# Graded Assignment 2 [Part I] #

Title: The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating Social Enhancement and Social Compensation Hypotheses Predicting Facebook and Offline Popularity from Sociability and Self-Esteem and Mapping the Meaning of Popularity with Semantic Network.

Author: Jolene Zywice and James Danowski

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2008.01429.x/pdf

Introduction

This research is focusing on the evidence of two hypotheses which are The Social Enhancement (Rich get Richer) that those with more developed offline social networks enhance them with more extensive online social networks and Social Compensation (Poor get Richer) hypothesis that those who perceive their offline social networks to be inadequate compensate for them with more extensive online social networks done by Valkenburg, Schouten, & Peter, in 2005. The purpose of this research is to find out firstly, the evidence between offline popularity and popularity on Facebook, and the possibilities of relationship of the Social Network Sites to the Social Enhancement and Social Compensation hypothesis. Secondly, to investigate the relationship between popularity on Facebook and offline with personality and social variables including sociability and self-esteem and thirdly to understand how are these traits linked to behaviors on Facebook.

Methodology

Briefly, in 2006 the researcher sent an email invitation of a survey to all students in a university in Midwestern United States with a diverse undergraduate student body. The participants are mostly college freshmen to alumni and were born within 1982 to 1988. Mostly the participants were female 71.8% and male 28.2%, they are from various ethnicity such as 56% white, 20.8% Asian, 8.6% Hispanic/Latino, 4.9% African American and 9.6% others. 67% of the samples are using Facebook for more than a year. The survey consists of open and close ended question and there are 24 questions. 

Findings

The result from their survey support both Social Compensation and Social Enhancement hypotheses. It is all because different subtypes of users behave differently. The result showed that those who are extrovert with high self-esteem are more popular both in online and offline compared to those introvert with low self-esteem and less popular offline are strived to look more popular on Facebook and think that is important. The percentage of low self-esteem users exposed more information online because they feel more comfortable expressing their true self online than offline. They admitted expressing more facets online, exaggerated information and done something to look popular. Furthermore, the researchers also found self-esteem may be a personality traits explain support the two hypotheses where the high self-esteem users use of Facebook to achieve higher social status and low self-esteem users use to fix deficiencies in order to be socially acceptable. In addition, according to the semantic network analysis of open-ended responses, the popular users said that they do not care about popularity on Facebook which suggest that those whose strive for it do not have it. Both of high and low self-esteem users agreed popularity on Facebook indicates by the numbers of their friends and the insecure individual likely try to be popular online. Lastly, the factors for always changing their Facebook profile are boredom and changes in life.

Conclusion

Basically, the research above is on how the Facebook users define popularity online and offline. Past researchers usually will do the field research on the behavior of people through observation. But with the advancement of technologies, Facebook can be used thoroughly to study on behaviors of the users. The study can be conducted on how the users portray themselves online because most of the users love to update on their lifestyles, daily activities and etc on Facebook. Furthermore, the research also can be conducted on the consequences of using Facebook. There are some users who will expose everything about themselves, their thoughts, and sometimes comments on other’s updates roughly that might hurt others. These might be the bad side of social networking. To conclude, Facebook, the up-to-date social networking has its own good and bad influences depend on whom using it and how they use it.

“O my Rabb! Increase me in knowledge.” (20:114)