Influencers’ Self-presentation on Visual-based Instagram …

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Chapter 2

Literature Review

This chapter first discusses the origin of self-presentation. Second, it illustrates the theory in an online environment due to the proliferation of the Internet and mobile technologies. Third, I review the prominent literature that talk about mother ideologies existing in patriarchal systems. Fourth, I discuss the current situation of mothers in Taiwan. Lastly, a summary appears at the end of this chapter.

2.1 Influencers’ Self-presentation on Visual-based Instagram

Erving Goffman (1059) initially brought up the concept of self-presentation in 1959, but only focused on face-to-face communication (Ward, 2016). The theorization of self-presentation originated from Goffman’s study, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” elaborated through a dramaturgic approach (Goffman, 1978). It

depicted the management of self-presentation as a performance on stage (Goffman, 1978), focusing on the “role” people solely play (Leary & Kowalski, 1990, p.35). In other words, impression management takes place in the presence of strategies and tactics of presenting oneself toward a different audience or depending on different occasions. With the strategies and tactics of self-presentation, Goffman stated the purpose of disclosing or concealing information to portray oneself strategically and desirably is linked to pleasing the audience (Baumeister & Hutton,1987). Aside from pleasing the audience, people can also present themselves by matching their ideal selves through self-construction (Baumeister & Hutton, 1987).

Leary and Kowalski (1990) referred to self-presentation as a process of individuals’

attempt to control the impression forms of themselves. These scholars specified

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impression management as the process of impression motivation and impression formation, which include the degree of motivation over which people control their images as perceived by others, as well as the process of creating their impression upon others (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). They further noted that the influence of both the mental and external parts of individuals should be taken into account (Leary &

Kowalski, 1990). Such a statement amplifies the importance of studying self-presentation from the mental and external aspects, which prominent researchers have done extensively in recent years.

2.1.1 Self-presentation in an online environment

With the significance of the theory and the popularity of digital interactions, scholars have considered that self-presentation does not just exist in a face-to-face environment. They continually have adapted Goffman’s ideas to electronic environments and discussed related effects and behaviors involved in the presentations of people’s selves (Ward, 2016). Such studies in the literature grant us a more multi-faceted knowledge of self-presentation.

Bozeman and Kacmar (1997) found that individuals tend to have a specific goal and present their selves accordingly by regulating their self-presentation. People regulate their self-presentation very well when they consider self-regulation as being vital in the process (Vohs, Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005). On the other hand, some theorists claimed that individuals could be selective when presenting themselves online.

Profiles selected for self-presentation in a computer-mediated environment (Hancock

& Toma, 2009) are a carefully-controlled type of selectivity of self-presentation (Walther, 2007).

People also select photographs in a computer-mediated environment for

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strategically to make their profiles more accurate or to possibly match their own expectations of themselves. Especially in a social media context, people will construct

“treasured aspects of themselves” digitally (Toma, 2013, p. 201). White (2016) also stated that social networking services have a way of making self-presentation rather distinct. Applying selectivity of self-presentation to Instagram’s profiles, scholars found that Instagram users are more aware of selecting images to foster their “self-concept” than in making connections with others (Jackson & Luchner, 2018, p.2). In a sense, people might purposely select pictures of themselves on Instagram, which Chae (2017) considered to be the process of editing.

Several studies on Instagram present different roles and characters’ self-presentation. Smith and Sanderson (2015) examined athletes’ self-presentation by analyzing the contents of Instagram feeds. Geurin-Eagleman and Burch (2016) examined Olympic athletes’ self-presentation to get a further understanding of their behavior and intention toward self-presentation. Related to gender expectations, Gainor (2017) also dug into the field of athletes’ self-presentation.

Sarita and Suleeman (2017) measured the correlation between the need for belonging and self-presentation on Instagram via the Need to Belong Scale. Scholars have also investigated adolescent girls concerning the manipulation of Instagram photos (Kleemans et al., 2016). Hurley (2019) emphasized Instagram as being a helpful resource for exploring presentations of identity (Hurley, 2019). The current study thus hopes to shed light on influencers’ presentations on Instagram from a more explorative way in order to grasp a better sense of participants’ viewpoints.

Social media have made people become more capable at multi-media presentations and changed celebrity cultures through influencers (Li, 2018). People who are not recognizable enough in the real world could be famous as an influencer

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through the Internet (Li, 2018). The proliferation of influencers has contributed to the practices of presentation on social media. By utilizing strategic tactics of self-presentation (Senft, 2013), influencers attract followers online (Marwick, 2015;

Khamis, Ang & Welling, 2017). Instagram grants influencers an opportunity for modifying their self-presentations into idealized ones that they could not achieve in an offline world (Hurley, 2019). Our study investigates Instagram influencers from a different angle and towards a specific aim - Taiwanese mothers.

For mother influencers, if they tangle themselves up with any socio-cultural factor when presenting themselves publicly, then their behavior and perspectives towards managing their presentations are more distinct compared to other roles. This is an intriguing topic to probe into and thus allows this research to present its cultural perception in terms of Taiwan. The next section discusses mothers and their relation to East Asian society.