The Effects of Self-Consciousness and News Consumption on Facebook

Abstract

The popularity of social media has led to a variety of communicative behaviors among users. This study targeted Facebook as a representative social medial platform because it has the most subscribers in order to investigate factors that influence Facebook usage. In particular, because a person’s behavior is based on how they are perceived by others, self-conscious behavior was examined in the study. Facebook usage and news consumption were examined to ascertain the effects of self-consciousness. An online survey was conducted to examine how private SC and public SC (SCs), affects Facebook usage (profiles and writing posts) and news consumption (clicking “like” and sharing news). 616 participants completed the survey, and results indicated that public SC was positively related to the degree of profile updating and post writing. On the other hand, private SC was positively related to the degree of news sharing. These results suggest that psychological elements significantly predict a user’s behavior on Facebook.