Kirsten Tan
Unwritten Rules: What Women Can and Can’t Do when Posting Pictures on Social Media
For my research, I incorporated over 50 surveys, four interviews and one focus group of 9 people. All three methods were done on females, aged 18-25. I used Qualtrics and a Facebook event page to distribute my 50 surveys online. The creation, distribution and coding of the surveys was all done within 24 hours, and I was quite pleased with the end results. Surprisingly, many women who I invited to take the survey were very open and supportive of my research. A few even commented at the end with extra “quotable” information, which I will be providing in the final paper. The four interviews happened over the time span of about a week, and interestingly, each interviewee reported using a different social networking site than the other, so I was able to get a wide range of data. I would have to say that the interviews were my least favorite part of the data collection, mostly because it seemed like, when put on the spot and on their own, the participants were a bit shy and wary of giving answers that might be considered embarrassing. All four interviewees were surprised by their own answers, as I did ask quite a bit about personal online preferences. Lastly, the focus group was my favorite part of the project. Nine women met with me in the library, and I showed them all two pictures of Kim Kardashian. One was a “selfie,” and the other featured her in a group photo. It was fascinating to see how much more attractive people rated Kim when she was in the group photo than when she took a self portrait.
Research Question: What kinds of unwritten rules do women follow in posting pictures on social media?
My data gave me a variety of information about what women consider before taking and posting pictures online. I was able to conclude upon three major factors that the participants consider before posting pictures: annoyance (will this picture annoy people and result in less “likes”?), appropriateness (will my future or current employer find this acceptable?) and physicality (hair, makeup, general appearance. How do I look in comparison to others/how do I look in this selfie alone).
Hypothesis: Women are primarily concerned with the content of photos that feature themselves both alone and in social settings in order to build their online and social identities.
Again, my data and conclusive topics of annoyance, appropriateness and physicality go into my hypothesis, because they deal with the content of user’s photos. I also looked into selfies versus group photos, and found that women feel that a balance between the both needs to be had. Selfies are used simply to promote physicality (i.e. looking good or pretty online), and group photos are used to create a fun, social identity. Both types of photos are used to build online and social identities, and it became clear that a balancing act between the three factors of annoyance, appropriateness and physicality needs to be had in order to build female SNS user’s so-called online and social identities.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the data that I collected, and how interesting I found the subject. The idea of women following unwritten rules when posting pictures on social media is something I hold near and dear to my heart, and it was fascinating to see and hear fellow women’s acknowledgement of it.