The Company You Keep and the Image You Project: Putting Your Best Face Forward in Online Social Networks Christine A. Kleck Texas A&M University Christen A. Reese Pennsylvania State University Dawn Ziegerer Behnken Pennsylvania State University S. 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) D ő ering (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 construction Leary 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 be Jensen, Farnham, Drucker and Kollock (2000) provides additional ways to seek information Ramirez, 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 on a social networking site will vary as a function of the modalities used on that person’s page.

2 (Social network) High Low x full-factorial, between subjects 167 participants viewed a Facebook page Method 3 (modality) Picture/text Video/text Text 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 confidence F (1,154) = 14, p<.0005 greater perceptions of sexiness F (1,155) = 12.8, p<.05 greater perceptions of pleasantness F (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

‘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!