Be Yourself: The Relative Importance of Personal and Social Norms for Adolescents’ Self-Presentation on Instagram

Zillich, Arne Freya und Riesmeyer, Claudia : Be Yourself: The Relative Importance of Personal and Social Norms for Adolescents’ Self-Presentation on Instagram. In: Social Media & Society, Bd. 7, Nr. 3

Abstract

This article examines the relative importance of personal, descriptive, and injunctive norms for adolescents’ self-presentation on Instagram and analyzes the role of proximal and distal reference groups in norm negotiation. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with German Instagram users between 14 and 19 years old, we identified four types of adolescents’ self-presentation that differ in terms of norms and referent others: authentic, self-confident, self-staged, and audience-oriented self-presentation. In addition, our study demonstrates that adolescents engage in reflective norm breaches when coping with conflicting self-presentation norms. These results highlight the crucial role of both adolescents themselves and their proximal and distal reference groups for norm negotiation.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (IfKW)
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie ; 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 370 Bildung und Erziehung
• ISSN: 2056-3051
• Bemerkung: First published online July 26, 2021
• Sprache: Englisch