The many faces of facebook: experiencing social media as performance, exhibition, and personal archive
Abstract
The growing use of social media means that an increasing amount of people's lives are visible online. We draw from Goffman's theatrical metaphor and Hogan's exhibition approach to explore how people manage their personal collection of social media data over time. We conducted a qualitative study of 13 participants to reveal their day-to-day decision-making about producing and curating digital traces on Facebook. Their goals and strategies showed that people experience the Facebook platform as consisting of three different functional regions: a performance region for managing recent data and impression management, an exhibition region for longer term presentation of self-image, and a personal region for archiving meaningful facets of life. Further, users' need for presenting and archiving data in these three regions is mediated by temporality. These findings trigger a discussion of how to design social media that support these dynamic and sometimes conflicting needs.
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Sometimes some degree of curation is already achieved through encoding; individuals purposefully decide which photos to take or what to post on social media, automatically limiting the kind of data that can be used later for reconstructing past memories.
“Of course, sometimes some degree of curation is already achieved through encoding; that is, individuals purposefully decide which photos to take or what to post on social media, automatically limiting the kind of data that can be used later for reconstructing past memories (cf.Zhao et al., 2013).”
From Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model (2024) · cites this paper as Zhao et al., 2013
When individuals aim at using a social networking site such as Facebook, which is optimized for public self-presentation, also for creating a personal archive of their lives, they may struggle to balance these different purposes.
“Interestingly, this can also lead to conflicts: When individuals aim at using a social networking site such as Facebook, which is optimized for public self-presentation, also for creating a personal archives of their lives, they may struggle to balance these different purposes (Zhao et al., 2013).”
From Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model (2024) · cites this paper as Zhao et al., 2013
Cites
Connection strategies: Social capital implications of Facebook-enabled communication practices
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2011) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444810385389 · Cited by 1,349 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Research around these platforms has focused on issues that arise in the context of social interaction, such as how these systems support identity presentation [5, 16] and how they help people build social capital [6].”
BackgroundHogan, B. (2010) · Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society · doi:10.1177/0270467610385893 · Cited by 1,318 · cited 7× · see citing works
“Our primary categories included themes such as real-time decision-making of Facebook activities (resonant with Goffman [7]), management behaviors (resonant with Hogan [11]), browsing behaviors, and general use of Facebook.”
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The Illusion of Control: Placebo Effects of Control Settings
Vaccaro, K., Huang, D., Eslami, M., Sandvig, C., Hamilton, K., & Karahalios, K. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3173590 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Nguyen, T., Kaviani, D., & Salehi, N. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3714192 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Self-citationUnderstanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model
Hutmacher, F., Appel, M., & Schwan, S. (2024) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1080/1047840x.2024.2384125 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Challenges and Opportunities for Technology-Supported Activity Reporting in the Workplace
Lu, D., Marlow, J., Kocielnik, R., & Avrahami, D. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3173744 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
- Authors
- Zhao, X., Salehi, N., Naranjit, S., Alwaalan, S., Voida, S., & Cosley, D.
- Affiliations
- Cornell University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2013-04-27
- Pages
- 1-10
- OpenAlex
- W2170671660
- Cited by
- 186
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 59.15
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Keywords
- Facebook, social media, digital traces, impression management, self-presentation, archiving, temporality, theatrical metaphor, social media design
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