cultural differences on visual self-presentation through social networking site profile images
A profile image is one of the most important personal attributes on social networking sites (SNSs). The current study examines whether self-presentation on SNSs is related to national culture and how forms of self-presentation differ between American and Chinese users. We accomplish this by analyzing profile images on two social networking sites, Facebook in the US and Renren in China. Our findings indicate that self-presentation is sensitive to national culture: Chinese users are more likely to customize their profile images than Americans. Our study suggests that there is a need to design social networking website features that better support profile construction for international users.
cultural differences self-presentation social networking sites profile images