• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.409-420
• /
• 2018

The decision to actively reveal oneself as a consumer on social media depends on whether the focus is more on positive rewards than negative threats associated with self-presentation, that is, who the other party is in that relationship. The audience of self-presentation could also be divided into expressive and instrumental ties: work partners can be classified as an audience of instrumental ties, whereas school friends can be regarded as an audience of expressive ties. This study accordingly predicted that people would focus more on prevention of negative threats than positive reward, exhibiting defensive self-presentation in relationships with strong instrumental ties because the fallout from negative threats due to failed self-presentation have a more detrimental effect than a positive reward from successful self-presentation. The empirical findings thereby indicated that as the proportion of coworkers increased among Facebook friends, the mediation effect through defensive self-presentation increased, whereas such effect through acquisitive self-presentation decreased.