teen girls' experiences with self-presentation, impression management & aggression on faceb

203 Pages·2014·0.56 MB·English

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT ONLINE:
TEEN GIRLS’ EXPERIENCES WITH SELF-PRESENTATION, IMPRESSION
MANAGEMENT & AGGRESSION ON FACEBOOK

by

ALISON M. HILL

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York

2014
2014
ALISON M. HILL
Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This manuscript has been read and accepted for the
Graduate Faculty in Sociology in satisfaction of the
Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Professor William Kornblum______________

_________ __________________________________
Date Chair of Examining Committee

__________ Professor Philip Kasinitz_________________
Date Executive Officer

Professor Lynn Chancer_______________
Professor Cynthia Epstein______________
__________________________________
_________________________________
Supervisory Committee

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
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Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to the most important people in my life – my mom Roberta, my dad
Steven, my husband Jason, and our children Vivienne and Max. Thank you for making
everything possible. I love you.

Acknowledgments

A very special thank you to Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Bill Kornblum and Lynn Chancer for their
guidance and support over the many years it took me to get to this point. Through my oral
exams, proposal and entire dissertation-writing process, they always believed in me and my
ideas.
I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues at the Girl Scout Research Institute, who
granted me access to the data set for this research. I hope that these findings can in some way
help you fulfill your mission to “build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the
world a better place.”

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Abstract

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT ONLINE:
TEEN GIRLS’ EXPERIENCES WITH SELF-PRESENTATION, IMPRESSION
MANAGEMENT & AGGRESSION ON FACEBOOK

by

ALISON M. HILL

Adviser: Professor William Kornblum
Online social network participation is widespread among American adolescents. Prolific
creators, consumers and curators of content, they write themselves into being (boyd, 2007) on
social network sites like Facebook. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s study of symbolic interaction
in the form of dramaturgical perspective and The Third Person Effect, this research explores how
young women ages 14-17 craft their self-presentations, engage in impression management, and
experience aggression and bullying on Facebook. I propose that the majority of this age cohort
craft online self-presentations that are consistent with their offline selves, yet they believe that
other girls their age use their profiles to craft distinct online portrayals. I hypothesize that girls
who restrict their privacy settings to “viewable by friends only” have fewer experiences with
aggression and bullying than those who don’t. I analyze these data from the perspective of youth
culture on Facebook and the discourse of digital citizenship.
Data for this research comes from the Girl Scouts Research Institute’s “Who’s that Girl?
Image and Social Media Survey,” fielded through online interviews in 2010 to a geographic mix
of individuals consistent with U.S. Census figures. Respondents are 1,026 young women (Girl
Scouts and non- Girl Scouts) evenly distributed across the ages of 14-17 who have profiles on at
least one social network site, including Facebook.
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The majority of respondents report that they craft self-presentations on Facebook that
reflect their offline self-portrayals, yet they believe most other girls their age do so in ways that
make themselves look different and cooler than they really are. Those who restrict the three
sections of their Facebook profiles to viewable by friends only experience fewer incidences of
aggression than those who don’t. These findings suggest strategies for understanding the lives of
youth online and how to connect their behavior to the conversation around digital citizenship.

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Table of Contents

List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
Chapter I - Introduction and Background ....................................................................................... 1
My Project ................................................................................................................................... 1
Dissertation Organization ............................................................................................................ 2
The Birth of Social Network Sites in the United States .............................................................. 4
A Brief History of Facebook ....................................................................................................... 5
Facebook Features ....................................................................................................................... 7
Adolescence and the Teenager .................................................................................................... 8
Digital Community and Social Network Sites .......................................................................... 10
Teens and Social Network Sites ................................................................................................ 13
The Third Person Effect ............................................................................................................ 16
Identity Development and Identification ................................................................................... 18
Self-Presentation and Impression Management ........................................................................ 20
Adolescent Friendship ............................................................................................................... 24
Aggression and Bullying ........................................................................................................... 27
Constant, Computer-Mediated Communication ....................................................................... 29
Digital Citizenship ..................................................................................................................... 32
Chapter II - Methodology ............................................................................................................. 34
Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 35
Hypotheses ................................................................................................................................ 35
Operationalizing the Data .......................................................................................................... 36
Aspects of Impression Management ......................................................................................... 37
Experiences with Online Aggression ........................................................................................ 38
Challenges with the Data........................................................................................................... 39
Chapter III - Results ...................................................................................................................... 40
Research Question #1 ................................................................................................................ 40
Self-Assessment .................................................................................................................... 40
Beliefs about Others’ Perceptions ......................................................................................... 41
Research Question #2 - ............................................................................................................. 42
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Privacy Choices and Posting Volume ................................................................................... 43
Self-Presentation Comparisons ............................................................................................. 43
Research Question #3 ................................................................................................................ 44
Privacy Settings .................................................................................................................... 44
Experiences with Aggression ................................................................................................ 45
Summary of Self-Esteem Data .................................................................................................. 51
Chapter IV - (Youth) Culture ........................................................................................................ 53
The Internet as Culture and/or Cultural Artifact ....................................................................... 53
Teen Cultural Production on Facebook ..................................................................................... 55
The Facebook Community as Social Structure ......................................................................... 56
Facebook as Status System ....................................................................................................... 61
Mutual Self-Disclosure and Social Control .............................................................................. 62
Boundaries and Behavior Rules ................................................................................................ 68
Peer Group Membership ........................................................................................................... 70
Chapter V - Identity and Identification ......................................................................................... 73
Adolescent Identity ................................................................................................................... 75
Self-Concept .............................................................................................................................. 78
Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy .................................................................................................. 81
Identification ............................................................................................................................. 84
Representations of Femininity and Identity Development ........................................................ 85
Chapter VI - (Relational) Aggression, Bullying and Drama ........................................................ 92
Bullying ..................................................................................................................................... 92
Bullying as Trauma Experience ................................................................................................ 96
Bullying and the “Outgroup” .................................................................................................... 98
Relational Aggression ............................................................................................................... 99
Drama ...................................................................................................................................... 104
Gender, Conflict and Media .................................................................................................... 107
The Power of Web 2.0 ............................................................................................................. 111
Chapter VII - Conclusion: Peer Culture and Digital Citizenship ............................................... 113
Digital Citizenship ................................................................................................................... 115
Social Norms and a New Humanism ...................................................................................... 117
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The Butterfly Effect ................................................................................................................ 119
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 120
Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 123
Tables ...................................................................................................................................... 123
Survey Instrument ................................................................................................................... 166
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 180

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List of Tables

Table 1. Summary of responses related to self-presentation 133
Table 2. Summary of responses related to impression management 142
Table 3. Summary of responses related to privacy settings & experiences with aggression 162
Table 4. Crosstab Analysis – respondents’ actions by privacy setting 166
Table 5. Crosstab Analysis – others’ actions on respondents by privacy setting 168
Table 6. Crosstab Analysis – respondents’ feelings by privacy setting 171
Table 7. Demographic Data 173

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