Empirical Research in Communications, Fall 2015, Freshman Year
1. Introduction According to Zephoria, an Internet marketing website, every second of the day there are at least 20,000 people using Facebook (2015). Social networking sites (SNS) specifically, Facebook play a large role of time spent in society. Social networking sites have become a staple in the everyday lives of this generation (Fowler, 2012)—so much, in fact, that there are numerous studies and scientific research being conducted to demonstrate the potential benefits and determents of social networking site usage (Fox and Moreland, 2014; Tandoc, Ferruci, and Duffy, 2014). I am interested in how SNSs can affect the satisfaction of a romantic relationship while also looking at how people present themselves online. This study will look at two impacts Facebook can have on a person. The first is how Facebook surveillance can impact a romantic heterosexual relationship. The second notion I’ll be investigating is if women post more photos and status on Facebook of positive features in their lives resulting in a more positive online self-presentation than men. Researching both of these impacts Facebook can have is significant considering a large portion of today’s society are active Facebook users. In fact, 1.55 billion people in the world are monthly active Facebook users (Zephoria, 2015). There have been many studies that link romantic relationships to Facebook, but there have not been any studies that investigate how the satisfaction of a relationship lessens when people surveillance Facebook. I’m interested in how the surveillance of Facebook can lessen the satisfaction of a relationship and how Facebook affects the way different genders project themselves online.
2. Rationale H1: Through social networking sites like Facebook, it becomes easier to portray yourself in a specific way. This meaning that a Facebook user may post only what she or he wants people to see, thus determining what their online appearance is. Women are more likely than men to post photos or statuses that further develop a positive self-presentation online (Farrugia, 2013). By publically posting a majority of positive self-presentation posts, people will compare themselves to the posts that they see. Since Facebook users, specifically females, want to achieve a positive self-presentation (Schau & Gilly, 2003; Walther, 2007; Zhao et al., 2008), they fill their Facebook page with positive relationships and other successes. This creates a competition between people that derives from the human instinct to feel power and attractiveness (Nabi et al, 2013). The Social Rank Theory suggests that when comparing oneself to another person, it may invoke a sense of competition. The comparison of the types of posts males versus females publish on Facebook is intensely different. Women use social media to share more personal information, while men use it for more business related reasons (Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2006). According to a study conducted by Pew Research Center in 2014, 53% of Facebook users are women, resulting in 47% percent of users are males. When looking at which gender is more active on Facebook, women have 55% more posts on their walls than men. Social Media Today explains, “women are more likely to share posts with their online peers that contain recent purchases, experiences with a business and photos of themselves”. Whereas, men share more worldly events including matter relating to politics, news and business (Cassidy, 2006). Thus, females are more likely to post things about themselves while males post notions that may affect a community. It may also be mentioned that most women will only allow posts on their Facebook page that give them a positive self-presentation. It was previous stated what women are more likely to posts and perhaps each aspect furthers their positive online appearance. It is conceivably that women share recent purchases to exhibit their wealth, experiences that benefit their career and photos of themselves that portray them in a specific way. With that being said, it can be concluded that women are more likely than men to post photos and status that further a project positive self-presentation on social networking sites like Facebook.
H2: When analyzing surveillance Facebook users, it becomes evident that social networking sites can provoke emotions, particularly envy. It was found that college students who use Facebook heavily for surveillance reasons are more likely to have higher levels of envy because they are exposed to other people’s lives (Jelenchick et al., 2013). In a study done by Smock et al, they define surveillance use of Facebook by how often a user “writes a status update; post a photo; comments on a friends wall; and browses a timeline.” Judging by how often a user did one of those things on a 5 point-scale, they could define what the user used Facebook for. As previous mentioned Facebook users want to achieve positive self-presentation (Schau & Gilly, 2003; Walther, 2007; Zhao et al., 2008), by filling Facebook with positive relationships and other successes. A result of this social competition is a feeling of envy due to consumption of social information on Facebook from peers who we perceive as better (Gilbert & Allan, 1998). Considering that people who post on Facebook want to show others the successful and happy aspect of their lives, it can lead to envy (Schau & Gilly, 2003). Evidence shows that individuals who use Facebook for surveillance purposes can lead to feeling envy due to positive self-presentation. There is also research and evidence to confirm the claim that positive self-presentation leads to individual envy, yet there has not been a specific study for relationship envy. Due to the fact that people want to express a positive self-presentation, they will “rarely post negative experiences or relationships” (Karpinsiki, 2010). This exposure to other ‘happy and successful’ couples can result in a lower satisfaction of ones own romantic relationship. The comparison of relationships through Facebook can result in envy and therefore a lower quality relationship. Additionally, in another finding of Tandou, he researched the connection between Facebook surveillance use, envy and depression. The quality of a relationship based on relational satisfaction (Baym, Zhang, Kunkel, Ledbetter 2007) can be greatly effect by relational envy. The satisfaction of a relationship has more pressure then being a satisfied individual because in a relationship you are investing time and energy (Chen et al., 2002; Quan-Haase et al., 200). Therefore, a satisfying relationship is more difficult to achieve because of these higher expectations (Berschied et al., 2004). This proving that envy will have an affect on relational satisfaction. Thus, in heterosexual romantic relationships the use of social media sites can lessen the satisfaction of the relationship due to the way people want to have a positive self-presentation online. This has been shown through Facebook envy, consequently resulting in a change of satisfaction negatively in a romantic relationship.
Method Participants A voluntary survey was sent to numerous people (n=154 participants) all of whom are over the age 18 from a wide range of locations. This survey was anonymous, meaning the researchers did not know who completed the survey; the researchers only knew the response rate. Our sample size of N=154 with an average age of 25 shows that this study was sent to a small sample. The response rate consists of 53% female (n=81) and 40% male (n=61), this meaning 7% of participants did not indicate their gender (n= 12). The reasons for not submitting their gender may vary--they are gender neutral, did not wish to state their gender for other reasons or simply skipped the question. Out of the 7% of participants that did not submit their gender, it may be evidence that some people skipped over questions thus making the data inaccurate or unreliable.
Procedure For our study, every researcher (person in the class) was asked to send the survey to at least three participants. These participants were recruited with the only requirement being that each participant must be eighteen years old or older. Once a researcher personally chose three participants, a link to the survey was sent via email or text. It was the responsibility of the researcher to select 3 trustworthy people who will take the time to fully complete the survey with true answers. This survey was sent online and took approximately 6 minutes to complete if the participant read each question thoroughly.
Measures This study as a whole looked at a variety of variables but for the purpose of my study, I’m going to measure: Facebook surveillance, the satisfaction of a romantic relationship offline, and positive self-presentation. Facebook Surveillance. Facebook surveillance can be defined as viewing any aspect (homepage, your profile, friends profile) of Facebook without being actively contributing. In order to measure Facebook surveillance, participants were asked questions based on the likert scale. There were four questions regarding Facebook Surveillance on the survey, e.g., “I find myself constantly viewing other users’ Facebook profiles”. Participants would answer whether they strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, disagree or strongly disagree to the statement. The Standard Deviation (SD)= 0.81744, with a Mean (M) =4.3604 and an Alpha (A)=0.880. Satisfaction of a Romantic Relationship Offline. I defined the satisfaction of a romantic relationship as an interpersonal evaluation of the positivity of feelings for one’s partner and attraction to the relationship (Rusbult & Buunk, 1993). I was interested in how Facebook surveillance impacts a romantic relationship offline. In the survey, there were four questions relevant to this variable. An example of a question regarding the satisfaction of a romantic relation offline is, “I consider myself closer to my boyfriend/girlfriend when we’re having intimate conversations.” The participant would then rank their opinion based on the likert scale as stated above. The results of this variable were M=2.6012, SD= 1.8845 and A = 0.753. Positive Self-Presentation. In this study I define positive self-presentation as any posts on a social networking site that has the intent to create, modify or enhance an impression of one selves through the use of posts. There were 3 questions for this survey, including “I frequently feel the need to share the fun things I’m doing.” The results for positive self-presentation were M=4.5855, SD=0.96304 and A=0.475.
Results As mentioned, my first hypothesis tests if females are more likely to project positive self-presentation when on social networking sites than males. An independent-sample t-test was conducted to compare gender on Facebook and how often they posted positive self-presentation postings. There was a significant difference in the scores for females (M=4.41, SD=0.9527) and males (M=4.81, SD= 0.9245); t(119)= -2.31, p= .023. These results suggest that gender does have an affect on who posts more positive self-presentation posts on Facebook. Specially, our results conclude that on Facebook woman post more positive self-presentations than men. In terms of my second hypothesis, in heterosexual romantic relationships, the surveillance use of Facebook can lessen the satisfaction of the relationship is negative but not significant. To test this hypothesis I conducted a correlation test. There was a negative correlation between the two variables, r = -.06, p= .258. These results did not support my hypothesis. Since the p-value is less than 0.5 the result is not due to chance and there is simply a negative correlation between Facebook surveillance and satisfaction of a romantic relation. With r representing the strength of the relationship and the p-value as the significance level, it can be concluded that there was a negative correlation, meaning Facebook surveillance did not lessen the satisfaction of the relationship but actually improved it.
Discussion In the first finding, we discover that there is a correlation between gender and whether they post positive self-presentations post on Facebook. I used a t-test so that I could compare males and females against another variable. The second finding that Facebook surveillance lessens the satisfaction of a relationship was proven to be false. Recall that Tandou research lead to a relationship between Facebook surveillance and envy and depression (2015). I wrongly assumed that because of that correlation, Facebook surveillance would have a negative affect on a relationship. As mentioned, relationship satisfaction has more pressure then individual because your investing time and energy into a relationship (Chen et al., 2002; Quan-Haase et al., 200). Therefore, a satisfying relationship is more difficult to achieve because of these higher expectations (Berschied et al., 2004). With all that previous research, one could predict that by adding a variable like Facebook Surveillance, the findings would be the same. But that prediction was proven to be wrong. Although with that being said, there were some limitations for this study. We could have had better control over who was taking the survey instead of one study size. Further, this study was interesting yet it was only made up of friends and family of Wake Forest students. The questions in the survey also varied in consistency, as we needed to explore numerous variables considering not everyone in the class had the same variables. For example, we only had 3 questions about Facebook surveillance; with that low of number it is hard to get accurate data. For future research, it would be interesting to look at how drastically Facebook affects a person’s relationship. In this study, we only examined if there was a correlation and if that correlation negatively affected the relationship. Further research could be done to investigate if Facebook surveillance actually improves a romantic relationship. And if so, how much affect does Facebook surveillance has on the satisfaction. In regards to the first hypothesis, it would be interesting to add another variable of “future endeavors.” In today’s society, many businesses looking to hire a new employee research their background by stalking Facebook pages. Since we learned that women portray themselves only in a positive self-presentation way on Facebook, does this help them get jobs? Considering, that the employer looking at the Facebook page only sees the positive attributes. In closing, Facebook and other social media sites are only projected to keep increasing. Technology today has reached an all time high and will continue to break impossible barriers. With that being said, there is many past research done that is no longer relevant today as technology keeps updating with the growing demands of society. Perhaps in the future, some of the past research hypothesis could be used as part of history. Although only one my hypothesis tested positive, they are both relevant and contribute to the ever changing and growing technology trend. With Facebook being the leading social media website, my hypothesis prove to be applicable and perhaps be used for future endeavors. As a result of my study, it helps society learn more about the impacts of Facebook and the affect it can have on a individual and relationship.
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