Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Prepared For
Dr. Deena P Forkan
Professor
Department of English and Literature
North South University.
Prepared By
Abdullah Al Galib
132 0410 030
Eng105, Sec 21
Summer 2017
25th August, 2017
Impacts of Online Identities ii
Acknowledgement
the day you pick your subject until the day you crack in the last account, you must combat
many encounters that mass your trail and stab to retain you from attainment of the final goal.
But if you are auspicious, there will continually be somebody there to hook you when you
arrangement that has kept me concentrated on my aims. To my friends, family and faculty,
thank you for being appreciative during writing this thesis that has been such a precedence for
the last one month and for not overlooking me as I used up long nights and vacations gazing at
my laptop screen. To my roommate Jibon, thank you for soothing me up every time I became
dejected, gathering me up when I hesitated and associating me every step of the way. To
Atiqur Rahman, thank you for your selfless guidance and inspiration during the inscription
procedure. To my honorable professor Dr. Deena P Forkan, thank you for letting me write this
piece of thesis and inspiring me to work hard to complete the thesis in a professional manner.
And last, but indeed not least, to Nazmus Sakib, my consultant and guide in this passage,
thank you for fetching out the finest in my writing and compelling me to push myself logically
to my bounds.
While this thesis has been one of the most thought-provoking involvements of my
Educational life, but it has also been one of the most satisfying. Without the complete
provision of my widespread social network, I do not believe I would have completed this ride
Executive Summary
Facebook and Twitter have been two important parts of our daily life nowadays as well as few
others, more or less occupied, social media websites. In our day to day life, most of us are addictive to
social networks which could be segmented in numerous ways as per the use per individual depending
on their needs and leisure activity. However, these regular basis uses have deep impact in our social and
family life. In most cases, we see a number of breakdowns in relationships, which are normal to serious,
which occurs in almost one third of the entire users. Numerous of them are victim of divorce, cheating,
breakup, and so on. Friendship and family bonding are frequently seen broken on different issues
relating to social network activity. Even the best friends have been quarrelling over little issues on social
networks, which unfortunately break down their years of band. Family members often argue about
contents posted online. Besides, there are people who are not consent about their privacy and typically
shares their information and activity with unknown people. Notwithstanding these technological
advances, these new social networks do not precisely replicate human interaction. Several parts of
traditional relationship formation are missing from social networking websites, including face-to-face
communication and the visual and verbal cues that accompany non-digital interactions. When someone
posts a comment on a friends profile page, for instance, the context can easily be lost on the intended
audience - let alone on the casual observer - and misinterpretations of meaning can lead to
Table of Contents
Title i
Acknowledgement ii
Table of Contents iv
Introduction 1
Literature Review 3
Survey Findings 9
Support 17
Conclusion 19
Limitations 21
Reference 22
Survey Questions 24
Impacts of Online Identities 1
Introduction
numerous types of ties, with social networking sites offering one of the most popular methods
people currently employ to link themselves together. But do old-fashioned ways of developing
Have we become too reliant on the instantaneous, answer-producing quality of the internet that
can reveal others most intimate personal details before we even introduce ourselves? In looking
at technology trends of the past decade, one quickly discovers how the Internet has changed the
face of communication. According to December 2013 data 73% of Internet users are connected
via social networking sites and email. ( Brenner & Smith, 2013).Websites such as Facebook and
Twitter - the two most popular social networking sites (as judged by the number of registered
users) - allow users to create profiles containing various personal information and images. (Top
15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites , 2014) Users can choose to include as much or as little
personal information in their profiles as they want. While the sites typically provide fields for
specific information, such as favorite books, movies, and food; educational and work
background; and contact information, they also provide text boxes for users to include a more
personal about me statement. Privacy settings allow users to restrict their profile information to
a specific set of users, or to make it available to anyone searching the website, and sometimes
anyone using a search engine like Google. Moreover, users can manipulate profile information to
create an online identity to hide their actual identity. Characteristics and pictures may be
exaggerated slightly or completely fabricated, with the intention of enhancing ones identity for
outside observers. These sites also make available numerous methods of communication,
including posting comments on a users profile or photo pages, sending a user private messages
(much like email), instant messaging, and, in the case of Facebook, poking another user.
Impacts of Online Identities 2
Combined, these characteristics present users with an ideal location to create and maintain
relationships with current friends and to make new friends based on similar interests.
Notwithstanding these technological advances, these new social networks do not precisely
replicate human interaction. Several parts of traditional relationship formation are missing from
social networking websites, including face-to-face communication and the visual and verbal cues
that accompany non-digital interactions. When someone posts a comment on a friends profile page,
for instance, the context can easily be lost on the intended audience - let alone on the
Online identities over-shadow the offline relationships as in most of the cases online identities
The thesis will build on past research in the fields of identity, interpersonal relationships and
differ from traditional offline relationships, focusing on how people create an online identity and
how that identity affects the formation and maintenance of "relationship in the digital world. The
thesis will then consider how the social networking site Facebook impacts relationships in the real
H1: In general, online relationships contain much weaker ties than offline relationships.
H2: In cases where factors such as distance change an offline relationship into a primarily online
Literature Review
Online Identities
An online identity, internet identity, or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet
user establishes in online communities and social networking websites. It can also be considered as
For many people, one of the Internets most-embraced characteristics - especially in its early
days - has been users ability to play with identity. In virtual world, users can create an accurate
reflection of their offline identity, or they can choose to manipulate their identity to any desired
Interpersonal Relationships
(Goffman, 1959)
Now that we have examined the role ones identity plays in interaction, we can broaden our
examination of literature to focus more generally on the relationships formed and maintained via
these interactions.
Social ties are the connections between individuals that link them together, as well as the
degree of strength of those relationships. The strength of ties between two individuals can be
evaluated according to the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity of the
Impacts of Online Identities 4
relationship, the level of intimacy and the degree of reciprocity (Granovetter, 1983).
Relationships with other people are typically broken into two major categories: weak ties, or
individuals who are considered mere acquaintances, are differentiated from strong ties, such as
close friends and family members. A third category that of intermediary ties, categorizes
individuals who fall between a strong and a weak tie (Wellman et al., 1996). With the rise of the
Internet and computer-mediated communication, much recent research has looked at the impact
of online forms of communication on social ties. Activities that connect individuals directly to
one another (e.g., email, chat) tend to have positive correlations to social ties, while those
activities that are more solitary in nature, such as web surfing, tend to have more negative
correlations to social ties (Zhao, 2006). While research from the 1990s found negative
correlations between Internet use and social ties, these findings were later disproven, especially
as most individuals using the Internet for social purposes also maintained their offline
relationships (Kraut et al.,2002). In addition, online social ties tend to be weaker than
Computer-Mediated Communication
Since its earliest days, the Internet has been used as a means of communication and
interaction. With the evolution of the World Wide Web during the 1990s and its increasing
presence in both the home and at work, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a
ubiquitous way to interact with friends and family, businesses and even strangers. This section will
offer a brief overview of literature relating to the impact of CMC on identity and
The rise of the Internet revealed a new way for people to interact on both a one-to-one
the changes in the sender, receiver, channel and feedback that online communication allows. The
most apparent difference between this newer method of communication and more traditional
face-to-face interaction is that CMC is typically text-based, thus restricting the verbal and
nonverbal cues that accompany non-digital interactions. According to the social interaction
processing (SIP) theory of CMC (Walther, 1992)individuals adapt their behavior to process the
cues that are present within online interaction, including content and linguistic strategies, as well
as typographical cues. Research in this area has found that individuals communicating solely
through computer-mediated methods of communication can and will form intimate relationships
People can use the Internet for a variety of communication purposes. When seeking
used when communicating online. First are a set of interactive strategies that entail direct
interaction between the communicator and the target to obtain whatever information is needed.
These strategies make more sense in digital communication than face-to-face interaction because
much of the time, the information being sought is not readily available and would need to be
researched on a computer anyway. If, for example, a person wanted a detailed explanation from a
friend, it might make more sense to allow the friend time to compose an email and take
advantage of CMCs ability to edit responses rather than put the person on the spot in a face-to-
Impacts of Online Identities 6
face interaction and require him to answer a question he does not know how to answer (Ramirez et
al., 2002).
Online social networks provide a means for individuals to sustain strong, intermediate
and weak ties, with the primary function of online interaction being the exchange of information.
Because of the structure of the Internet and the ability to both browse vast amounts of data and to
remain anonymous, people are able to form relationships with people they may have never met in
real life. Many of these relationships would be considered weak ties, as relationships are based solely
Some of the most extensive research on the evolution of the Internet as a major method of
communication and interaction revolves around privacy issues. Given the emergence of social
networking sites, questions have been raised over how much personal information is revealed on
these sites, especially by young people. Research conducted on Facebook, a major social
networking site devoted specifically to status, photo sharing, check-in and video sharing. They
found that only 10% of people make customized privacy before making a post, photo sharing or
While online relationships generally contain weaker ties than traditional offline
networking technologies continue to evolve. Likewise, there will be more cases where social
networking sites allow relationships that would have otherwise strengthened (e.g., because of
physical distance) to instead be maintained, and even strengthened further, because of the
There is no doubt that Facebook is creating a new kind of environment where things have
become difficult for relationships. There are many stories where people breakup because their
partner changed their relationship status to single or due to some immoral photo or due to some
unexpected communication with another person. Several aspects of the human behavior have
changed because of the way people interact on this social media site, and it is also affecting
along with other researchers surveyed Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 82 years old,
asking them to describe how often they used Facebook and how much, if any, conflict arose
between their current or former partners because of using Facebook. They found that higher
levels of Facebook use led to higher levels of conflict because of the social network. The
Users can manipulate profile information to create an online identity to hide their actual
identity. Characteristics and pictures may be exaggerated slightly or completely fabricated, with the
themselves. Perhaps the manipulator needs to gain something purposefully or feels that they have
to advance their own causes or plans - no matter what the cost to others may be. Maybe they
need to feel powerful and in-control of their relationships with others. Maybe feeling powerful
over others increases their own self-esteem. Maybe the person does not have the social skills to
2013)
Impacts of Online Identities 9
Survey Findings
For the primary research I have carried a survey of thirty five students, within the age
group of twenty to twenty four years, from North South University (NSU) by mean a
relationship. (See appendix for the sample questionnaire). The following figures represent the
Figure 1 describes the popular methods of communication that are used by NSU student.
It can be seen that 31 % of the respondents use Face-to-face for their primary communication
media, 56% use Social Networking sites for most of the time, 13% use telephone communication
and 0% of the respondents use text-messaging and email for communicating most of the time.
From the figure it is obvious that the majority of the respondents think social networking sites is
the easiest way to communicate so they use Social networking sites for most of the times. On the
Impacts of Online Identities 10
other hand, another big proportion of respondents use Face-to-face communication as it increases
communication as it helps to the bonding among relationships. The third big proportion of
people use telephone communication with isolated people easily. The respondents use text
messaging and email but dont use it for most of the time.
50%
40%
31%
30%
20% 13%
10%
0% 0%
0%
Face-to-face Social Phone Text Email
Networking messaging
Sites
The rise of the Internet revealed a new way for people to interact on both a one-to-one
the changes in the sender, receiver, channel and feedback that online communication allows. The
most apparent difference between this newer method of communication and more traditional
face-to-face interaction is that CMC is typically text-based, thus restricting the verbal and
nonverbal cues that accompany non-digital interactions. From Figure 2, it can be seen that 56%
of the people believe that for a better relationship Face-to-face communication is needed,
Impacts of Online Identities 11
whereas 31% think for a better relationship Social Networking Sites are needed. However, very few
percentages of the respondents think social networks and Face to face communications are not
expressed better relationships. About 13% of the respondent thinks telephone communication is
better for relationships. The respondents use text messaging and email but dont think it
express better relationship. In my opinion, it is true that without proper visual and verbal cues no
Figure 3 represents the opinion of respondent on the premise of social networking sites
and its users. It can be seen that, majority uses Facebook as its the worlds leading social
networking sites. Very few numbers of respondent use twitter, linkedin and my space along with
Facebook. Among all the respondents only 3% doesnt use any social networking sites
Impacts of Online Identities 12
Figure 4: Percentage of Facebook friends that you have never met offline
5% 11%
0%
More than 75% Between 50-75% Between 25-50% Less than 25%
In Facebook we are always trying to increase the number of friends but dont consider
about the quality of that types of relationship. Figure 4 represents more than 30% of respondents
have never met offline with more than 75% of his Facebook friends. About 28% of the
respondents have met only half of their friends and 31% of the respondents have met only of
their Facebook friends where as 11% of the respondents have net met almost 75% of their
Facebook friends.
Impacts of Online Identities 13
I consider some
If I had the
To be among I like to
opportunity to communicate I dont
my closest with them communicate
meet some of
friends and online, but with the
them, I would
would definitely
probably do it
like to meet would not majority of my
them someday pursue an online-only
offline friends
friendship
A very interesting question was asked with a tittle Relationship with online-only friends.
Figure 5 represents 21% of the respondent think that I consider some to be among my closest friends
and would definitely like to meet them some day. About 19% of the respondents think If I had the
opportunity to meet some of them, I would probably do it. The large number of respondents which is
39% they dont want to pursue any off-line relationship with Facebook friends but they want to
communicate through online only. On the other hand 21% of respondent dont want to communicate
15% 31%
26% 25%
10% 18%
5%
0%
Most of the time. When I share Never. I dont bother
contradictory post. about this.
In social networking sites we contain different types of friends in our profile. Figure 6
represents 26% of the respondents make customized settings before making wall post or photo
sharing and 18% of the people make customized settings when they share contradictory posts. But a
significant percentage that is 25% of the people never do it and 31% of the respondents dont
We sometimes choose to include shadings and exaggerations of our offline identity in their
online profiles. When asked about the truthfulness of the information in their Facebook profile, 12%
of respondents say more than 75% of their friends exaggerate or manipulate at least some of the
information in their profile. Twenty six percent of the respondents think 50-75% of their friends
50%
40%
30% 57%
20%
26%
10%
12%
5%
0%
More than 75% Between 50-75% Between 25-50% Less than 25%
The large portion of the respondents which is fifty seven percent, they think 25-50% of their
friends manipulates information in Facebook and a very lower portion of the respondent think
manipulate information in their profiles say they do so for a variety of reasons, although most
A family member
objected to content
in your profile Lost a
5% Lost offline job/employment
relationship with a opportunity
friend over content 9%
in your profile
38%
Social networking sites allow users to share a significant amount of personal information
friends they have on these sites, users may be revealing potentially harmful information about
themselves and their relationships to a large audience. Even when all information included in
their profile is factual, the absence of cues in text-based, non-verbal communication leaves room
The majority of respondents 38% say they have lost offline relationships because of Facebook
whereas 25% said consequence is the boyfriend and girlfriend ended relationship. A bit little
21% of the respondents said their off-line relationships have never suffered.
Impacts of Online Identities 17
However, some of the data from the survey support the idea that Facebook can be a boon to
friendships lacking physical interaction. Nearly two-thirds 71% of respondents said the majority of
their friends have a Facebook account, which suggests that many students use the site to stay in touch
with their offline friends when distance is the main obstacles. Furthermore, approximately
9% of respondents said Face-to-face and 15% said phone expresses proper relationship when
Support
The primary objective of the research undertaken in this thesis has been to shed light on
the evolution of online interaction, as characterized by the rise of the social networking site
Facebook. Specifically, this thesis has attempted to provide insight about the differences between
online and offline identities, and how - if at all - users online identities impact their offline
model and two hypotheses that aimed to explore the puzzle Facebook created. A survey of
North South University undergraduates generated current data on how they interact through both
H1: In general, online relationships contain much weaker ties than offline relationships.
This thesis offers a detailed description of social ties and differentiates between strong,
intermediate and weak ties. (Donath, 1999) Based upon this theory and suggest that ties are
based on (1) the context surrounding relationship formation, (2) the frequency of interaction
between ties and (3) the closeness of the relationship. A survey conducted as part of this thesis
research asked respondents with Facebook accounts several questions about their online-only
friends. While a significant portion or respondents which are 39% they dont want to pursue any
off-line relationship with Facebook friends but they want to communicate through online only.
On the other hand 21% of respondent dont want to communicate with all of their Facebook
friends.
Thus Social networking sites such as Facebook offer users a convenient method for
maintaining a large number of weak ties. While maintenance of strong ties typically requires
significant commitments of time and energy, weak ties may be managed solely through the
connections that link Facebook friends. Facebook allows users to stay up-to-date on their weak
ties lives simply by viewing the information available in those friends profiles and by
connecting through actions such as pokes, private messages, wall postings and photo comments.
By offering multiple methods of interaction, Facebook saves users significant time, thus enabling
them to create and maintain a massive social network, which leads to develop week ties among
Impacts of Online Identities 19
relationships. . From the survey we also found that only 21% thinks that their offline
H2: In cases where factors such as distance change an offline relationship into a primarily
online relationship, strong ties may be maintained and even strengthened further.
However, some of the data from the survey support the idea that Facebook can be a boon to
friendships lacking physical interaction. Nearly two-thirds 71% of respondents said Social
networking sites expresses better relationship when distance is the main obstacles. Furthermore
21% of respondents said they had never experienced negative consequences in their offline
relationships due to content in their Facebook profiles, which suggests that most respondents
Apart from the survey data, common sense suggests that social networking sites can play a
powerful role in maintaining friendships separated by a physical distance. By poking these close
offline friends, or posting a quick message on their wall - activities which take just seconds to complete
- users have a quick and easy way to stay connected and keep the relationship
healthy when they are too busy to commit more time to interaction.
Conclusion
Todays abundance of communication options means that one can maintain friendships
with more ease than ever before. Whereas a person 20 years ago may have been limited to letters
and occasional phone calls from their friends and family back home, the college students of
today have numerous options available to maintain constant levels of communication with a
Impacts of Online Identities 20
large network of friends comprised of both strong and weak ties. Survey respondents reported
high levels of daily interaction via text messages and social networking sites, methods that allow
for near real-time communication but that leads to develop week ties in relations. Thanks to all-
inclusive cell phone packages and widespread Internet availability, these newer forms of
interaction are low-cost - if not free - and thus encourage people to spend more time using them.
Impacts of Online Identities 21
Limitations
Although this research was carefully prepared, I am still aware of its limitations and shortcomings.
First of all, the research was conducted in the few segments which have lasted for eight weeks. Eight
weeks is not enough for the researcher to question all of the audiences about their choices and
Second, the population of the experimental group is small, only 45 people and might not represent
Third, since the questionnaire designed to measure the audiences attitude towards the use of social
media might give useful information about the impacts of communicative strategies; it seems not to
In addition, since the assessment of the pretest and post test was conducted by the author herself, it is
unavoidable that in this study, certain degree of subjectivity can be found. In fact, it would have been
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Impacts of Online Identities 24
Survery Questions
1. Which method do you use in your regular life for better communication?