Self-presentation and Impression Formation through Photographs in an LGBT Online Dating Community

This netnographic and autoethnographic study examines self-presentation and impression formation through photographs presented on a gay online dating community, Qruiser. The theoretical framework of Goffman’s performance of self and Asch’s formation of impression was developed based on semiotic signifiers and signified. The study was carried out through participant observation of 200 gay daters’ photographs, online interviews, group discussions and narratives of the author’s personal experience. Observation showed that gay daters primarily presented six categories of photographs: self-portrait, daily pictures, travel pictures, sexually explicit pictures, pictures of objects, and black and white pictures. The daters were asked to justify their photographs in self-presentations, and the responses showed that the signs in the photographs could be both intentional and unintentional. Online interviews and group discussion participants suggested that there were distinctions of central and peripheral signifiers in impression formation. Furthermore, participants felt that misunderstanding of impressions resulting from dating photographs was unimportant, due to the compensation of textual presentation and messages.