Reverse Self-presentation

Driven by the sharing culture derived from social media,romantic relationships that were once private are currently being exhibited on public platforms for others to watch.Romantic couples tend to post loving photos and update their relationship status to present their couple identities in front of others,so as to make the relationship more open and official and thus enhance it in the offline world.From the perspective of Goffman's self-presentation theory,this kind of phenomenon can be understood as a kind of identity performance of romantic couples.The exhibition has therefore produced a lot of digital traces on social media,which caused identity crisis when couples break up,because they can no longer be consistent with individuals' current real identities.Therefore,it is essential that individuals take good care of these remnant traces.The common remedy strategy is self-withdrawal,which is the act of erasing digital traces or reducing their visibility on social media.This study applies the qualitative research method of in-depth interview.Twenty-five interviewees that have experienced a romantic break-up within three years were interviewed.Based on the materials collected from the interviews,this study tries to understand how they used different methods of self-withdrawal in order to deal with the negative event.The findings suggest that there are three kinds of self-withdrawal on the social media platform after an individual breaks up:1)withdrawal at the public level,which means erasing digital traces from the public's eyes,such as deleting or hiding the previously public posts indicating the romantic relationship;2)withdrawal at the dual relationship level,i.e.erasing digital traces from the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend's eyes,specifically including blocking,deleting friends and so on;3)withdrawal at the individual level,which is completely deleting the posts concerning exes,chat records and other traces.These three withdrawal methods show a gradient--from the public,to the dual level,and then to the individual level,the degree of withdrawal increases and shows the changing trend from general to.special,from public to individual,from normative to emotional.Individuals would use these three methods for identity performances of one-to-many,one-to-one and reflexivity differently and strategically,based on their own situation,so as to complete identity replacement and social relationship adjustment.It is proved through this study that self-withdrawal can be regarded as a special kind of self-presentation.It is different from the latter in two aspects:1)it is more normative at the public level;2)it consumes a lot of emotional resources throughout the process.Yet it is also related with self-presentation as it will influence individuals'future self-censorship behavior on social media.It is concluded that this study,by exploring and analyzing individuals'self-withdrawal behavior after a romantic break-up,proposes the concept of self-withdrawal in the context of social media research.It complements previous studies on self-presentation and impression management on social media from the theoretical perspective,updating Hogan's metaphor of curator to editor,and discusses the role of self-withdrawal in life transitions.