Self-Presentation and Gender on Social Networking Sites Research Paper

Self-Presentation and Gender on Social Networking Sites - Research Paper Example These sites allow the users’ to create a profile that reflects their identity. A study by Magnuson and Dundes (2008) about the MySpace Profiles for 51 females and 49 males revealed that women had a better self presentation profiles on MySpace than men. Also they were more active that the males. The studies also revealed that although females dominate the social network sites, they have to depend on others for their sense of self as they do traditionally depend on the male in their families. A similar study by Manago et.al. (2008) revealed that social networking sites were a means to explore one’s own identity, engage into social comparison and express idealised aspects of selves they had dreamt to be. This paper tries to identify the ways in which males and females present themselves online in the social networking environment. The paper also intends to check if culture influences self presentation of genders in social networking. Keywords: Social Networking Sites, Gend er Difference, Self-Presentation Self-Presentation and Gender on Social Networking Sites Self-presentation is a very important aspect of today’s globalised world. According to Leary (1996) â€Å"Self-presentation is kind of impression management, which is the management of other’s impressions of a social unit such as people or organisation† (p. 17). ... Thus this subject has also attracted researchers to the study the gender differences in self-presentation on these sites. A study by Kornblum (2006) revealed the exploded popularity of these SNSs with users numbering to hundreds of millions in the recent years. However self-presentation on SNSs differs from face-to-face self-presentation. Self-presentation on SNSs differs because one can â€Å"inspect, edit and revise† one’s self presentation before it is available to others (Walther, Slovacek & Tidwell, 2001, p.110). These sites proclaim to help people get connected and share with the people in their lives. Thus SNSs create a real-life social network for people online. Although the SNSs are a replica of a real-life social network but the environment provided by the SNSs differs greatly from real life (cited in Hinduja and Patchin, 2008, p. 127). The studies have revealed that several people have 1000 other people on their friend list which is nearly impossible in the r eal life. These SNSs provide people with unique opportunities to stay connected to more people than they might otherwise have and to be able to know in their real lives. Also people can construct any kind of image about themselves that they would like to portrait to the people on their friend list. The self-presentation on these SNSs allows the users to construct an audience as they can add or remove friends from their social network in just seconds, with no more efforts but just a click on the mouse. Past research suggests that these SNSs are most popular among adolescents as it allows them to experiment with their identity. Research also suggests that adolescent girls use SNSs more than the adolescent boys as it