english

Abdullah Noman

English 100

10/26/2016

Twitter versus Facebook Twitter versus Facebook: Exploring the role of Narcissism in the motives and usage of different social media platforms

Research shows that social networking sites are tightly linked to narcissism. Narcissism is a term that is used to describe the intensity that an individual presents with on matters regarding love for oneself. It exists in a broad range of levels including on behavior, attitudes, and beliefs. The social media is a platform where individuals meet and chat with their friends whom they might know or not. Some of the examples of such sites include Facebook and Twitter.

The sites are usually used for various purposes including advertisement. Numerous organizations post their goods and services as ads for the general public to see and interested parties or their target population or even those interested in the gods might opt to follow and by the products of interest. Facebook and Twitter is the most popular social networking sites in the world in general.Researchers consider Facebook as the prototype of social networking sites. It presents with a variety of features that are usually available for its users. The features include tagging others on various posts especially pictures, posting comments, liking of posts and observations, adding friends and update of stats. The above features play a major role in facilitating interaction between the account holder and his or her friends.

According to Bergman et al., 2011, there exist a positive relationship between some friends one has on social networking sites and narcissism. The rational of a user having the majority of the friends being attractive to narcissists, and this acts a measure of the popularity of the selected individual. Facebook allows its users to update their current status, share with friends and family as well as their whereabouts.

It acts as a microblogging social networking site and presents with a different profile from that of Facebook. The issue of posting messages is usually via the use of tweets unlike in Facebook where the user only sends the message to their contacts. The connections are known as followers, and not friends like on Facebook. Users gain friends on Twitter via a different process that that of Facebook, they follow their interested parties and they get followed back unlike in Facebook where one sends a friend request, and the recipient accepts it for the confirmation of being friends. According to the American Psychiatric Association, 2013, they stipulate that Twitter may be appealing to narcissist more than Facebook due to its features. McKinney et al., 2013 established the existence of a significant interrelation between the users of Twitter and narcissism. It is practically evident that narcissistic behavior is linked with social networking sites and Twitter and Facebook are the most affected sites. Research as it that Twitter is the site that promotes narcissistic behavior than Facebook due to the existence of its unique features. In general, both Twitter and Facebook tend to provide an easy method for the narcissistic to indulge in the attention seeking as well as self-promoting and exhibitionistic behaviors that tend to help them in the maintenance of inflating their view for oneself.