One very scary social norm of Facebook is users posting photo albums solely of their friends and themselves of parties. Many of us are guilty of it. Most Cornell University students do not spend 90%+ of their time partying in college-town, frat parties, etc. However, according to student’s albums, college Facebook users feel the need to socially conform and display party pictures for everyone to see.
One may wonder how the online social norm of Facebook got to be of people posting lots of pictures of themselves partying. According to Wallace (p. 64), “the lack of physical presence may make our natural tendency to conform weaker”. In many situations, this is true concerning FtF versus CMC conformity. However, when it comes to Facebook, many of those stalking, I mean looking at your Facebook profile are people who actually have a relationship with you “in real-life” and therefore aren’t hiding from you physically. I believe in this circumstance, the social norm of posting party pictures on Facebook must have come about much differently and anonymity had nothing to do with it. For Facebook, I believe the “network” feature has a huge impact on conformity. Since users are friends with their “real-life” friends (who usually share a network with each other), their desire to socially conform and act similarly to their friends escalates.
For example, my younger brother (still in high school) recently created a Facebook profile. When he originally made his profile, he uploaded a “soft” picture that my mother probably took of him with our family pet pomeranian. Shortly after, his friend “Timmy” (who has a default profile picture sporting sunglasses and a cute girl hugging him) wrote on his wall “alex nice gay pic, where are those pics from this summer?” My news-feed informed me that almost immediately he uploaded a new default picture of him and his friends in Las Vegas posing with half-naked women. According to Wallace (p. 66), if someone breaks social norm, online friends will stress individuals to conform “by simply raising a virtual eyebrow”. In this situation, “Timmy” gently reproached my brother to conform to the social norms of their high school Facebook network. Since Facebook is such a broad social network composed of a wide variety of users, my brother was clueless when it came to composing his profile. There was no instructional video for him to watch or FAQs section for him to review. Instead, the reason for his conformity was based on how his friends presented themselves in their profiles as well as critical feedback they offered him concerning his own profile.
In this situation, I believe that the Leviathan enforces the social norm of selectively self-presenting party pictures to display on one’s Facebook because by conforming most individuals are producing a more “productive online group environment” (p. 70). When it comes to social networks, users may want to comply with their online friends because this helps to “distinguish” their selected stereotype more efficiently.
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Hey Kristina,
You had some great points in your post. I find it very interesting how the actions of other on Internet sites such as Facebook can have such a strong effect on our actions. In this case I would argue that the Leviathan is, in fact, the other users of Facebook. Because we are confronted with the norm that has been set on the site every time we log on (for example, posting party pictures) and are perceived as different if we do not follow suit, it would seem as if we respond to the possible criticism of the other members of the Facebook “community”. You brought up a good example with your brother and how he changed his profile picture to something more “normal” after being prompted by a friend. Just as in the case of your brother, it is our fear of being different from other members of the in-group that keeps us conforming to the norms. Great post!
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