YouTube and Identity

During the fall 2009 semester of my senior year of college, I did my psychology research on YouTube and Identity Development. After I put a video of one of my presentations on YouTube, people were asking for more details on my research. The following is an abbreviated version of the full research paper that I wrote. I hope you enjoy it!

Abstract

The Internet has provided a way for people to explore, experiment, and develop their identities thanks to its limitless reach across the globe and the anonymity it provides. Recently, more people are revealing their identities on the Internet in homemade videos that allow them to explore who they are and share these explorations with an audience. Up until now, psychology research has only considered Internet exploration in terms of the anonymity it provides and has not addressed this sort of open, honest Internet usage.

Experienced video bloggers (N=28) between the ages of 18 and 35 were asked open-ended questions regarding how posting YouTube videos has affected their identities. Half of them reported attempting to appear more put together or attractive than they usually would, which suggests that the knowledge that their videos will be seen by others has affected their self-presentation. More than half claimed that they have become more confident as a result of their activities on YouTube. They also reported being more outgoing, open-minded, and motivated due to their experiences posting video blogs.

While we cannot accurately say whether this experience would be the same for other age groups or people who have only posted a few videos, video blogging has positively affected this sample’s identity development. Every reported effect that YouTube had on the participants was positive, so it is safe to say that the Internet, when used in this way, can be a healthy tool for identity exploration.

Introduction

Most research on online social networking relies on the idea that anonymity allows people to present themselves as they wish to be seen. MySpace profiles commonly show idealized versions of its users, reflecting the types of people that they wish to be through the selection of photographs and self-descriptions (Manago, et. al., 2008). Even more anonymous websites such as chat rooms and online roleplaying games encourage identity exploration and provide an opportunity for free expression without consequence (Ranon, 2006). Facebook differs from these more anonymous websites because it allows its users to show peers who theyare, rather than tell them (Zhao, et. al., 2008).

Existing research on YouTube showed that videos were either “privately public”, which did not expose the creator’s identity but were seen by many people, or “publically private”, implying that the videos that exposed users’ identities were relatively private because they were not widely accessed (Lange, 2007). However, more recently, the video blogging phenomenon has resulted in many videos containing user identities receiving thousands and sometimes even millions of views. In Lange’s terms, video bloggers these days could actually be considered “publically public”.

Anonymity is even more difficult to achieve through video blogging, but many YouTube users have considered the concept of creating a new identity for these videos. Although they are seen and heard in these videos, they can still change the way they dress, how much makeup they wear, lighting and video contrast, and they can even act like someone else.

Since current video bloggers are publically broadcasting their identities through sites such as YouTube, research needs to examine the implications of this activity. Through this study, I hope to find out how video blogging on a website such as YouTube can shape a person’s identity, and to discover what can affect the creation or alteration of an identity specifically for the purpose of these videos.

Method

Procedure
An online survey was sent through email to the participants. The first part of the survey contained questions that determined their demographic information and background information regarding their participation in video blogging on YouTube. Participants were then asked the following open-ended questions:

• When recording a video blog, do you act or dress differently than you do in everyday life? If so, how do you differ from the way you portray yourself in these videos?
• How does positive and negative feedback on your videos affect you? Has it ever changed the way you try to portray yourself in video blogs?
• How has your time posting videos of yourself on YouTube affected the way you think about yourself or who you are as a person? Have you changed in any way as a result of your involvement on this website?

Participants
This study was given to 28 participants from age 18 to 32 and each of them had posted anywhere from 14 to 350 public videos. These YouTube users have an average subscriber count of 1836.8, with anywhere from 5 to 23,000 subscribers who are notified every time the user posts a new video. The participants were mostly (69%) female.

Coding
For each question, a list of categories was generated that contained all of the responses. Participants’ responses were then coded for the presence or absence of each category. The categories were not mutually exclusive — one person’s response could contain multiple coding categories.

Results

More than half of the participants reported greater confidence since they started video blogging and some indicated that their experiences on YouTube helped them to figure out who they really were. Many participants found a sense of group identity as a member of the YouTube community. Participants reported that their interactions on YouTube made them more outgoing in social situations and more open-minded to others’ opinions. Posting on YouTube motivated them to try new things and provided them with professional and travel opportunities. 14.8% of the participants reported no change in identity due to video blogging (See Figure 1).

Exactly half of the participants paid more attention to their looks when making a video, including wearing makeup, grooming, and dressing up when they would not otherwise. Women (60%) were marginally more likely to report this than men were (25%), (χ2(1, N=28)=2.80, p=.094). Participants reported being more animated in videos and used editing to appear more eloquent. Some participants reported feeling less inhibited in front of a camera, claiming that the platform allowed them to be themselves with fewer consequences. Some participants (17.9%) reported no change in the way they acted or appeared in videos, or claimed that their identities came across despite minor changes in portrayal (See Figure 2).

Participants who reported a change in the way they portrayed themselves in videos were significantly likely to also report that posting YouTube videos had changed their lives or the way they look at themselves (χ2(1, N=27)=4.60, p=.032).

A large majority of the participants claimed that negative feedback had no impact on their feelings or future videos. Over a quarter said that they had been hurt by negative feedback, but many reported that they listened to constructive criticism from negative comments and used it to improve future videos (See Figure 3).

(For those of you who were wondering, a small but compelling 3.6% of participants (equaling out to just one person’s response) admitted that negative feedback felt good because it meant that he or she was famous enough for people to hate him or her.)

Conclusions and Implications

Most of the participants, especially females, reported changing their appearance to look better in videos than in everyday life. This supports a great amount of research indicating that females tend to be more conscious of their looks than males, and these video bloggers were often under pressure from negative commenters to look their best. A 23-year-old female participant said, “People on YouTube respond better when you’re easier on the eyes”.

Quite a few participants reflected that YouTube changed their lives, even in small ways. The most positive benefits were also the most common; many people reported becoming more confident and outgoing in social situations because of YouTube. The notion that many participants reported becoming more open-minded as a result of participating in this online community reflects current research involving the benefits of online interaction on one’s worldview (Valkenburg, 2008).

Those participants who altered their portrayal were also more likely to benefit from their YouTube experience. It is possible that video bloggers who made positive changes in themselves for videos actually experienced these changes. Someone who reported actually feeling less inhibited in videos was one step closer to becoming more comfortable with expressing him or herself and becoming more outgoing in face-to-face social situations as a result.

With many benefits such as gaining confidence, becoming more outgoing in social situations, identifying as part of a community, gaining motivation and opportunities, improved skills, and even finding a true identity, public video blogging on YouTube has clearly had a positive effect on these participants.

References

Lange, P. G. (2007). Publicly private and privately public: Social networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 361-380.

Manago, A. M., Graham, M. B., Greenfield, P. M., & Salimkhan, G. (2008). Self-presentation and gender on MySpace. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29(6), 446-458.

Ranon, N. (2006). Young women’s use of the Internet to explore secret identities. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 67(6-B), 3498.

Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2008). Adolescents’ identity experiments on the Internet: Consequences for social competence and self-concept unity. Communication Research, 35(2), 208-231.

Zhao, S., Grasmuck, S., & Martin, J. (2008). Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1816-1836.