Author: Patricia Williamson, Trey Stohlman and Heather Polinsky
Central Michigan University, United States of America
Email: willi1pa@cmich.edu
Published: October 16, 2017
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.2.2.05
Citation: Williamson, P., Stohlman, T., Polinsky, H. (2017). Me, My "Selfie" and I: A Survey of Self-disclosure Motivations on Social Media. IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.2.2.05
Abstract
Personal photo-sharing has become a popular activity across social media platforms as a self-disclosure activity. A survey of 366 (N=366) individuals via a web-based questionnaire measured correlations between photo-sharing on social networking sites (SNS) and fulfillment of self-disclosure goals. Data analysis indicated respondents posted selfies to social media to meet the information storage and entertainment self-disclosure goals. Facebook users also posted selfies to aide in relational development, whereas relational development was negatively correlated with the frequency of selfie-posting on Twitter. Neither gender nor age were found to have any impact on the number of selfies posted to social media, overall. However, Snapchat was a more popular SNS for selfie-posting among younger respondents, while Facebook was the most popular medium for posting selfies amongst the older respondents.
Keywords
self-disclosure, selfies, social media