Profile Picture Propaganda

The Project

Profile Picture Propaganda is a qualitative analysis project, researching how identity is portrayed and perceived through Facebook profile pictures.  

The project is based on our group's theory that people select certain profile pictures according to how they want to be perceived, and people viewing the profile pictures gain a certain understanding of who the original person is from their pictures. 

Methodology

To experiment with this theory, the goal was for each person within our group to question six different people (three males and three females) about another person in the group's profile pictures. For clarity, in our group are Charley, Shannon, Katie, Andrew, and Leigh.  Charley used Shannon's profile pictures, Shannon used Katie's, Katie used Andrew's pictures, Andrew used Leigh's, and Leigh used Charley's.  The requirements for people being interviewed were: 1) must be between 18-25 years old 2) may not know the person whose pictures he or she are looking at and 3) must be a friend to the person interviewing him or her. 

The people being interviewed were only allowed to look at the group member's assortment of profile pictures including comments, captions, tags, and dates in order to make assessments on the person's identity. They were not allowed to let features of the group member's Facebook profile influence their assessment of the group member's identity.  In order to standardize the analysis of how the group member's identity is perceived, our group created an interview document to ask the person being interviewed.  Questions on this document examine four areas of identity: self-image, values, demographics, and relationships.  The document can be viewed as an attachment along with each interviewer's processed inputs. 

After each interview was conducted, we in the group used the same document to question ourselves on our own profile pictures in order to understand what we were attempting to portray about ourselves through our profile pictures.  This allowed us to compare and contrast others' perceptions of our identities to our own understanding of who we are and what we were trying to convey.

Concluding Thoughts

As expected, we discovered that identity cannot be wholly understood through profile pictures.  We concluded the following:

• Context isn't easy to discern:
  Profile pictures only show a snapshot of time in a person's life; therefore, the person viewing the pictures has no idea what was happening before or after the picture was taken or how the person reacts to certain circumstances.
• We're all curators of our own content:
  Consciously or not, we select certain aspects of ourselves to represent through our profile pictures, but there is no defined "correct way" to use this medium of expression. Because these limitations aren't in place, we are free to express with the medium and curate it however we please.
• Who we ask is as important as who we ask about:  
  The subjects being interviewed all brought their own life experience and values to their responses. How an image is perceived is as much a result of the values of the person viewing it as of the person presenting it.

One unexpected result of this experiment was a comment that came up on a few occasions from the interviewees — after examining the pictures, many said that they now wanted to examine their own pictures with this critical eye to evaluate what their pictures say about them. Many interviewees also were hesitant to be honest because they felt like it would be mean, but the interviewers encouraged their subjects to respond honestly even if the comments came across as sharp.

The depth at which identity can be understood is limited by what we are willing to share. The most interesting result, however, is that people perceive different things about identities according to their own beliefs and previous life circumstances.  Therefore, perception is different to every viewer, and cannot be predicted or generalized. 

No medium is or has ever been adequate for truly expressing a self, but it is likely the advent of new digital media for expressing self are helping people have more control over the curation of their image.

Here is the link to the presentation.