Self-Presentation of College Students on Social Media: Take Weibo as An Example

With the development of social networking services (SNS), people are accustomed to sharing their lives and presenting themselves on social media. Different from the traditional ways of face-to-face communication, social media platforms are becoming the performance stage for people nowadays. The study adopts Goffman’s dramaturgical theory as the theoretical framework, and looks into the self-presentation of college students on Weibo, a quite popular social media platform among young people in China. The study aims to explore whether individuals present different personas on the front stage and backstage, and to figure out the reasons behind them. Adopting the qualitative method, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with eight research participants. After organizing the interview data for further analysis, it is concluded that most of them tend to have different personalities online, compared to those in real life. The reasons for the difference include audience segregation, privacy considerations, and conformity, which will bring some inspiration to SNS developers.