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SELFIE CRAZE: EXAMINING THE FACTORS BEHIND TAKING AND POSTING SELFIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Faryal Bashir, Somera Akhtar
(FAST National University Islamabad, Pakistan)
Abstract
In our study we explore the impact of Narcissism, Social Environment, Social Media usage and Obsessed for endorsement on Selfie Craze .We collected data from Students (N=190) of Private and Public Universities from twin cities of Pakistan. Our results Indicate that social environment, Social Media usage and obsessed for endorsement are positively related to Selfie craze where as Narcissism has no impact on Selfie Craze in Pakistani Culture. We found that Individuals who are more inclined towards using Social media have more Selfie craze. We also found that Social Environment and obsessed for endorsement both are positively related to Selfie craze.i.e. higher the obsession for recognition higher will be the Selfie craze.
Keywords: Selfie Craze, Social Media Usage, Narcissism, Social Environment, Obsessed for Endorsement.
INTRODUCTION
The recently emerging trend of taking Selfie is getting common now a day. Oxford English Dictionary defines Selfie as taking one’s picture using digital camera or typically with the front camera of smart phone. Selfie is one’s portrait and Selfie can be of two people or group of people that we called group Selfie which features more than one person.According to Gupta and Pooja Selfie is defined as a gesture that sends messages to different audiences and this gesture is modified by the social media usage..
In the recent era the dramatic growth have been seen in social media usage. A pew research center study found that 55% of generation has posted their Selfie on social media and almost 26% of Americans have posted their Selfie on social networks like facebook, twitter ,instagrametc (Taylor,2014).
Selfie has been declared as a word of the year in 2013 by (oxford dictionaries).According to the recent study conducted by Katz and Crocker (2015) in USA about selfies says that 98% of people age (18 to 24)years are inclined to take selfies, 46% had shared within the past days and 69% inclined to share Selfie 3 to 20 times daily.
Social media is defined as a platform where people interact with each other like facebook, instagram and snapchatetc are the main source of sharing Selfie. Obsessed for endorsement is urge of to be loved and to be recognized or appreciated. Social environment represents the human behavior which is sum total of the activities of normative structure of the society. Our social environment is now inclined towards social media usage.
Similarly narcissism is defined as to be in love with one’s physical appearance and narcissists can be called attention seekers. Most of the Selfie studies have found the relationship of Selfie with narcissism. Recent studies about Selfie showed that taking Selfie and posting them on social networks boost one’s narcissism (Sorokowski, Sorokowska, Oleszkiewicz, Frackowiak, Huk and pisanski, 2015).
The gap in the previous studies is that the emergingphenomena of Selfie craze have not been studied in Pakistan yet. Our study is designed to understand the phenomena of Selfie in Pakistan. The present research will help to better understand the new trending phenomena in Pakistan. Our research will help to understand why people are so crazy about taking Selfie as recently many death cases has been registered in all over world specially in Pakistan recently, Three women died while taking Selfie in Northern area of Pakistan ,another incident happened in Lahore 16 years old girl fell down from the sixth floor of hotel while taking Selfie, so we want to know that why people are still crazy about taking selfies and uploading on Social Networks (Abbtaktv news).
Based on the Gaps identified and the importance of filling these gaps our study has several objectives. The first objective is to understand the impact of social media usage on Selfie craze, secondly to understand the impact of narcissism on Selfie craze, thirdly to understand the impact of getting endorsement on Selfie craze and lastly to understand the impact of Social environment on Selfie craze.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Selfie Craze:Selfie craze is defined as a craze of capturing one self. Capturing Selfie of any event and happening becomes a fashion now days. People are crazy about showing oneself to others and want to share every bit of their life’s happenings with their social circles. According to Taylor (2014) most of the generation use social networking sites like, facebook, twitter and instagram and share their photos over there.
Sciberras (2015) says that millions of photographs are shared and posted on social media daily; Instagram is one of the social site that holds more than 55 million photographs and generates 1.2 billion likes daily.
Social Media Usage:According to Al-Ali Social media is defined as a platform for gossiping, socializing and sharing information on various levels. Social media includes face book, twitter,linkedin etc.According to Lin and Lu (2011) Social networks plays an important role for communication and relationship building worldwide.People spend most of their time on social media and are crazy about social relationships that are the one main reason behind taking Selfie because people love to share their Selfie on social media so their friend can see their Selfie.
Gabriel, (2014) explores the reason behind posting Selfie continuously to social media is that people believe they look gorgeous in their snaps, and they want others to remark them as they perceive thus they post their Selfie on Facebook and Twitter etc, so that they can accomplish their desired social identity. Bustard, (2014) says that when a Selfie gets “likes” or good comments on social media platforms, a sense of accomplishment and victory develops, which will allow the person in the Selfie by determining real-life understanding of self-identity.
Eftekhar, Fullwood and Morris (2014) say that posting and sharing Selfie on social media is connected with promoting one self. Another study conducted by Eftekhar et al.(2014); Lee, Lee, Moon and Sung (2015) says that social media is medium which is helping people to fulfill their need of interaction with others.
Narcissism:Narcissism is defined as to be in love or affinity with oneself. Narcissists are those individuals who love admiration.Many researches in social psychology and personality has indicated that narcissism is characterized by a highly elevated, positive self-concept and attributes such as physical appearance, status, social popularity or intelligence (Campbell, Rudich, &Sedikides ,2002).
Panek, Nardis and Konrath (2013) explained narcissism as an attraction to consider oneself superior as compared to others, narcissist want respect and esteem from others. According to Barry, Doucette, Loflin, Rivera and Herrington (2015) there is strong association among narcissism with the posting of self-photograph ("Selfie"). Similarly, Sorokowski, Sorokowsk, Oleszkiewicz, Frackowiak, Huk ,and Pisanski,(2015) also identified a strong relationship between narcissism and posting Selfie.
Haggard, (2014) say that many researchers believe Selfie is a way in which people indorse their life, while it is observed to be a prediction of narcissism. Another researcher Moreau, (2014) says that the key factor that why people take and post Selfie are to get somebody’s attention, to show off, out of boredom, to boost self-esteem. Another study conducted by Subrahmanyam, Subba, Sivakumar and Galeti (2016) says that narcissists show their grandiosity to others or may project their egotism and aggrandizement or reputation by postingSelfie.
Obsessed for Endorsement: Endorsement is defined as getting appreciation and recognition among others. The degree to which an individuals are obsessed for or mad for getting endorsement by their surroundings. People where ever meet celebrities or stars, try to take selfies with them to upload on social media to get endorsement (face book, instagram, snap chatetc).
Social Environment:Social environment is defined as the extent of usage of social media by surroundings. In this era people are more inclined toward cell phone and internet usage. Our social environment is adopting this habit dramatically by their environment.
Social Media Usage and Selfie Craze:People who are involved in social media usage mostly have huge social circle and they love to upload Selfie over social media. Whereas those people who are not much involved in social media usage are not inclined toward Selfie craze.
Hypothesis 1: Attitude towards the social media usage is positively related to the Selfie craze.
Narcissism and Selfie Craze:According to the literature available on narcissism, social media usage is backed by narcissism. People who have narcissism in their personality are more inclined to social media usage for attention seeking and hence they are crazier about taking Selfie. People who post a lot of Selfie over social media have higher trait of narcissism in their personalities and narcissists may want to show off their grandiosity to others and want admiration and aggrandizement by posting Selfie (subrahmanyam, subba, sivakumar and galeti, 2016).
Hypothesis 2: Narcissism is positively related to Selfie craze.
Obsessed For Endorsement and Selfie Craze:People who want to get appreciation and endorsement from others and also want to seek attentions of others by their actions and postures shown over social media will be having more craze for Selfie. Where people who are less inclined toward endorsement will not be having Selfie craze.
Hypothesis 3: Obsessed forendorsement is positively inclined towards Selfie craze.
Social Environment and Selfie Craze: where social environment is more supportive in social media usage there people will be crazier about capturing and posting Selfie on social media. However, if social environment is not much familiar with social media usage then the people will also be not crazy about Selfie.
Hypothesis 4: Social environment is positively inclined to Selfie craze.
THEORATICAL FRAMEWORK
METHODS
Sample and Data Collection Procedure
Data for our study was collected through questionnaires which were employedto investigate the behavioral intentions of the participants to indulge in Selfie activities. This investigation was conducted in five higher educational institutions, both government and private sector inclusive, in twin cities of Pakistan. We distributed 200 questionnaires among selected institutions and get back 190 of the distributed questionnaires and these 190 questionnaire were used for further analysis. The majority of the respondents were female 52% and male were 46% and rest of 2% didn’t respond their genderand average age of respondents were 22 years. In our collected data 27% student were enrolled for bachelor degree 60% were enrolled for masters program and rest of 13% students didn’t respond to the degree. We didn’t translate questionnaire in to local language because medium of communication at university level is English.
We used personal and official contacts for entry permission. Questionnaires included a cover letter that explain respondents the purpose of our research and assured them their confidentiality. The participation of the respondents was voluntary. The respondents revealed their age, gender, University/institution .Questionnaire comprised of closed ended questions in which Selfie craze is used as an dependent variable where as Narcissism, obsessed for endorsement, social environment and social media usage were considered as independent variable and literature review was the base of our research. We used 5 point Likert scale in our study which anchored 1= strongly disagree 2= disagree, 3= neutral, 4= agree and 5= strongly agree.
Measure
Selfie Craze: We couldn’t found questionnaire on Selfie craze according to our research study so we develop 8 items questionnaire to measure Selfie craze and examples of the questions include I am crazy about Selfie; I take Selfie whenever I get ready. The responses for Selfie craze were taken by using 5 point Likert-scale which anchored 1= strongly disagree 2= disagree, 3= neutral, 4= agree and 5= strongly agree.
Social Media Usage: Social media usage was measured by 8 item social media usage questionnaires that are based on the work of Petersen & Johnston, (2015). We slightly change the questions according to our study and examples include I frequently post my Selfie; Social media is a part of my daily routine. The responses for social media usage were taken by using 5 point Likert-scale which anchored 1= strongly disagree through to 5 strongly agree.
Narcissism: Narcissism was measured by 12 items questionnaire that is based on the work ofRuskin and Terry, (2015).Examples include I like to be complimented; Iwant to become something in eye of the world. The responses for narcissism were taken by using 5 point Likert-scale which anchored 1=strongly disagree through to 5= strongly agree
Social Environment: Social environment was measured by 5 items social environment questionnaires that we develop by ourselves because we couldn’t found any questionnaire in our research context. Example of questions is; I am living in environment where everybody takes Selfie. My environment influences me to take Selfie. The response were taken by using 5 point Likert scale which anchored 1= strongly disagree through to 5= strongly agree.
Obsessed For Endorsement: Obsessed for endorsement was measured by 5 items questionnaires that we developed by our own selves due to the reason we couldn’t found any questionnaire to the best of our knowledge on our required context. Examples are; I want endorsement from others; I am obsessed for getting noticed. The responses for obsessed for endorsement were taken by using 5 point Likert-scale which anchored 1= strongly disagree through to 5= strongly agree.
Table 1:
Mean Standard Deviation, Reliability and Correlation:
Mean / SD / Alpha / N / SM / Ob / SE / SCN / 3.275 / 0.599 / 0.743 / 1
SM / 2.434 / 0.870 / 0.814 / .303*** / 1
Ob / 3.258 / 0.825 / 0.794 / .450** / .327** / 1
SE / 3.070 / 1.038 / 0.686 / .239** / .425** / .373*** / 1
SC / 2.646 / 1.062 / 0.796 / .275** / .457** / .378** / .452** / 1
RESULTS
All the respondent of our study were well aware of Selfie. In our results Table 1 showsmeans, standard deviations, correlations and cronbach’s alpha. Table 2, shows the regression analysis in which narcissism has positive but insignificant impact on Selfie craze (β=.055, p>0.001, R2=.076). Similarly Table 2shows that social media usage has positive and significant effect on Selfie craze (β=0.276, p<0.001, R2=0.230).On the other hand, obsessed for endorsement is positively and significantly related to Selfie craze (β=0.167, p<0.001,R2=0.321) and social environment also has positive and significant effect on Selfie craze (β=0.259, p<0.001, R2=0.302).We used multiple regression analysis to test the developed hypothesis about narcissism, social media usage, and social environment and obsessed for endorsement. Therefore, Table 2 representsthe regression results and these results support our hypotheses H1, H3, H4 and reject H2.
Table 2:
Regression Analysis:
Selfie crazeBeta / ΔR² / Sig
1 / Narcissism / .055 / .321 / .428
2 / Social Media Usage / .276 / .321 / .000
3 / Obsessed For Endorsement / .167 / .321 / .021
4 / Social Environment / .259 / .321 / .000
N=190
Table 3
Hypothesis Testing:
Sr Hypothesis Results
H1 Attitude towards the social media usage is positively related to the Selfie craze Accepted
H2Narcissism is positively related to Selfie craze Rejected
H3 Obsessed for endorsement is positively inclined towards Selfie craze. Accepted
H4 Social environment is positively inclined to Selfie craze. Accepted
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Summary
The objective of our research was to identify the impact of four independent variablesthat are narcissism,social media usage, social environment, obsessed for endorsement on dependent variable Selfie craze.The main purpose of our research was to identify whether Selfie craze is affected by these four independent variables. In our study we found that those individuals who are more inclined towards the social media usage in their daily routines are crazier about taking Selfie as compared to those individuals who do not use social media or sometimes use social media, and our results clearly support developed hypothesis.In past few years social media has become an important platform for sharing information .Narcissism has no relationship with Selfie craze in Pakistani context because collected data shows insignificant results.Similarly those individual who want endorsement and appreciation take and post more Selfie on social media then other individuals who are not obsessed for endorsement and survey result supports the hypothesis positively. As in today’s world internet has become important part of our livesand makes our lives much easier for communication purposes but every technology has some pros and cons similarly Selfie phenomena sometimes can develop psychological problems like most of times people will get disturbed if they didn’t get appreciation or likes on their photos or Selfie.
Theoretical and Practical Implication
We conducted study to examine the impact of Selfie craze on various variables. Our theoretical implication was to develop literature review on Social environment and obsessed for endorsement because we couldn’t find any developed literature review on these two variables which was our primary contribution.Main focus of our study was youngsters. In youngsters Selfie craze is more than old people because their circle, social environment boost them for taking Selfie as they want to be in lime light they want to share every event of their life with other people and want endorsement as in our study we found that social environment has positive impact on Selfie craze that when in your environment everyone is following one trend it will encourage others to participate too. Our study was knowledge based study as this study contributed to knowledge of emergingSelfie phenomena.
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References
Al-Ali, S. (2014). Embracing the selfie craze: Exploring the possible use of Instagram as a language mLearning tool.Issues and Trends in Educational Technology,2(2).
Barry, C. T., Doucette, H., Loflin, D. C., Rivera-Hudson, N., & Herrington, L. L. (2015). Let me take a selfie: associations between self-photography, narcissism, and self-esteem. Psychology of popular media culture. doi:10.1037/ppm0000089..