Theorizing Self Visibility on Social Media: A Visibility Objects Approach

DOI

Self-presentation undergirds social interaction on social media. HCI and social computing scholarship draw on visibility to theorize self-presentation management; while research addresses how social media users leverage (in)visibility for self-presentation goals, how users perceive and assess the visibility of themselves and others merits investigation. We conducted interviews (n=20) to explore how U.S.-based social media users perceive and assess self visibility. Findings indicate that self visibility comprises a set of related objects’ visibility—content, persons, and identity—associated with distinct, but related, visibility attributes. We develop the visibility objects lens to examine self-presentation, contributing a unified social media visibility framework. We show how users perceive themselves as visible to platforms and algorithms, which act as visibility agents. We introduce reflected algorithmic visibility to describe awareness of visibility to platforms and algorithms informed by algorithmic feedback. We conclude with design implications of a visibility objects lens.