Abstract
People use the various social media very differently. And such activity clearly demonstrates how usage establishes notably differentiated characters and behaviours. This article bases itself on Goffman to apply his theory on people’s self-presentation to the field of social networks and to analyse such behaviour through various examples. Accordingly, we have quantitively and qualitatively investigated social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for 15 people in Germany from three different areas (sports, media/entertainment and politics). Our results allow us to determine clear differences in usage of different social media channels between the groups of people, but also among the sportspersons, above all regarding extent, way used or authenticity. We, therefore, advocate in future discussing multiple social personalities in social media instead of the appearance on it.
Keywords
Introduction
Social media, like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, have ever-greater influence on various areas of public life, such as sports and athletes. Social media supplies many different contents like information, marketing or personal presentation. Here, one can see mostly talk about the or a self-presentation on social media, but one can demonstrate how different people use various social networks quite differently. Hence, some sportspersons seem to use each social network similarly, but others distribute very different sorts of information via social media and do present very varied versions and stagings of their personality.
So, there is the question if, in fact, one can talk about self-presentation on social networks or if, much rather, various self-presentations per network are available. These social personalities would then correspond to people’s various characters on social media. In addition, the way people from different areas of public life, like sports, politics, show business or media, use social media seems to vary widely. Here, there is also the question if there are different behaviours from particular groups, compared to others. These questions receive closer attention in this chapter. Here, comparing differing groups’ use of social networks.
We present a case study with data collected from German sport, entertainment and politics people, most of them rather prominent. With this sample, we want to examine the different behaviour of diverse groups of people. But we think the results are not only relevant for social media networks used by prominent people in Germany. In a broader way, one can assume most of persons within these groups behave the same way on social media also in different countries. However, we believe the results may demonstrate a deeper understanding in how people use different social media networks in diverse ways to represent distinguished personalities or characters of themself. Yet, the focus of this paper is on the group of sports people.
Theoretical foundations
The social networks, aka the social media, have revolutionised the world of media (Schmidt, 2013). Above all, the traditional provider function of journalism has changed drastically, something already surveyed in the area of sports journalism too (Nölleke et al., 2017). The development began with the increasing influence of Facebook as a personal multimedia net and later of the micro-blogging service, Twitter, oriented more towards news and text. Grimmer and Horky (2018) offer an overview of these networks and their function in the sports area. Consequently, Instagram – primarily visually oriented – became increasingly popular (Burk and Grimmer, 2018; Lunden, 2014). The decisive change means that, people or organisations do not have to rely on traditional media as channels for spreading information. Athletes can present themselves on social media, which can, in turn, be considered a way of performing in media.
People’s everyday self-presentation
According to Goffman (1983), ‘everyone is playing a role’. Goffman’s ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ (original English title) already refers to the electronic media by considering the demands of ‘radio and television productions’ (p. 110). The idea of applying this psychological model to the functioning of new social media and their role-playing possibilities is not new, Papacharissi (2002) explained self-presentation on personal home pages, Van Dijk and Poell (2013) introduced the ‘social media logic’.
Hogan (2010: 377) seeks to differentiate between the actor and the artwork the former presents. He declares the crucial difference lies in the time-factor: ‘The actor performs in real time for an audience that monitors the actor. The artifact is the result of a past performance and lives on for others to view on their time’, and transfers this approach onto the online domain: ‘How tightly can we couple the identity of an individual online and the activities of that individual?’ This would allow also differentiating online between spaces of performance (Goffman’s ‘behaviour regions’, 1983: 66) and ‘exhibition spaces’. In the latter, a (finished) artwork would be presented (Hogan, 2010: 377). The actor’s presence, or the artist respectively, has to be considered as much as those reciprocal effects between artwork and performance actually characterising the latter. The artwork, therefore, changes its observer too. Hogan (2010: 377) explains:
Clarifying this distinction creates an expanded theoretical repertoire for scholars, thereby enabling them to disentangle processes occurring when actors are copresent (in time, if not in the same geographic place) and processes that occur when actors are not necessarily present at the same time but still react to each other’s data.
With his metaphorical differentiation between a ‘front region’ and a ‘backstage’, Goffman (1983: 13) has illustrated how self-presentation functions in the medial context too. Thus, both parts have equal significance.
Given a particular performance as a point of reference, it will sometimes be convenient to use the term ‘front region’ to refer to the place where the performance is given. (. . .) We will have to see that some aspects of a performance seem to be played not to the audience but to the front region. The performance of an individual in a front region may be seen as an effort to give the appearance that his activity in the region maintains and embodies certain standards. (Goffman, 1983: 66–67)
Here, Goffman means diverse rules, that is, behaviours, but also facial expression and gestures, in short, the ‘ways in which the performer treats the audience’ (Goffman, 1983: 67). In the space of the front region, ‘some aspects of the activity are expressively accentuated and other aspects, which might discredit the fostered impression, are suppressed. It is clear that accentuated facts make their appearance in what is we have called a front region; it should be just as clear that there may be another region – a back region or backstage – where the suppressed facts make an appearance’ (Goffman, 1983: 69).
As backstage, Goffman (1983: 70) defined as ‘a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course. [. . .] It is here that the capacity of a performance to express something beyond itself may be painstakingly fabricated; it is here that illusions and impressions are openly constructed. [. . .] Here the team can run through its performance, checking for offending expressions when no one is present to be affronted by them’. Goffman points self-critically and with self-irony to the ‘worn-out’ theatrical metaphor surrounding the front region and the backstage. He nevertheless stresses the clarity of the image, in order to point to the mechanisms governing self-presentation. In this sense ‘the successful staging’ of a role is based on ‘the application of real techniques – the same techniques by which we assert ourselves in our real social situation in everyday life. Those participating in direct interactions on the theatre stage have to conform to the basic conditions of real situations; they have to define the situation via means of expression’ (Goffman, 1983: 233).
Hogan (2010: 379) emphasizes that this backstage is by no means ‘private’ and explains how online self-presentation and performance almost merge. Following Goffman’s definition, there can be no front region without a backstage. However, Hogan and others (Lewis et al., 2008; Tufekci, 2008) regard Facebook as backstage (Hogan, 2010) or as a ‘character of online socializing’ (Enli and Thumin, 2012: 96). Hogan (2010: 280) explains the categorising of Facebook through technical structure and differentiation according to visibility of information (Facebook friends or also friends of Facebook friends?). Robinson (2007) creates the term ‘cyberperformer’ for people who appear in cyberspace – for instance, in chatrooms and instant messengers or also in the blogosphere. A genuine performance cannot be simply repeated; it involves a singular event in real time, staged at a certain place by one or several artists for a certain audience.
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Hogan comments that a ‘recorded performance’ cannot strictly be deemed a performance, because its character has changed. Hogan (2010: 380) describes altering a recorded performance as follows:
It may still be a presentation of self, and undoubtedly it continues to signify an individual. However, it no longer necessarily bounds the specific audience who were present when the performance took place. Instead, it can be taken out of a situation and replayed in a completely different context. For example, a concert video may bring back great memories of a summertime show, but it does not transport the band to the viewer’s living room.
Benjamin (1936) had already noted the absence of originality in a repeated, or respectively, reproduced artwork – he maintained copies of the original lack ‘aura’, so are less valuable. The social media’s audience involves a group neither clearly defined nor homogenous, consisting of contacts partly known, partly collegial and professional, or almost unknown (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 197).
Holton and Molyneux (2017) interviewed journalists on their self-marketing online and have speculated over how far these latter do, when working, imagine their audience in social networks, given that previously the tradition of their journalism did not make this absolutely necessary. Individual journalists are not at all happy about their role in social media and feel like ‘advertising schlub’ (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 204). Hence, journalists and media scholars only slowly addressed the audience’s expectations. As regards the personalities in social networks, the American journalists questioned seemed to evince various characteristics in the different media channels (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 202). 2 Some even maintained several accounts meant to coalesce complementarily into a (authentic) personality. Some of the reporters said they ‘balanced their personal lives with their professional lives by creating separate social media accounts or relying on less-public platforms (e.g. Instagram, Snapchat) for personal content, the majority felt as though they shouldn’t have to represent themselves so dichotomously’ (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 204).
With the question about transparency, the presentation of the professional journalist’s role is more important than private activities from personal life. Where organisational pressures from the medium collide with individual ones, the decision often favours the organisation. In general, uncertainty over how they should meaningfully market their own persons or medium in the social media preoccupies journalists and editors (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 207). Consequently, most of the journalists questioned tend to perform and present themselves objectively/professionally and, with that, are virtually always aware of their profession in the social networks – even when they are apparently acting and reacting privately in the social media.
People’s self-presentation and performance in social media
In what follows, from this theoretical basis should be proceeded to attempt not just to transfer this model onto social media but also to ascertain how far people from the areas of media/entertainment, sports and politics can profit from these effects for a successful social media performance. It is suspected such parties have not yet fully exploited social media’s performative potential and medial characteristics. Based on Goffman, apropos performance in social media, there is an assumption about various social personalities in turn displaying obviously diverse characteristics on various platforms.
Schmidt (2013) demonstrates how public spheres investigated in social media differ from other public spheres. Hence, users effectively create their own personal public spheres, ‘which diverge from three vital traits of journalistic-publicistic public spheres in the mass media: selection criteria also have personal relevance’. Thus, they can overlap with contents journalists would also report on. In addition, the contents are not necessarily addressed to the general public. ‘It is much rather their own social network of friends, acquaintances or colleagues that users count as “Facebook friends”, or whom they know follow their own blogs or Twitter accounts’ (Schmidt, 2013: 26).
Ultimately, a different communications mode dominates personal public spheres. While journalistic media “publish”, i.e. provide socially relevant material to as wide an audience as possible, social media focus on conversation. [. . .] Here, the “like” button on Facebook also figures as a social signal, making out of one-sided “I send, you receive” communication a mutual exchange: “You communicate something, I signal pleasure, sympathy or agreement”. (Schmidt 2013: 27)
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The technology of social media alters, not least, use-conditions for senders and receivers equally: according to Schmidt (2013: 33): ‘social media’s architecture’ is formed by the internet’s technical features. He names four vital properties:
Communication based on digital media is persistent, that is, stored long-term. [. . .]
Additionally, data existing digitally can be copied with no loss of quality. [. . .]
Persistence and reproducibility imply that information’s spread is potentially limitless, in other words: the spread is arbitrarily scalable. [. . .]
This, in turn, results from digital data being searchable. [. . .] By dint of data’s persistence, it can also be information already long online and long forgotten by the actual ‘author’. The other extreme involves searching in ‘real time’ – thus you can, for example, have indicated on Twitter what others think about a current sports broadcast or a casting show. (Schmidt, 2013: 33)
Uski and Lampinen (2016: 448) point to the particular ‘sharing mechanisms’ and specifically social norms current in the social media channels. They argue that ‘sharing mechanisms and related social norms concerning online sharing are intertwined and shape strategic online self-presentation, or profile work’. They summarise the various specific possibilities for sharing content online in social media, as well as the psychological motivations behind (conscious and unconscious) social norms. In describing which tasks related to ‘work’ on your own profile belong in social media, they rely on the definition:
Profile work emphasizes that while possibilities for strategic self-presentation are multifold online, the possibility to choose what to reveal, omit, or underplay forces individuals to make many choices to manage how they are perceived. Profile work is a means for self-presentation via an online profile and related aspects of an SNS, such as stream-based up-dates. It encompasses one’s presence in the SNS as a whole, considering the social psychological aspects of the experience. Profile work is a continuous, strategic process that is guided by interpretations an individual makes of her or his behavior and that of others. (Silfverberg et al., 2011)
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In an analysis of Facebook and the music portal, Last.fm, Uski and Lampinen (2016: 461) conclude that authenticity depends on what and how somebody communicates content – or should. They consider social norms and the concomitant question about authenticity of performance in social media, to declare:
Social norms concerning sharing were at times contradictory. While, “being real” and “not faking” were two seemingly matching pursuits that existed in parallel, in practice, living up to both demands caused a conundrum to individuals. In the case of both Facebook and Last.fm, although more obviously in the case of automated sharing, participants had to adapt their behavior in one of two ways to comply with social norms: They could either change the way they behaved, or, they could try to ‘fake being real’ in hopes of making a convincing presentation of the self. (Uski and Lampinen, 2016: 461)
Hence, ‘paradoxical social norms’ sometimes figure; participants may be led to sharing photos, although they personally really did not want to. And the ‘presentation of authenticity’ finally becomes the focus of ‘work’ on your own (social) profile (Uski and Lampinen, 2016: 461). This authenticity is not always easy to achieve; corresponding efforts can even be much harder than face-to-face communication.
SNSs promote performing authenticity even though the behaviors and characteristics that are considered desirably “authentic” vary contextually. Differing sharing mechanisms may direct individuals to share in particular ways to accomplish a desired self-presentation that is compliant with relevant social norms. When individuals perform authenticity in managing their online presence, they engage in profile work. In other words, the authenticity displayed in SNSs is the result of profile work, not a simple outcome of “truthful”, unencumbered sharing. (Uski and Lampinen, 2016: 462)
Holton and Molyneux (2017) wonder what happens when, your own identity apparently gets lost within the complex structures in the social media. With self-marketing and particularly ‘branding’ of journalism, digital media acquire a special significance. Hence, the authors’ investigation concentrates on the social media profiles of American newspaper journalists and editors. They conclude that these participants form something tantamount to other personalities, or respectively, perform differently – depending on the context of particular professional roles. The findings of Holton and Molyneux (2017: 195) suggest that ‘as reporters incorporate branding into their routines, they may feel as though they are sacrificing the ability to simultaneously maintain a personal identity online. . . . editors seem to sympathize with journalists’ loss of personal identity but defer to organizational policies’.
Not only has the complexity of communication increased through digitalisation, self-presentation and (self-) marketing processes have become more complex and rigorous – something not just determined by technical possibilities. Journalists have surrendered their previous gatekeeper function; competition for users’ attention has grown as social media become established. Professional roles and journalistic routines have comprehensively changed through digital media. Holton and Molyneux (2017: 197) describe this leading to uncertainty: ‘More specifically, reporters have said they aren’t sure how to balance professional and personal identities on social media or even what their employers expect, and this has led them to approach branding experimentation with caution’. The relevance of journalists’ (self-)marketing in social networks has simultaneously risen. The current debate on fake news and the accusation of lying by the press has made the question of authenticity in presenting their identity online still more relevant for journalists in particular. ‘A journalist seeking transparency allows the audience to see both professional and personal identities in an effort to appear more authentic and trustworthy’ (Holton and Molyneux, 2017: 199). What is correspondingly difficult for the ‘experts’ in public communication, may presumably be still more demanding for the players in politics, sports and entertainment.
Sportsperson’s self-presentation in social media
Self-presentation in social media has become part of the marketing of almost all (professional) sportspersons (Hambrick and Mahoney, 2011). Social media offer a distribution channel for advertising, products, placements or image-creation and reputation management, whether in marketing top sportspersons or in the chance to gather an audience and increase notice for athletes in marginal codes (Grimmer and Horky, 2018).
Here, Twitter and Facebook are the leading networks, and research, above all, has focused on sportspersons’ self-presentation on Twitter (Hambrick et al., 2010; Pegoraro, 2010). Thus, Lebel and Danylchuk (2012) analysed female and male tennis players at the US Open, based on Goffman’s theory. They found that male players occupied the foreground more pronouncedly as athletes, whilst female players emphasised personal issues and constructing a positive image. Hull (2014) chose the same approach to investigate how golfers behaved on Twitter during the Masters. Using Goffman, his content analysis assigned 895 tweets from 39 golfers to several categories, in the sense of information distribution or engagement in front region or backstage.
Smith and Sanderson (2015) analysed the self-presentation of athletes on Instagram, against the background of social media having developed from rather more text-based to visual formats. Their content analysis of photos and corresponding captions investigated 1352 photos by 31 sportspersons over eight codes (basketball, football, tennis, track, golf, swimming, baseball and softball). 73% of the photos showed the athletes, 7% a family member, friends or other persons, as well as 20% landscapes or meals. The majority were group photos showing the athletes together with persons or a group (39%), followed by photos depicting the sportspersons alone (35%). The majority of photos on Instagram showed the athletes from a distance, depicting the entire body. Classical selfies are thus rarer than expected. In contrast to earlier studies related to other social media platforms, noting gender difference indicated female athletes depicted more strongly in active, more sporting roles. Nevertheless, the athletes’ images were very personal. Sporting activity and competition received only a lesser share of the self-presentation. The persons investigated showed, much rather, their private side via personal preferences, interests, family and charitable involvement. Instagram seems best suited to this visual representation.
The text analysis of the captions on Instagram produced six topics altogether, distributed across the sexes equally. The ‘Humanitarian’ category stands for communal engagement. The second topic is ‘Family Driven’ and contains insights into athletes’ home lives – for example, Christmas, birthdays, holidays or weekend activities. With the third topic, ‘Personality Traits and Interests’, people reveal their private lives outside of sport – in ways maybe funny, mocking, jocund or modest. With the fourth category, ‘Dedicated Athlete’, they share workout tips and show photos of training and practice. Naming sponsors falls under category five (#nike, #lovegatorade etc.). Category six covers the rubric, ‘Socialite’, and shows the athletes at events like galas, parties or other engagements.
Burk and Grimmer’s (2018) survey the self-presentation of athletes on Instagram, as, through various means in social networks, they also display the shift between personal and professional appearances supported by agencies.
Methodological approach
The investigation is on how five German celebrities from the areas of politics, media/entertainment and sports use the biggest (assessed on user numbers) social networks in Germany: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The sample targets the accounts of personalities, using criteria like celebrity, activity and variety (among others, gender, age and function) (Table 1). In the 2 months from 1 November 2015 to 2 January 2016, all items were assessed, as well as the various sorts of publication on all three platforms. The intensity of interaction emerged by differentiating between likes, shares and commentaries on Facebook, as well as retweets, favourites, commentaries and conversations on Twitter, or respectively, likes and comments on Instagram. Data was collected via a quantitative content analysis.
People investigated.
Secondly, the activities of the accounts investigated were qualitatively analysed in the context of seven important events, selected on their significance for our subjects from politics, media/entertainment and sports. The events comprised the national football team’s last game of the year (17 November 2015), the Hamburg Olympics Referendum (29 November 2015), the opening of the UN Climate Conference (30 November 2015), World Aids Day (1. December 2015), the opening of the film, ‘Star Wars – The Force Awakens’ in German cinemas (17 December 2015), Christmas (24 December 2015) and New Year (1 January 2015). As with selecting the persons investigated, the selection of events represented the areas of sports, media/entertainment and politics equally. All items on the three social networks were investigated on the day itself, as well as on the preceding and the following. The qualitative analysis ran on the basis of a category range borrowed from Goffman’s (1983) stage model and his elements of self-presentation, as well as Horky’s (2001) metaphor of staging in mass media. On this basis, the dimensions of topic-creation, personalisation and generating closeness, above all, appeared relevant. The categories figure in various guises. The following categories, or respectively, questions were assessed in the qualitative part of the investigation:
A) Topics
• Intrinsic to sector v. extraneous: When a sportsperson says anything about a political event, or if a politician pronounces on a cultural-social one – that is something extraneous – or do celebrities mainly comment on happenings in their field?
• Homogeneous versus heterogeneous social media profile: do people publish the same contents on the three platforms, or do they differentiate between the communication channels?
• Practical and informative content: how much information do the published contents contain? With pictures likewise, the motifs can be equally more or less informative.
B) Personalising
• Profile image: neutral logo versus portrait. This first ‘signboard’ on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram can be altered anytime and arbitrarily – where just the time of altering a profile image permits conclusions on events and happenings. An example: Steinmeier accordingly altered his profile image on World Aids Day, 1 December 2015, into an Aids ribbon.
• Images and their graphic language: the majority of the posts noted contain images, less often moving ones. They can be categorised according to motifs, but also to filmic and dramaturgical criteria – from witty-personal to serious, from pseudo-private through private as far as official.
• Style of language: this category’s forms are obvious, for example, address used – familiar or formal ‘you’.
C) Proximity and speed
• Spatial and temporal proximity: proximity can be staged temporally and spatially. The categories overlap, as proximity results from graphic staging but also from personalising address etc.
• Further techniques in this dimension are creating intimacy, emotion and eroticism (Horky, 2001: 185).
The investigation assumes that a conscious public staging of personality happens more intensely in social media. Thus, it is proceeded to investigate how celebrities use social media. What platform serves what communicative purpose? How does politicians’ use differ from that of sportspersons and of celebrities from media/entertainment?
Results
Quantitative results
The quantitative investigation registered 2177 items from the 15 people, covering the social networks, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Comparison of the three networks indicated Twitter was used most overall, followed by Facebook and Instagram. However, use varies very noticeably between the subjects investigated (Figure 1). The politicians published on Facebook (82%), above all, followed by Twitter (10%) and Instagram (8%). From media/entertainment, activities predominated on Twitter (74%); Facebook was only 18% and Instagram 8%. By contrast, sportspersons used the three platforms almost equally: Twitter (35%), Instagram (33%) and Facebook (32%).
Distribution of posts according to social network (in %, n = 2,177).
The celebrities from media/entertainment were most active (64%) on the social networks analysed, followed by politicians (25%) and sportspersons (11%). The title, ‘social media king’, belongs to Kai Diekmann. The quondam editor-in-chief of the BILD-Zeitung came out top with 644 items, followed by the singer, Lena Meyer-Landrut (p. 454) and the quondam Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (p. 379) – by contrast, the national soccer team player, Mesut Özil, the most active sportsperson, published only 86 items (Figure 2).
Distribution of posts by individual (number, n = 2,177).
Looking particularly at the sportspersons in the sample confirms very different network use. The athletes figured with 236 posts over our period. The international footballer, Nadine Keßler, did not use Twitter; basketball player Dirk Nowitzki, playing and living in the US, used this medium, by contrast, almost exclusively. In addition, all sportspersons were influenced by Instagram (Figure 3).
Distribution of posts by individual, sports (in %, n = 236).
A glance at the different usage reveals a lack of uniformity in the sense of differing publishing forms for content. Regarding the use of networks, the sportspersons’ publishing forms vary widely. Dirk Nowitzki, as Twitter user, posts mainly text messages; Nadine Keßler, by contrast, constantly posts text/photo combinations. Many athletes prefer a combination of text and video (often integrated as a link). This disparate use already confirms an assumption of differing characters on social media: a first indication of social media personalities (Figure 4).
Distribution by individual and sort of post, sports (in %, n = 236).
For all subjects, a glance at the sorts of items confirms that there are overall very few differences between them and between groups. However, one clear surprise is: pure videos (items with only moving images) scarcely figured in publications, except with the politicians. Sportspersons and politicians favoured, above all, text-photo combinations, followed by text messages (Figure 5).
Distribution of posts according to nature of use (in %, n = 2,177).
A glance at changing follower-numbers on the various social networks during the investigation confirms the Instagram’s increasing relevance. With all subject groups, this photo-oriented medium showed – above all, with politicians – the greatest growth rate during our investigation (Figure 6).
Growth in follower numbers during the investigation (in %, n = 2,177).
Qualitative results
In the second part of the analysis, 601 posts in the context of the results were investigated: distribution according to social networks gave 295 tweets, 230 Facebook posts and 76 posts on Instagram. Of the seven events chosen, the most discussed was the decision surrounding the citizens’ referendum against holding the Olympics in Hamburg, with 118 posts (64 tweets/38 FB posts/15 Instagram posts). With 110 posts the new Star Wars film in German cinemas came a close second (58/39/13), followed by the German football team’s first match in Paris, with 96 posts (60/29/7) and New Year with 86 posts (31/42/13). Further, the subjects posted on World Aids Day (31/25/9) and Christmas (22/31/12). The event least considered was the opening of the UN Climate Conference, with 61 posts (29/25/7).
The most active person in social networks was Kai Diekmann, with 173 posts overall, followed by the quondam Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (p. 99) and the singer, Lena Meyer-Landrut (p. 81). The rest of the subjects posted notably less during our investigation, as the ranking indicates: Jan-Josef Liefers (p. 42), Elyas M’Barek (p. 35), Judith Rakers (p. 5), Edina Müller (p. 28), Sigmar Gabriel (p. 26), Robert Harting (p. 23), Mesut Özil (p. 22), Angela Merkel (p. 19), Nadine Keßler (p. 12) and Dirk Nowitzki (p. 6). Two of the subjects from politics, Joachim Gauck and Ursula von der Leyen, were not active on social networks at all during the qualitative analysis. A clear difference thus resulted among the different groups: with 366 posts, subjects from media/entertainment were notably more active than the politicians (p. 144) and, above all, than the least active, the sportspersons (p. 91).
Analysing the posts qualitatively sometimes produced clear contradictions among our subjects; we could, in this sense, talk about split personalities: some social profiles were more heterogenous than others. Some subjects published identical contents on two or three platforms; others exploited the individual advantages of a particular medium more intensively. Investigating the photo-motifs, ranging from very private through professional up to obviously staged publicity material, also furnished interesting results. The styles of language also allowed conclusions on differing characters, who spoke either objectively-informatively or declared personal opinions – partially colloquially and garnished with numerous emoticons.
One example of all this was Kai Diekmann as media/entertainment celebrity; he is a professional in the media and clearly interested in social media. During the investigation, Diekmann used Twitter, above all, intensively. The tweets varied in informative value, being mainly retweets. Diekmann used Facebook on average only once daily, although relatively consistently (except at the opening of the UN Climate Conference). Via retweets, Diekmann pointed to current news and to linked messages and articles. Hence, he functioned like a meta-journalist, or a tickertape editor respectively. He addressed his items directly to individual media and sometimes proffered obvious (media) criticism. Here, topics from media and media politics predominated. Diekmann retweeted from various media on the terrorist attacks in Paris, for instance – particularly from international offerings, like the New York Times und BBC, not, for instance, from European media, although the attacks took place here. One possible explanation could be Diekmann’s lengthy stay in the USA, meaning he posts, in this case, for a global audience. The mixture of English, German and a chatroom language also indicates that.
Via a retweet on 17 November 2015, Diekmann indirectly advocated Twitter’s new medial possibility of streaming the live reports on terrorist attacks via Periscope. Repeating three highly significant dots to open his own items is noticeable, obviously meant to point to the continuity of communication between Diekmann and his followers.
Diekmann generated many responses with his action of an ‘Advent Calendar’, offering a lottery on Twitter and finally earning thanks from the winners among his followers. This action produced closeness and attachment but did not provide any significant informative content.
The SPD politician, Sigmar Gabriel, performed quite differently, he was active on Twitter and Facebook. Gabriel seems to distribute extracts from his public speaking via social channels – always the while presenting a fuller version of his speeches on Facebook and often linking them to the overall context (documents etc.). In turn, a short extract from the Facebook post usually appears as a short Twitter message. Clearly, Gabriel thus uses Twitter precisely as the medium intends – people value Twitter, above all, for distributing short messages quickly. By contrast, Gabriel offers more service for his Facebook fans by presenting a fuller version of the item and even adding the link to the original document. It can be assumed that these two accounts are managed by a professional press team.
The Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was, by contrast, present only on Instagram. One can note how her press team obviously stages her performance as a look at the Federal Chancellery’s ‘backstage’, or respectively, at her everyday work. Thus, the items in the ‘bundeskanzlerin’ account (the name of her account, equally unmistakable as it is singular) resemble a (travel) diary. The point is clearly to present the Chancellor as incessantly ‘on the move’. Not only the text content, but also the photos make this clear by explaining where Angela Merkel is this minute. The latter show her and her retinue from behind, giving her followers genuine insight into her work. She is staged on the red carpet as the most important person; she stands centrally – all others turned towards her. Another example shows Angela Merkel at a table and surrounded by her politician colleagues (16 November 2015). Again, she stands out as the only woman in the leader’s group. That creates a symbolic effect; the grouping is staged almost like the Last Supper or a religious motif.
In the analysis, the sportspersons investigated proved to be rather more inactive on social networks. The German para-canoeist and quondam gold-medallist in wheelchair basketball, Edina Müller, produced the most postings. In terms of a market-oriented presentation, she figured as very authentic and typical for the sector. Thus, as a Hamburg para-Olympian, she encouraged her followers to vote ‘yes’ in the poll on the city’s application for the 2024 Olympics. At Christmas, Edina Müller posted a very humorous and personal item with a clear Hamburg reference.
With the terrorist attack adjacent to the Paris football international, the politician, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, conformed to his occupation by emphasising the political significance of what was originally a sporting event. The quondam German foreign minister posted like a foreign correspondent. And here the clearly recognisable credit for a professional photographer indicated the professionally-mounted agency presentation. It is particularly interesting that the politician posted about this sporting event, but simultaneously our sample of sportspeople did not evince a single posting. With US resident, Dirk Nowitzki, this is understandable; with the national team’s Mesut Özil being involved, or the international, Nadine Keßler, and the Olympic athletes respectively, it is, much rather, surprising.
Mesut Özil’s profiles exemplify a sportsperson’s professionally-moulded social media personality. 5 The German international, a highly-paid professional known worldwide and registering the most followers on social media, presented the same person, the same character on all three networks. Alongside the identical image – quite clearly produced professionally – the same text was posted in all three networks and only adapted for the networks’ requirements. His very homogenous profile mostly deals only with events directly from his sporting context; even on the day of the Olympics referendum in his home country, he published three identical postings on his club, Arsenal. Özil’s postings do additionally seem to offer a private insight into his life, but are quite clearly professionally staged. The postings surrounding Christmas confirm this, with an actual first-person text on Facebook, but professionally-produced photos.
By contrast, Robert Harting’s social personality is quite different. The German discus gold medallist presents himself differently, and in part simultaneously, on the three social networks investigated. Thus, on Facebook he posted a serious text intrinsic to his profession and a suitable, seemingly private photo on the Hamburg Olympics question – and only a little later a completely different image with little information on Instagram, meant to quite obviously present a different character. Yet, the image and text language are here very heterogeneous; even when the images are third-party, this does not seem professionally-managed and often shows private things, such as him on Instagram with his son at New Year. Like Mesut Özil, Robert Harting is indeed a highly successful professional athlete, yet his social media personality is quite clearly not staged.
A careful ranking of the profiles investigated on the social networks – there was no confirmation – resulted in an overall majority for rather more authentic usage of the social networks. Kai Diekmann seemed to have arranged his 173 posting mostly himself, just like Jan-Josef Liefers (p. 42), Judith Rakers (p. 35) and Edina Müller (p. 28), Robert Harting (p. 23) Nadine Keßler and Dirk Nowitzki (p. 6), above all, most of the people from our sports group too. By contrast, Frank-Walther Steinmeier (99), Lena Meyer-Landrut (p. 81), Elyas M’Barek (p. 35), Sigmar Gabriel (p. 26), Mesut Özil (p. 22) and Angela Merkel (p. 19) display accounts clearly managed by professional agencies. Politics, media/entertainment, as well as the one-off football international, were, therefore, the ones staged.
Discussion
The investigation shows, sportspersons are actually active on many channels, but they use them in part homogeneously and not as intensively as the comparative groups from politics and media/entertainment. The politicians considered in the study use fewer channels, mainly Facebook, but then intensively. By contrast, people from media/entertainment favour Twitter.
Most of the sportspersons’ accounts impress as authentic and mostly homemade, with the exception of Mesut Özil, whose photos look private but show management by a social media agency – whilst the politicians’ profiles are obviously handled by their PR teams. Among other things, this is clear from photo credits and sources.
The concept of authenticity seems particularly significant in the context of social media: simply because users actually expect to be in real communication with the genuine account-holder, all-too-falsified staging in social media is enjoyed less by an audience. More studies are needed, analysing explicitly audiences’ reactions to accounts’ artificiality or to falsified, or respectively, lacking authenticity. That a celebrity account exists clearly seems already to have audiences anticipating its veracity.
In the context of the study, the definition of authenticity through assigning accounts to individuals can be verified. Fake accounts or fan accounts were excluded from the sample and instead included only celebrities publicly declaring (officially verifying) their respective account as theirs – whether managed by their PR team or not.
The aspect of fake accounts gains a particular relevance through the current debate on fake news and the associated accusation all-round of a ‘lying press’, implying deliberate spreading of false facts. As Lilienthal and Neverla sketch out in their collection, right-wingers broadcast this accusation mostly; the notion of a ‘lying press’ itself always was already anti-Semitic (Neverla, 2017). Hence, social media contributors can make their public self-presentation significantly more credible via an authentic performance, or respectively, their arguments in the public debate.
Limitations
By contrast, the items’ veracity was not checked. A certain effort would make it technically possible to ascertain if, for example, Kai Diekmann is actually in Istanbul and posting dawn photos from there, or if his Instagram account is only suggesting this for a given period. However, such checks lie outside the limitations of the study.
It is important to stress that this study only investigated a few persons’ behaviour over two months, and just in Germany. The results are accordingly not representative – neither for the individuals nor for the groups investigated.
The unforeseeable Paris terrorist attack may well have influenced the way the subjects selected communicated. What the study reveals on their behaviour shows its design is relevant and should be expanded in future. Schmidt (2013: 32) has, for example, pointed to an imagined audience serving as a yardstick ‘for selecting and presenting topics and information we treat in our own personal public sphere. Depending on how our contact network is configured, this can also mean that differing, even contrasting, expectations of our own selves have to be balanced out’.
Conclusion
This German case study demonstrates, people use different social media networks in diverse ways at the same time. It seems reasonable, in some parts not to speak of the usage of social media, but more of different ways to use different social media networks. Like the diverse character of people in changing real contexts, people present themselves as different social characters on social media networks: an authentic businessperson, and a private person at the same time. And we believe, this is not only a German case, the behaviour seems comparable to other countries (Holton and Molyneux, 2017).
What does that say about social media usage in general? In our opinion, it should be important for the future to examine some different social networks before talking about and rating an individuals’ behaviour on social media. People seem to behave different on networks presuming a different audience in mind. That’s why, subsequent studies should also engage more closely with the audience aspect. For example, it should be investigated how far audiences on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram differ and where the areas of interest and expectations of social media do lie. And also because of the authenticity of accounts clearly so important precisely for social media, numerous research approaches materialise: linguists could, for instance, analyse celebrities’ speech patterns, as uttered in the analogue world, and show how far the contents in social media accord with real vocabulary at public appearances, or as regards humour and irony.
This is important precisely in the case of celebrities from politics, but also for sportspersons like Mesut Özil. If agencies are clearly responsible for staging a personality’s performance in the social media and limit themselves to simply taking over the real public appearances like public statements on camera or public speeches, then this way the potential for presenting yourself authentically for fans of possible voters certainly goes begging – and that particularly, if you, as a ‘fan’ of the politician-celebrity, express the wish through the connection you established on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to know more about them than you already know from public appearances and reporting from traditional mass media. Studies on audiences’ expectation and wishes could engage here, as it would be intriguing to investigate if the suggested simultaneity of communication, the suggested closeness and veracity of communication also corresponds to what fans want from celebrities’ accounts.
In addition, it would be intriguing to investigate more intensive how media experts – for example, journalists – manage their own social profiles.
6
Schmidt sees, in any case, a large opportunity for journalism in general and he rejects the assumption that social media make every user a journalist:
Most of their users do not regards themselves as journalists when they filter and shape their own personal public sphere and open it to others. Here, they adopt journalistic contents, whilst, vice-versa, journalism incorporates the social media into its own work. (Schmidt, 2013: 56)
The results indicate we should no longer proceed from a uniform use of social media but from different personalities or characters in it. Therefore, we suggest talking about multiple social media personalities, who can display differently-configured social media characters. In this sense, one could also talk about the, as yet, unexploited potential of using social networks for your own public performance.
