ABSTRACT
This chapter examines factors influencing online self-presentation as it evolved from early personal webpages requiring considerable computer programming skills and often web hosting fees, to contemporary, ostensibly free to use, social media platforms which can be updated from almost any connected device in two keystrokes or a voice command. While the increasing proliferation of social media platforms with sophisticated user-friendly interfaces reduces technical constraints with embedded standardized templates and algorithms, they introduce opaque, often overlooked biases. Economic, ideological, and technical considerations underlie social media template designs and algorithms, restricting self-presentation and nudging users toward commercially exploitable content generation. We review how platform design influences self-presentation then offer some key implications for future consumer research.
