Keyword – SNS

Schleicher, Nóra:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Gender and visual self-representation on Facebook

Médiakutató, 2019. ősz, XX. évf., 3. sz.

The paper examines the identity construction of Hungarian secondary school students from the perspective of gender. It focuses on their visual self-representation performed through their Facebook profile photos. In line with previous international research, the detailed analysis of 362 Facebook profile photos originating from a representative survey shows that visual self-representations are typically conform and meet social expectations and stereotypical meanings attached to gender. Experimentation, norm breaking and boundary crossing, often thought to be characteristic of this age group, were not at all typical of the profile photos, especially with girls. Visual representations were rooted in traditional representations of femininity and masculinity, and reconstructed stereotypical meanings attached to gender.