MySpace and Social Psychology

Self-presentation and Gender on MySpace
Adriana M. Manago et al.
Published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (2008)

I thought this article was cool because it was a study done on something that almost everyone is familiar with. The researchers in this study examined what they defined as “emerging adults” and how they establish their self-identity and their interactions with fellow MySpacers. Manago, et al. determined that by using MySpace people were able to express themselves in different ways than they could in the offline world, and often used their page to exhibit to viewers the “self” they want to become. The study was conducted from surveying a group of volunteers from psychology classes in the 18-24 year old age range. The participants were split into same sex focus groups with a moderator whose purpose was to keep the conversation on track and to extract more answers by using pointed questions. The responses were then coded for what themes they touched on. The themes for the purpose of this article were self-presentation, social identity and gender identity.

This article is relevant to class discussions because it gives a real life display of how people affect their social reality. People who are frequent users of MySpace often have their “offline” reality and then their reality on this social network. Friends on MySpace are not necessarily people that the user knows in real life. This networking site allows people and almost non-threatening way to explore social groups and norms in a way that is anonymous. Until this Social Psychology class I had never realized the impact that MySpace had in life outside of the opportunity to stay connected to people.