Outcome

My research question is "What mood and focus do facebook users want to convey with their profile picture?". In order to get an accurate analysis of facebook profile pictures, my process was essentially gather the profile pictures from facebook, create a google spread sheet with various moods and focuses (happy, serious, humor, self, friends/family, nature, food), and then go through each profile picture and notate which categories it satisfied. From my analysis, I found that most profile pictures were happy solo photos which is natural. Many people want to convey that they are happy people with their profiles. There were also a good amount of serious and funny solo photos as well to represent that part of their personality they valued. There were some photos of couples and friends, but not as much as selfies. This difference in numbers showed that many wanted to focus their profile on themselves rather than their significant other or their family and friends. I think what I found most surprising was there was less contrived and touched up profile pictures than I thought I would find. Many of the solo photos were not actually selfies, but photos that other people took of them.