This study explores how college students present themselves on Facebook, a social networking website, and the impressions they want their fellow students to form of them when looking at their profiles. Goffman's dramaturgical and impression management framework served as a theoretical lens through which Facebook profiles were explored. Employing an ethnographic research design, data for this study were collected during eight-months of participant observation, 30 photo-elicitation interviews, and a photographic content analysis.Facebook has been rapidly adopted by undergraduate students who use it to maintain existing relationships and also as a medium in which to present themselves, especially through photographs. This study provides college administrators and student affairs professional some information about how undergraduates use Facebook and how Facebook can assist them in better understanding their institution's own student culture.Because photographs are instrumental to Facebook use, this study focused on the many images students place on their profiles. The use of photographs in social research is limited and it is hoped that this study will lay the ground work for further use of visual methods. This study found that college students believe that other college students are the primary audience for their profiles. Also, college students use six general "fronts" that lead audience members to see them as: (1) partier, (2) social, (3) adventurous/risk-taker, (4) humorous/funny/silly, (5) part of larger community, and (6) unique. Taken together, these fronts represent an "idealized" undergraduate. Students use props, settings, and gesture to provide their audience members visual cues to help them form the desired impressions. Much of the material that students place on Facebook is meant to be humorous or only understood by a small group of friends. Also, students only show a "narrow strip of activity" in their profiles.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / L. Susan Williams / Studies on fear of crime demonstrate that fear of rape controls women’s lives by altering emotions and behavior, though how women construct rape discourse through social networks has not been examined. Further, studies tend to dismiss stranger rape because of its rarity compared to acquaintance rape, but this study argues that research must begin where women are. This study looks to women’s voices to articulate how they talk about fear of rape; specifically, it examines responses to a serial rapist at work in a college town. Framed by feminist methodology, this study establishes the influence of fear on women’s lives and the role of women’s social networks in disseminating information, constructing strategies, and changing behavior as it relates to a local serial rapist. The study utilizes a multi-method approach to quantify levels of fear in the community and to document qualitatively women’s responses to knowledge about the serial rapist. Two surveys, content analysis of local newspapers, and interviews support this research. In particular, group interviews conducted in two environments – campus face-to-face groups and online virtual groups – provide opportunities for young women to voice concerns and report behavioral changes related to the serial rapes. The research demonstrates that women are concerned about insufficient information from formal sources and want more accurate reporting. Women depend heavily on informal networks for information, but it is often incomplete and/or inaccurate and may actually intensify fear. As documented in earlier research, women focus on stranger rape to the neglect of the more common acquaintance rape and tend to strategize in individual terms rather than recognize structural issues. A major finding of this research is that young women actually perceive a change in their own identity as they try to manage fear of rape. However, women’s social networks and, in particular, the increasingly popular online networks, provide a forum from which to try out strategies, build collective discourse, and, in turn, develop greater group consciousness among young women. From the experiences of women in this study, several policy implications are offered for managing fear, including education about the more likely threat of acquaintance rape.