Identity construction or outspoken privacy? A qualitative empirical study on the authenticity of profiles in social networks. "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life". That means that Facebook allows you to interact with the people in your life and to connect and share content with these people. This citation comes from the homepage of the social network Facebook and should introduce and show the topic, which will be treated in this scientific work. It is about these

more »

... onnections and content, which are shared with friends, relatives or even strangers. Social networks, especially Facebook, nowadays are so integrated into our daily lives, that some of us don't even realize, how much information they contain about us and which or how much content we publish. People always poste, comment, share likes and now it's so far, that current locations can be shared with many "virtual" friends. Online social networks have become a self-presentation platform, which has both, positive and negative aspects with it. In this case, the following question arises: Can this be called self-representation? On the one hand in terms of self-presentation it is claimed that users of social networks already publish many private information, which leads to an exaggerated self-representation. But on the other hand, you can find studies which show that people create a "desired identity" and that their profiles are only illusions because the network can be used for testing a variousity of partial identities. Which of the two theories is now dominant and can be redirected to social networks? In the previous study this issue was explored in more detail with Goffman's "Model of the Theater". So it was assumed that people see social networks as their front stage, which is why they are taking it a spectacle attitude. In real life, however, people are on the back stage. There, people act so, as is common in everyday life. The results of this study showed that this model can also be related to social networks. There [...]