Look At Us: Collective Narcissism in College Student Facebook Photo Galleries

Abstract

In recent years the popularity of social network sites (SNSs), such as Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, has expanded, enabling a culture of remote connectivity for young adults maintaining a variety of social ties to primary and secondary groups of contact. This is especially true for college-age adults who use SNSs to stay connected with friends and family dispersed across remote or nearby locations. These networked platforms of socially oriented activity permit an introduction of the self via public displays of connection (boyd & Ellison, 2007; Donath & boyd, 2004; Papacharissi, 2002a, 2002b, 2009). A subsequent networked presentation of the self involves performative elements, using a variety of tools and strategies to present tastes, likes, dislikes, affiliations, and in general, personality. Such a performative palette on sites like Facebook might include listings of interests and favorite music, films, and books, linking to groups sharing points of view or interests, posting of comments and responses, and, relevant to this chapter, posting and labeling of photographs of one’s self and one’s friends. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the use of photo galleries as an instrument of self presentation and a means of visual autobiography online. Photographs have long served a significant function of preserving biographical memories. Albums of photographs-from tintype and cabinet card albums in the mid-and late 1800s to digital galleries in the twenty-first century-are used to tell and retell experiences shared by members of one’s family and by one’s wider social circle. These photographs serve as mnemonic devices for the moments that bond us together, sparking larger conversations within families (Chalfen, 1987). Further, they allows us, as Barthes (1981) suggests, to search through the past and rediscover the truth of our loved ones. Similarly, the manner in which college students portray themselves and tag others through photographs on Facebook is a contemporary means of introducing the self and performing one’s identity. How do the photos selected, presented, and tagged help reify this mediated performance? If photos are taken for the purpose of being displayed and tagged, does this render the experiences and the social relationships presented more real? College students consciously upload and tag displayed photographs, thus selecting certain subjects and events to emphasize. Inspired by Chalfen’s (1987) examination of “how we construct, manipulate, interpret, live with, participate in, and generally use visual symbolic forms” (p. 5), we examine how visual imagery is employed to present the self and everyday college life via Facebook photo galleries. In this study, we interrogate the photographs college students present of themselves as important forms of symbolic creation of their worlds.