed of a person ona social networking site will vary as afunction of the modalities used onthat person’s page.

2 (Social network)

HighLow

x

• full-factorial, between subjects

• 167 participants viewed a

Facebook page

Method

3 (modality)

Picture/textVideo/textText only

Manipulation check

Participants were aware of the ‘number of friends’

“Low” (M=36.82, SD=28.15)“High” (M=226.77, SD=38.27)

Text Only / Low Social Network

Picture & Text / Low Social Network

Video & Text / High Social Network

(video began when the mouse crossed the black box on the left side of the screen)

“ high” number of friends =greater perceptions of popularity

F (1,152) = 31.65, p<.0001

Results (IV: size of social network)

Results (con’t)(IV: size of social network)

“ high” number of friends =

greater perceptions of confidenceF (1,154) = 14, p<.0005

greater perceptions of sexinessF (1,155) = 12.8, p<.05

greater perceptions of pleasantnessF (1,155) = 4.97, p< .05

Results (IV: modality)

participants in video/text condition =

higher recall of ‘favorite books’

F (2,158) = 5.10, p<.05

• The “richer” the modality, the more it acts as a remembering device.

• It does not necessarily affect certain impressions formed as a function of size of social network

• Some image-enhancing information about a person with low number of friends might be amplified with a video presentation.

• Using the richer modality may help those with a small circle of friends because it may serve to highlight other potentially image-enhancing information.

• Designers might also be inspired by these results to find ways of capitalizing on the richness of new modalities (verbal and nonverbal communication).

Discussion

Discussion

• ‘Number of friends’ (size of social network) does not normally surface in a face-to-face interaction, but does on a social networking site, it positively influences perceptions of popularity, confidence, pleasantness and sexiness of the user.

• Online communication allows the user a certain amount of control in the impression they project to others.

Size Matters!

Discussion• Online social network designers

should consider ways to make modalities of a website less distracting and the social network of each individual more obvious on a person’s personal website.

• Individuals that use online networking sites may choose to use the findings of this study when deciding what information to bring attention to when creating or updating their WebPages.

Sanjaya has 34,862,794 friends!