Social network sites (SNSs) have become a common part of everyday life for billions of people worldwide. Not everyone uses the same sites, nor are sites functionally equivalent in the eyes of users. Both established platforms and new upstarts may provide novel features or access to new audiences, yet users tend to remain on a few dominant platforms, especially Facebook, the world's reigning social network site. The goal of the present study is to understand why people are committed to specific social network sites, given that no site encompasses either all of a person's social connections or all possible gratifications available from online participation. Further, individuals do not always wish to have a single real-name identity for all online interactions, thus implying the necessary use of multiple accounts or sites. To understand SNS commitment, this study employs a mixed-methods research design by combining findings from a survey of 800 respondents with 50 semi-structured interviews. The research focuses on young adults in the UK and their use of four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Findings indicate that network size has only a marginal effect on commitment, whereas the effect of identity performance is more pronounced, albeit in different ways on different sites. Social and informational gratifications have the strongest effect across all four SNSs, suggesting that commitment is primarily driven by repeated habit-forming experiences. To further help explain SNS commitment, this thesis employs a typology of social media users based on attitudes towards digital technology. It is evident that attitudes explain more variation in commitment than either demographic factors or personality. Qualitative analysis reinforces this finding by showing how users employ specific gratification-based repertoires to determine which sites to use and when. These findings help advance research on affordances, self-presentation and SNS use, while also making practical recommendations for social media platforms.

In an age when people make and maintain relationships in online environments, creating and sustaining impressions online becomes equally important. For a better understanding of social networking sites usage, the present study examines the influence of gender, personality, and selfesteem on social media presentation. The goal of this study is to investigate individuals‘ expressions through social media in order to determine if they reflect the author‘s gender, personality, and levels of self-esteem. Quantitative analysis was used in this study through survey and SPSS content analysis. The researcher found that neuroticism was related to selfpresentation, and agreeableness is related to Facebook friends. Personality traits were generally shown to be a stronger predictor of self-presentation on social media than gender or self-esteem, because the big five personality traits correspond well with functions of social media.

In many institutional settings in today’s globalized job market, people have to deal with different role asymmetries in the co-construction of meaning. In this study, institutional, cultural and linguistic asymmetries are focused on in interviews at an employment agency in Sweden. Interviews between a recruiter and fourteen female job candidates with an academic background from other countries were video taped. Three sequences on personality were analysed: What do you consider to be your strengths? What personal characteristics do you want to improve? and What has made an impact on you? The general aim of the study was to gain knowledge of the processes whereby self-presentations are co-constructed and how participants try to reach common understanding when they do not share common linguistic and cultural resources. Theoretically, the study has a dialogical framework. Discourse is seen as the place where society, culture, situation, individual and language meet and where meaning is constructed through social action. Within an interactional sociolinguistics framework, an holistic approach to methods combines ethnography of communication with ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The results show that the meaning-making project in this institutional situation is institutionally framed, culturally hidden, socially constrained by face-work and interactionally embedded. The recruiter orients to the institutional frame by embedding reformulations of the candidates’ answers in her uptake, often an adjective, which is filled in on a form and later transferred to a data base. The recruiter also takes on the face-work of the communicative dilemmas that the questions exhibit, for example by using explanations when candidates admit to low self-confidence. It is also shown that for some candidates the hidden agenda of the situation is concealed and that their communicative styles clash with the recruiter’s expectations. The asymmetrical situation can for the candidates be seen as both a resource and a constraint. The linguistic asymmetry is not foregrounded. Instead, the negotiation of meaning concerns the institutional and cultural frame rather than linguistic meanings. On the other hand, the recruiter shows a tendency to normalize the candidates according to her own institutional and cultural knowledge. This dynamic interplay between heterogenization and homogenization tendencies is an important feature in the interviews.

In any human culture the telling of stories for representing past events is likely to have a centralplace. The aim of this dissertation is to describe storytelling among Swedish adolescents from astructural, interactional and functional perspective, and to demonstrate how the meaning of thestory is interactionally constructed. The material consists of a corpus of 258 stories taken from 30 hours of tape recordings of conversations between adolescents, aged 10-15, of both sexes, mostly in naturally occurring situations. The majority of the recordings were made in the late 80's and early 90's, while others datefrom 1974-1984. The study tries to combine the theoretical and methodological ideas of conversational analysis(CA) and sociolinguistic discourse analysis. The method is basically qualitative and the analysesare carried out through detailed scrutiny of pieces of recordings and transcriptions. The aspects ofstorytelling that arc studied include the way the stories are introduced and accounted for in the ongoing conversation, how they are designed by the teller in order to propose and make the listeneraccept a certain version of what happened, and how the listener through his contributions duringthe telling can accept, modify, reject and negotiate the meaning proposed by the teller. Another aspect studied is how the stories serve as means for self- and other-presentations. The results show that, both as tellers and listeners, Swedish adolescents make use of many different strategies to structure the telling and evaluate the story. These include verb tense, word orderand different kinds of discourse markers as well as highly emotional and dramatizing features suchas reported speech, onomatopoetic expressions and laughter. A very important evaluative deviceis the discourse marker ba. Dramatization is also found in many of the listener's contributions tothe telling. It is also shown that there are substantial differences between boys and girls, both in the use of (some of) these dramatizing features and in the way they construct and present themselves and others in the stories. This seems to be due to the fact that storytelling serves different functions in groups of boys and girls. Finally, it is argued that there are some indications of an ongoing change in the narrative style of Swedish adolescents.

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to clarify and describe what image men and women present and communicate in their profiles on an online dating site. Further has been investigated if traditional gender roles and stereotypes are as pronounced on this online platform or if it offers a space to go beyond traditional formations. The theoretical framework of this study consisted of a social psychological idea and understanding of identity as well as a gender theoretical perspective. The methodological points of departure were hermeneutic and the data consisted of ten male and ten female member profiles on match.com. The results of the study was divided into three themes, the emphasis on positive qualities, the attractive body and project manager to one’s own life. The results showed that both men and women present a positive image of themselves in their profiles, both concerning inner and outer qualities. The results also indicated that a life with various social activities is of great importance, which implies a reflexive attitude towards life. To create an image of oneself is strenuous work in constant change. Regarding traditional gender roles and stereotypes about what is being regarded as male and female showed that traditional, stereotype ways of describing masculinity and femininity exist, but there were certain tendencies that a crossing of traditional formations takes place on this platform. However, the result of this study has also revealed that this happens to a lesser extent than we first thought.

This thesis is set to investigate the factors that affect the intention to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The purpose of this study is to identify factors and how these factors affect the behavioral intention to disclose personal information to SNS from a new angle of analysis, namely through a user-to-organizational approach. By examining this phenomenon in a new context, this study seeks to provide an understanding of this phenomenon in a new setting and test if previous research can be used to explain the stated behavioral intention. With this argumentation in mind, the thesis aims to contribute to existing theory in consumer behavior, social networking sites, privacy concerns and personal information disclosure. In order to do so this paper is built on a quantitative research approach where the main research strategy is based on the results of a questionnaire. Through the questionnaire, a proposed framework was tested in order to identify factors affecting peoples’ intentions to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The model was built upon the structure of privacy calculation theory, which has been proven to identify intentions to disclose personal information in online settings. The results show that the factors that significantly affect behavioral intentions are trusting beliefs and self-presentations. They are factors leading to personal information disclosure to SNS providers. Limitations of this study is that it suffers a sampling restrictions due to its sampling of only Swedish inhabitants. This paper is the first to develop and empirically test an integrated model of personal information disclosure to SNS, taking on a user-to-organizational approach to privacy. Since SNS are financially evaluated by number of active users of their SNS it is crucial to understand the factors that affect consumers’ intention to disclose their personal information. From the empirical findings, this study proved that trust and self-presentation determine the intentions to disclose personal information to SNS providers. The results shows a discrepancy of existing literature, explaining differences between user-to-user and user-to-organizational context, and thus broadening the context of personal disclosure in the SNS realm. Practitioners can, by using the insights, tailor their strategies in order to maximize the efforts of affecting potential users’ to disclose their personal information, which SNS providers are dependent upon.

Expressive Writing (EW) involves writing in an emotionally expressive manner about an experienced event, and has been shown to be related to increases in psychological and physical well-being. The purpose of the current study was to extend previous work by examining how self-presentation affects psychological and physical gains following the EW task. Forty one participants who have experienced a traumatic event were recruited from the community and given either an EW or control activity. Measures assessing self-presentation and various indices of health were administered at baseline and again at one month follow-up to determine changes in symptomatology. Results indicated that higher levels of perfectionistic self-presentation were significantly associated with less improvement in symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. Further, a nonsignificant moderation trend emerged whereby higher levels of perfectionistic self-presentation were associated with more improvement in symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress in the EW group but not control group.

Expressive Writing (EW) involves writing in an emotionally expressive manner about an experienced event, and has been shown to be related to increases in psychological and physical well-being. The purpose of the current study was to extend previous work by examining how self-presentation affects psychological and physical gains following the EW task. Forty one participants who have experienced a traumatic event were recruited from the community and given either an EW or control activity. Measures assessing self-presentation and various indices of health were administered at baseline and again at one month follow-up to determine changes in symptomatology. Results indicated that higher levels of perfectionistic self-presentation were significantly associated with less improvement in symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. Further, a nonsignificant moderation trend emerged whereby higher levels of perfectionistic self-presentation were associated with more improvement in symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress in the EW group but not control group.

This thesis deals with the problematics of usage of dating applications between young people of the Czech republic and their views on partnerships. The introduction is dedicated to theoretical findings and basic terminology related with on-line dating. The first half of the theoretical part introduces the reader to different views on partnerships and their core pillars based on psychological theories. In connection with these attributes, the second part of the thesis concentrates on theories dealing with transformations in present relationships. Separate chapter is devoted to millennials - known as generation Y. Second part of the theoretical part brings the reader closer to understanding how meeting and getting acquainted with someone works in the cyber world. It analyses its evolution and existing research on the topic. At the same time it deals with communication and self-presentation of users on dating applications and dating websites. Last but not least the reader is acquainted with on-line dating applications Tinder and Grindr, whose users were my respondents. The practical part is dedicated to the research itself, whose main task was to determine the role the dating applications play in establishing relationships in a young persons life. User activity of respondents as well as their experience and attitude towards dating application was revealed using a semi-structured interview. At the same time the research shows the views and opinions of the respondents on partnership itself.

The theme of this master thesis is Instagram - a social networking service and its impact on self-acceptance and self-promoting of teenagers. In the first place, theoretical part aims to describe concepts, that are linked with social networks, such as prosuming, participative culture, and Web 2.0. Furthermore, general approach regarding the impact of social networks on teenagers is introduced. The main subjects of this research are contextualized in the field of social networks. The thesis strives to introduce following topics: the presentation of a distincitve identity on social media, the self-reflection under the influence of the subscribed content, and the marketing exploitation of Instagram influencers. There are three main goals of the dissertation, as stated in a hypothesis part. Firstly, how are the participants of the research influenced by the subscribed content. Secondly, whether is the information stream they are following being reflected in their own Instagram presentation. And finally, what is the impact on the participants of the research in case of advertising activity represented by the Instagram influencers. Qualitative research is focused on girls at the age of sixteen. This is a moderate deflection as the original hypothesis was aiming to involve wider research group of...