Self-esteem and visual self-presentation on facebook among Chinese undergraduate in a public university in Malaysia

Increasing usage of technologies and internet contributes to an introduction of online social networking sites or social media such as Facebook. Facebook has become a platform for self-presentation, especially among the youth. This qualitative study was carried out to study description of self-esteem and visual self-presentation among Chinese undergraduate students in a public university in Malaysia. Altogether ten Chinese students from the university were recruited through purposive sampling and interviewed. This study found that high self-esteem students expressed that they are not addicted to Facebook, accept more real-life/known friends and would not “un-tag” unflattering photographs, while low self-esteem students are addicted to Facebook, accept more strangers on Facebook and would “un-tag”, hide or even delete the unflattering photographs on their Facebook. This study also discovered that management of students’ visual self-presentation on Facebook could be divided into two categories, i.e. selective visual self-presentation and authentic visual self-presentation. In short, this study gave a big pictures on characteristics of self-esteem, types of visual self-presentation, and reasons for using different types of visual self-presentation besides raising awareness of Facebook addiction among university students.

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