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Australians are making use of social media to curate their image, rather than connect with friends and household, a new survey says.
Nonetheless, an expert says how considerably someone’s identity is “curated” varies from platform to platform.
Tumblr’s however-to-be-released Status of Social in 2015 survey looked into how Australia’s practically 13 million social media customers approached social media.
The company’s creative strategist, Max Sebela, said the survey suggested the majority of social media users preferred to use their accounts to showcase the best of their lives.
“Australians have moved away from using social media as a way to connect with their loved ones, and are increasingly using these channels as an identity construct,” Mr Sebela mentioned.
The survey found 63 per cent of respondents considered social media to be a lot more like a “highlights reel” of their lives.
Nevertheless, social media specialist Dr Tim Highfield, from the Queensland University of Technology’s digital media study centre, stated how “curated” someone’s on the internet presence was varied from platform to platform.
“[Individuals] will use Tumblr for diverse factors than they’ll use Facebook or Twitter,” he stated.
“There might be a distinction among personal and expert accounts.
“They may possibly split up their identity. It’s all them and it really is part of themselves, but you never get the full picture and the complete self from what they put on Instagram and Facebook.”
Dr Highfield stated the thought of projecting an identity was not new, but that social media was providing folks a new outlet.
“It really is what we do in basic anyway, it’s just realised in specific types by way of social media,” he stated.
Cultivating image ‘not narcissistic’
Dr Highfield stated social media was nonetheless becoming utilised to connect with loved ones and pals, and that Facebook content material was most likely the least curated since its audience was far more general.
“It has the biggest audience in common and it is more folks and much more of a mix of everyone — you might locate your parents and grandparents on there — it’s a really different audience,” he stated.
“Twitter … can also be extremely authentic, but it might be centred around a different kind of thought or interest.”
Photo: Sunshine Coast teen Essena O’Neill gained fame for claiming social media was “not genuine life”. (Insagram: @essenaoneill)The authenticity of social media was hotly debated final month, when “Instafamous” Sunshine Coast teen Essena O’Neill deleted most of the photographs from her account and re-captioned these that remained, stating that “social media was not true life”.
In a video, Ms O’Neill — who had far more than 500,000 followers on Instagram but has because made her account private, retaining a following of more than 11,000 — stated she had “designed an image of myself that I feel other individuals feel is unattainable”.
“Lately, I’ve realised how horrible that is,” she said in a video released online.
“For a person to stick to my content material and consider, ‘I want I was you’, that is the opposite of what I want to market.”
Ms O’Neill’s motives were later questioned, with some saying the move could have been a “advertising and marketing stunt”.
Nonetheless, Dr Highfield said on the web promotion was not necessarily self-centred.
“Men and women on Instagram may get a lot of likes if they are posting about style or fitness and it can turn out to be a type of market for them,” he said.
“There is a lot of self identity and self promotion involved in all social media and it’s surely curated and cultivated, [but] I would not say it’s narcissistic.
“I’d say there’s a lot of self worth gotten out of it, but there’s also a lot of neighborhood sharing and feedback about it.”
ABC/AAP
Topics: social-media, internet-culture, relationships, men and women, australia