Annotated Bibliography Does Social Media Effect Change In Our Personalities?

Jon Thomas Professor Malcolm Campbell English 1102 April 23, 2013

Casserly, Meghan. "Multiple Personalities And Social Media: The Many Faces of Me." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 26 Jan. 2011. Web. 23 April 2013. This source is a Forbes magazine article written by Meghan Casserly, a prominent member of Forbes staff who specializes in promoting women studies. She talks about how people create different personas on social networks by creating multiple accounts on numerous different sites. In the article she mentions Ashley Brown, a PR consultant with Jones-Dilworth who has spent the past four years immersing herself in social media. Brown goes on to talk about the idea of a person having different aspects of their personality in different web presences. Though it is strange it is not uncommon. For instance, Facebook alone claims to have over 500 million users, yet Sasha Muraddli, a publicist at Burston-Marsteller, juggles eighteen accounts herself on Facebook alone and excluding other outlets of social media. What Casserly is trying to say is that these multiple accounts are what's leading to the misconception of how many participants there truly are within social media websites and this leads to altering personalities of account holders. Because of Casserlys accredited position on Forbes and the research she has done by interviewing multiple publicists, business executives and other broad spectrums of people, I view this as a very credible source. Forbes has also been around since 1917, making it one of the leading sources in business, news and politics. Her purpose of writing this article, is to counteract Facebook and other social medias false claims of having millions of users, when in fact, most users have multiple accounts. This source was useful because it opened my eyes to the false information from people as it relates to their accounts. When people have multiple accounts they

are using them to advertise multiple sides of themselves and hiding behind all of their different sides or identities of themselves. These multiple accounts providing multiple personalities strays them away from who they truly are in reality.

"People or Profiles: Individual Differences in Online Social Networking Use." ScienceDirect.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 April 2013.

Jordan Carpenter, a member of the department of psychology at the University of Chapel Hill, goes into talking about the two cultural and academic narratives regarding Facebook and other social networking sites. How some consider it to be a useful, social way to connect with old acquaintances and keep up with distant friends, while others believe it to be an isolating distraction from deeper social interactions. In the article he also goes on to name four categories that people are placed in from directly using these sites; direct interaction, supplements for in-person relationships, romantic relationship-seeking and social network only relationships. Hes simply saying that individuals use social networks for a few reasons that sometimes cause them to exclude themselves from others and forced to rely on these networks to replace real life relationships. ScienceDirect is a credible source due to its large number of journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books. The reason this article was written was to bring awareness to the different reasons for why the many individuals use social networking to replace actuality. The source was useful because it made me realize the motives of others on these different networks and take a look at myself to figure out which category I fit in.

"Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites." Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 April 2013. This source is from a study done at the University of Georgia led by Laura Buffardi, a doctoral student in psychology who suggests that social networks directly correlates with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). In essence this disorder displays a need for admiration and lack of empathy on behalf of the user. Networks like Facebook and MySpace allow for the development of shallow relationships and emotionally detached communication through a keyboard. In other words people are using their computers and smart phones to replace meaningful in person conversations that leads to online relationships and friendships. They go on to explain how researchers found that the number of Facebook friends and wallposts that individuals have on their profile pages goes hand in hand with narcissism. Buffardi said this is consistent with how narcissists behave in the real world, with numerous yet shallow relationships. Although this source was from a recently performed study, I found it useful to gain information from current students as opposed to an older generation of psychologists because it made for more current information. Fitzgerald, Britney. "Facebook Psychology: 7 Reasons Why We Act Differently Online." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 April 2013. Britney Fitzgerald, a writer from The Huffington Post, wrote an article on the 7 Reasons Why We Act Differently Online. She talks sets out to answer the eluded question of why exactly do we feel empowered enough to act a certain way on social

networking platforms such as Facebook? Keith Wilcox and Andrew Stephen, professors from Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh were interviewed to find the answer. Their main argument states that people present a positive self-view to others when online, leading to an increase in self-esteem and decrease in self-control. Some of the main reasons that were found as to why we act differently are solutions like we know others are watching us or its easier to hate online personas than it is to hate people in real life. I relied on this source due to the credibility of The Huffington Post. They have been around since 2005 and was ranked number one on the fifteen most popular sites list by eBizMBA Rank. It was useful in the sense that it hit my topic right on the head and gave valuable information as to exactly why we act the way we do on social networks.