E. Rodriguez: Field Exercise 3

Process/Product: Last week, the project was to analyze how people present themselves on social media by the profile pictures them use. Looking at these images, I categorized them by my perceived intention of their: why this photo? My photo up to that point fell under Appearance, photos chosen because the subject liked the way they appeared in that pic.

Appearance, as to be expected, was the largest category. Symbol, a picture that is not a direct image of the user but instead of picture of something they associate themselves with, was one of the smallest. Intrigued, I decided to change my profile picture to one that fit this category.

Intention: By changing my profile pic to something that doesn't even physically depict me, I hope to get people to ask or think about why I chose this image to represent myself. Although I do expect several people to complain about me changing my profile pic to a non-descriptive image.

Effect: The effect was significantly less than expected. Two people liked the photo (both family members) and nobody commented.

Reflection: I have to say, I'm a little disappointed with the results. I'm not someone who really interacts with others over social media; I observe but never really like or comment on anything. I can only assume that the lack of response to the change in my profile pic is due to my lack of "presence" on social media. As a continuation of project, it would be interesting to analyze "presence" on social media and how that impacts one's experience on social media. Specifically, if I were to this experiment again, I'd take people with various level of "presence" and have them change their profile pics in a similar manner (ex. Appearance to Symbol) and see if there's a correlation between response and "presence". 

Update: After the project ended, right before class started, I changed my profile pic to the image below. After 9 1/2 hours, the pic has 25 likes and 2 comments. Considering the significant increase in response and what was discussed in class, I'm starting to believe the response correlates to the picture being recognizable as me. When you're scrolling and see you an image on someone's timeline, you're likely to believe it's just something they liked or posted themselves. However, people recognize faces, and they seem to be more likely to response to a change in profile pic if they actually recognize that the pic was changed.