Week 8-Social Media

Question 1

What’s the Presence of Social Media?

Answer 1

■ 2016 - approximately 3.4 billion Internet users and 2.3 billion active social media accounts

■ Uses and Gratifications framework – we actively seek media content to fulfil psychological needs (e.g., connect with others)

■ York (2017) twin study data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS III) survey
■ Approximately one-to two-thirds of variance in social media use is attributable to additive genetic traits. Unique and shared environmental factors account for the remainder of variance.

Question 2

Slide 5

Question 3

What are some Measurement Issues?

Answer 3

■ Substantial and increasing number of social media research studies

■ Research typically involves self-report questionnaires – but little assessment of self-report questionnaire validity

Question 4

What are some Measurement Issues? (Andrews et al., 2015)

Answer 4

■ 29 participants (aged 18-33) all university staff or students

■ Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (MPPUS), estimates of phone use, and an app measuring when the phone is being used

■ For number of phone uses, there were significantly more actual phone uses per day (84.68) than were estimated (37.20), and no significant correlation between the two

■ For total daily duration there was no significant difference between actual (5.05 hours) and estimated use (4.12 hours) per day; and there was a moderate positive correlation between the two (p = .02).

■ Duration of use has better validity than frequency of use

■ MPPUS scores not correlated with objective or estimated use

Question 5

Slide 7

Question 6

Interaction on Social Media - Deindividuation and disinhibition: What are the six aspects of online disinhibition? (Suler, 2004)

Answer 6

1. Asynchronicity
2. Dissociative anonymity
3. Dissociative imagination
4. Invisibility
5. Minimizing authority
6. Solipsistic introjections

Question 7

What is Trolling?

Answer 7

■ Online communication with the intention of being provocative, offensive, or menacing in order to trigger conflict and cause distress for the amusement of the troll

■ Four common elements, deception, aggression, disruption, success (Hardaker, 2010)

■ Men are more likely than women to engage in trolling and report greater enjoyment from trolling (Buckels et al. 2014)

■ Trolling decreases as the amount of identifying information (e.g., real names vs pseudonyms) increases (Cho & Acquisti, 2013)

■ Psychological outcomes are similar to in-person harassment

■ Relatively few cases prosecuted

■ Sean Duffy one of the first internet trolls to receive a custodial sentence – posting offensive messages and videos on tribute pages

Question 9

What’s the Presence of Social Media?

Answer 9

■ 2016 - approximately 3.4 billion Internet users and 2.3 billion active social media accounts

■ Uses and Gratifications framework – we actively seek media content to fulfil psychological needs (e.g., connect with others, professional use etc.,)

■ York (2017) twin study data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS III) survey
■ Approximately one-to two-thirds of variance in social media use is attributable to additive genetic traits (associated with our personality, extrovertedness, openness etc.,). Unique and shared environmental factors account for the remainder of variance.

-Sometimes we don’t have a choice in social media usage e.g., a job where phones are prohibited

Question 10

What is Social Media usage like? (PEW Research Center, 2018)

Answer 10

-We regard this presence of social media as important to us (not many times where we don’t have access to social media)

-A majority of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram users visit these platforms on a daily basis

-The majority of users say it would NOT be hard to give up social media (seen more in older generations)

Question 11

What are some Measurement Issues in Social Media Research Studies?

Answer 11

■ Substantial and increasing number of social media research studies

■ Research typically involves self-report questionnaires (e.g., how many times you’ve logged on and how long or reporting usage) – but little assessment of self-report questionnaire validity

Question 12

What are some Measurement Issues in Social Media Research Studies? (Andrews et al., 2015)

Answer 12

■ 29 participants (aged 18-33) all university staff or students

■ Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (MPPUS), estimates of phone use, and an app measuring when the phone is being used

■ For number of phone uses, there were significantly more actual phone uses per day (84.68) than were estimated (37.20), and no significant correlation between the two

■ For total daily duration there was no significant difference between actual (5.05 hours) and estimated use (4.12 hours) per day; and there was a moderate positive correlation between the two (p = .02).

■ Duration of use has better validity than frequency of use

■ MPPUS scores not correlated with objective or estimated use

Question 13

Measurement Issues: When do people use Social Media?

Answer 13

-Midnight is when a lot of people spend their time online

-Trolling tends to occur between 7pm to 1am

Question 14

Interaction on Social Media - Deindividuation and disinhibition: What are the six aspects of online disinhibition? (Suler, 2004)

Answer 14

There are certain things that make/encourage a person to behave a certain way online:
1. Asynchronicity (someone can post a message and leave it + come back to it whenever they want so don’t have to acknowledge anything)

2. Dissociative anonymity (We are anonymous when online meaning people don’t realise when to back off or if they have gone too far)
3. Dissociative imagination (rules in society don’t tend to apply online so can do as they please)
4. Invisibility (No physical presence making us more likely to respond to people in a certain way i.e., easier to be rude when you can’t see them. The more removed we are from ourself, the easier it is to be rude and aggressive)
5. Minimizing authority (we don’t have the same difference to authority just see them as their profile i.e., a blank sheet with a different hierarchy to daily life)
6. Solipsistic introjections (When we don’t have the cues, we tend to make it up e.g., what they may look or sound like, what they are like etc., the things that we make up to fill in the gaps impacts how we interact online)

-Disinhibition: we don’t feel as if we are restricted

-Disindividuation: we are away from our actual self when online (may be less likely to say something mean in person)

Question 15

What is Trolling?

Answer 15

■ Online communication with the intention of being provocative, offensive, or menacing in order to trigger conflict and cause distress for the amusement of the troll

■ Four common elements, deception, aggression, disruption, success (Hardaker, 2010)

■ Men are more likely than women to engage in trolling and report greater enjoyment from trolling (Buckels et al., 2014)

■ Trolling decreases as the amount of identifying information (e.g., real names vs pseudonyms) increases (Cho & Acquisti, 2013)

■ Trolls try to disrupt what someone is doing - there is always an element of the troll wanting to achieve something

■ Psychological outcomes are similar to in-person harassment (it could be argued to be worse as you don’t know who it is, when they will harass you and how many accounts they may create)

■ Relatively few cases prosecuted

■ Sean Duffy one of the first internet trolls to receive a custodial sentence – posting offensive messages and videos on tribute pages dedicated to passed teenagers

Question 16

What has Trolling been linked with?

Answer 16

■ Relative to other online behaviour, relatively few academic studies investigating trolling behaviour

■ Initial studies focused on linguistic analysis, then ‘communities’ of trolls

■ Shachaf and Hara (2020) Wikipedia trolls (people who change info on Wikipedia) – boredom, attention seeking, revenge, pleasure, desire to cause damage were motivations

■ Buckels et al. (2014) - trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (viewing other people as means to an end), using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores.

■ March et al. (2017) - dysfunctional impulsivity predicts trolling on Tinder, but only when the person has medium or high levels of trait psychopathy

Question 17

What is the McCann Trolling Community Example? (Synott et al., 2017)

Answer 17

■ Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007

■ Ten years post disappearance, still 100 tweets using the McCann hashtag each hour

■ Identified the most prolific twitter users using the McCann hashtag and followed those

■ 400 tweets from 37 user accounts (200 between anti-McCann users and 200 between anti-McCann and pro-McCann users)

■ Researcher prompted a discussion – lasting over 3 hours (online data will provide useful insight on people’s thoughts without directly asking them which is an issue with this study as they personally asked these trolls)

Trolling strategies:
■ Digression from the topic
■ Hostility and attacking users with little provocation
■ Mocking the achievements of others
■ Distribution of memes and offensive images to provoke pro-McCann users

■ After the researcher contacted a user via direct message, they informed others of their intentions

■ Many became hostile, criticising the researcher’s intelligence, grammar etc

■ “you need better English to do a PHD luv!”

■ “if your bias [sic] your dissertation will be a complete failure you need my help”

-The research should have considered the wellbeing of the users and the researcher themselves

■ And criticising the researcher among themselves

■ “she sent me a questionare file back in May, lots of stupid q’s”

Question 18

What’s the Importance of Context?

Answer 18

-Core events for example can shape how we view social media and topics e.g., the election

■ Facebook network size associated with higher levels of perceived social support, contributing in turn to higher life satisfaction (Nabi et al. 2013)

■ Approximately 30% of people have experiences of “unfriending” with acquaintances or friends on Facebook due to opposing political viewpoints (Lee & Chan, 2015)

Question 19

What’s the Importance of Context? (Lau et al., 2016)

Answer 19

■ The Umbrella Movement, originally called “Occupy Central”, emerged between September 28th and December 15th, 2014 in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

-Researched how this impacted individual’s online networks and presence

■ 1,208 respondents, 815 (67.5%) reported no social resource loss on social media, 300 (24.9%) reported loss to a small degree, and 92 (7.6%) reported loss to a moderate to great degree (quite a big % of loss for people considering the political, environmental contexts)

■ Recruited two months after the conclusion of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

■ Social resource loss on social media was positively associated with depressive symptoms but not anxiety symptoms

■ Association was significant only among middle-aged (39-55 years) and older (56 years+) adults but not younger (18-38 years) adults (these older adults may be more likely in a routine with a standard set of friends)

Question 20

What’s the link between Social Media and Personality? (Goffman, 1956)

Answer 20

■ Goffman (1956) ‘presentation of the self’

■ We ‘perform’ to project a desirable image and version of ourselves

■ Conscious of being observed and having undesirable opinions about self

■ Some argue that online interaction means that Goffman’s work is outdated (as this was in the 1950s regarding in-person interactions), others say that online interaction is a natural extension of the original work

■ Distance between the performer and online self makes it easy to conceal aspects of the self and embellish others

Question 21

How does personality relate to our photos we post online?

Answer 21

■ Uses and gratification theory –people make their own decisions about which type of platform they use. Social and psychological factors affect this

■ Eftekhar et al. (2014)
■ Measured Personality and photo-related activity

■ Wang (2019) – narcissism and extraversion positively related to editing selfie

■ There are lots of relationships between your personality, engagement online and your online social network

Question 22

What are the purpose of Emoticons?

Answer 22

■ Functions of emoticons; to portray emotional or social intent and reduce ambiguity

Tossell et al. (2012):
■ Real communications data from individuals’ smartphones over a 6-month period
■ 4% of all messages containing at least one emoticon (and tends to be with our friends rather than strangers; seen as an indication of familiarity and meaning)

Question 23

What are the reasons people use Emoticons? (Kaye et al., 2016)

Answer 23

■ Participants (N = 92) provided open-ended accounts of their reasons for using emoticons (email, text message, and social networking site)

■ Emotional tone “To emphasise certain emotions which are sometimes hard to establish over a text message” (text messages)

■ Lighten mood “To show what I’m saying is less serious, more friendly” (email)

■ Reduce ambiguity “To make sure that the message I am sending isn’t interpreted sarcastically or that I seem irritable.” (email)

■ Context “I do not use emoticons in this context. I tend to send emails only to people of authority or professional people such as at work (area managers, line managers, supervisors, other stores, etc.)
and to university lecturers. I see emoticons as something to be used in a general or casual conversations not in professional emails” (email)

Question 24

What’s seen in Blogging and Second Life? (Bullingham & Vasconcelos, 2013)

Answer 24

■ Measured how people behave when they are involved in a: (1) personal blog (2) SL (VR type environment into this second life with their own customisable avatar, house, jobs etc.,) (3) blog and SL

■ People re-create their offline self online, but edit aspects of the self (escapism) as Goffman said

a) Expressions given
b) Embellishment as minor form of persona adoption
c) Dividing the self
d) Conforming and ‘fitting in’
e) Masking, anonymity and pseudonimity

Question 25

What did Kosinski et al. (2014) find about personality types and website usage?

Answer 25

■ 350,000 Facebook users, liked websites

■ Highest and lowest website categories for
each personality trait e.g., having higher openness means more likely to look at arts, photography whereas being more conservative means you are more likely to look at reference sites and education

Question 26

What’s meant by Judging a Facebook by its Cover?

Answer 26

■ Substantial body of research looking at our ability to accurately detect personality from minimal information e.g., static photographs, brief interactions

■ How we live provides others with valuable information about our personality, attitudes, behaviour and values

■ It is important to know whether we can (accurately) do this online and which cues we use to determine people’s personalities

Question 26

What’s meant by Judging a Facebook by its Cover? (Bachrach et al., 2012)

Answer 26

■ 180,000 Facebook users

■ Looked at the Number of: Facebook friends;associations with groups; likes; photographs uploaded; status updates; others tagged the user in photographs

■ Big Five: Openness; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Agreeableness; Neuroticism

■ Traits can be predicted by Facebook activity, but agreeableness and openness was less accurately predicted than other traits

Question 27

What’s meant by Judging a Facebook by its Cover? (Kosinski et al., 2013)

Answer 27

■ 58,000 Facebook users

■ ‘Likes’ of posts predict demographic and personal information (e.g., sexual orientation, religion, political orientation, ethnicity, personality, IQ)

Question 28

What’s meant by Judging a Facebook by its Cover? (Ellison et al., 2011)

Answer 28

■ Patterns of connectivity over time distinguished those who were making connections to seek social capital from those who were not e.g., if introduced to a new social group a person quickly approaches and adds friends

Question 29

Can We Assess Personality? (Derbyshire et al.,2016)

Answer 29

■ 1) Looked at the accuracy of first impressions formed on the basis of viewing a person’s Facebook behaviour

■ 2) how judgements are formed

■ Openness and conscientiousness can be judged most accurately through observing Facebook behaviour

■ Six information ‘cues’ including:
■ 1) vocabulary of target (more informal language seen more negatively)
■ 2) photographs
■ 3) written online interactions
■ 4) relationships with others
■ 5) health status and
■ 6) occupational status (tells us about their experiences and potentially what they are like as a person)

Question 30

What did Wall et al. (2016) find about judgements personality through the use of Emoticons?

Answer 30

■ Study 1 psychological factors associated with emoticon usage on different online platforms

■ Study 2 accuracy of personality judgements of Facebook users

■ Highest level of accuracy for extraversion and openness were particularly easy to detect

■ Positive correlations were found between objective usage of “happy” emoticons and observers’ assessments of targets’ agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness

Question 31

What did Barry et al. (2019) find about judgements on people’s personalities through the usage of Selfie Assessment?

Answer 31

■ Those with more posies (posed in photos) rated as higher in self-esteem, more adventurous, less lonely, more outgoing, more dependable, relatively fond of trying new things, more successful, more likeable, and as potentially being a good friend

■ Those with more selfies rated as having lower self-esteem, disliking adventure, more lonely, less outgoing, disliking trying new things, less successful, and less likeable

Question 32

How is Social Media linked to Health?

Answer 32

■ It has been argued that the use of multiple social media platforms is associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, even when controlling for time spent on social media (Primack et al. 2017)

Radovic et al. (2017):
■ Positive and negative use of social media by depressed adolescents

■ Positive use e.g., searching for positive content or to connect with others “That made me feel good because I was like, ‘Well, someone [online LGBT community] agrees with me.’ And I was like maybe my parents don’t agree with me, but they do.”

■ Negative use e.g., risky behavior, cyberbullying, comparisons with others “when you get all those likes and everything, that’s going to make you feel good, but then the second you don’t get, I don’t know, whatever, 16 likes on your picture, that’s going to make you feel bad”

■ “oversharing” “I feel like why does the whole world need to know your business? Like, why do I care if you went…if you went and got a bucket of fried chicken.”

■ “stressed posting” “If I would to post, ‘This is the worst day ever.’ And then they would tweet at me and say, ‘Are you okay? Text me if you need anything.’”

■ “triggering posts” “I follow this account on Instagram, and it’s a band account, and one day the girl took a picture of her arm, and it was all sliced, and there was blood down it, down her arm. And it just hurt me so bad. I was like, ‘How could you post something like that?’

Question 33

What are Online Sources of Support?

Answer 33

■ Support for those with specific health conditions or life experiences

Differences between online and offline support:
■ Typically no pre-planned treatment delivered online
■ Aim of online groups is to offer support – not change cognitions or behaviour
■ Online support groups may not have a leader
■ Online support groups are often open (say what you want to say), with people joining and entering at various times
■ Not time-limited for online support

Question 34

What are the advantages of online sources of support?

Answer 34

■ Access to a supportive community and information (to give practical and emotional guidance)

■ Convenience - valuable for those unable to attend offline events e.g., those who have children, have disabilities etc.,

■ Anonymity (may not feel comfortable to say in-person so helps to open up)

■ Benefits for those with stigmatising conditions

■ Support 24/7

■ Empowerment

Van Uden-Kraan et al. (2008) participants of online support groups (breast cancer, fibromyalgia, arthritis):
■ Empowering outcomes - being better informed, feeling confident in the relationship with health professionals etc, improved acceptance of the disease, increased optimism and control, self-esteem and social well-being

Question 35

What are the disadvantages of online sources of support?

Answer 35

■ Information and advice provided may not be accurate

■ Potential exposure to trolling (particularly if conditions are misunderstood e.g., addiction)

Greene et al. (2010) Facebook groups focused on diabetes:
■ 27% of posts featured some type of promotional activity, generally testimonials advertising non-FDA approved products. Clinically inaccurate recommendations were infrequent but usually associated
with promotion of a specific product or service.

■ “I wanted to share this information that I have concerning the natural antioxidant known as Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) and how it can help you in your fight against diabetes. Alpha Lipoic Acid benefits people with diabetes and heart disease by helping to prevent cell damage throughout the body—a natural antioxidant which attacks free radicals that cause damage to the cells in the body— supplements help to rid the body of harmful substances from the environment. These are reasons why we include Alpha Lipoic Acid in [BRAND NAME PRODUCT]…Talk to you soon, XXX.”

Question 36

Online Activity: What are Lurkers and posters? (Van Uden-Kraan et al., 2008)

Answer 36

■ Van Uden-Kraan et al. (2008) questionnaires to those participating in breast cancer, fibromyalgia, and arthritis groups.

■ 528 participants, 109 (21%) identified themselves as lurkers (just observers)

■ Lurkers – ‘free-riders’ (not offering anything to the group) but learning process and participation from all may not be feasible (may just be looking for more practical suggestions)

■ Lurkers and posters did not differ in their information-related reasons for visiting the online support group.

■ Lurkers did not differ significantly from posters with regard to most empowering outcomes

■ Posters visited online groups significantly more often for social reasons, e.g., curiosity about how others were doing, to enjoy themselves, as a part of their routine

■ Even lurking can be beneficial