Most adults have multiple social networking profiles, and they adopt a unique persona for each account. This is the findings of a new study by Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), alongside King's College in London, England. This new study can even help people determine their own personas in the different profiles they have.
According to the research, people tend to create various personas for each profile to fit in to the unique culture and tradition of each platform, Eureka Alert reported. This is a conclusion from the study co-led by Penn State's Dongwon Lee, alongside King's College senior lecturer Nishanth Sastry. Lee explained that an image of an attractive Starbucks drink may gain popularity in Instagram, but not in LinkedIn.
The study studied up to 100,000 social media accounts through social media directory site About.me. Lee said it is a very reliable account since users give their own profiles willingly. Sastry said that using About.me is a significant breakthrough helping them to observe social network accounts from platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
The profile pictures and basic information from the users that the researchers observed vary significantly for each social network, Mirror UK reported. The researchers came up with a scientific model that allows them to determine what social media platform a profile is created for by checking the photo and description from that account. The research also found out that different demographics is also a big factor on how people present themselves on their social media account.
When it comes to demographics, the research showed that females usually don't wear glasses on their profile pictures, while those who are 25 years below usually don't smile on theirs. The researchers also found out that these users aren't consciously choosing to adapt a different persona for each profile; instead, the personas were created by the user subconsciously.
