Self-Presentation And Its Gender Difference Of Network Spouse-Searching

The advent of Internet society has greatly changed the way we manufacture and the life fields of human being. Network spouse-searching is a vivid example where the internet expands people's spouse choosing options, which is an endeavor to build up the strong relationship of engagement through the weak tie of network. The self-presentation of spouse-searching through BBS is a micro, dynamic and complex process in which not only can we see people's values and standards of spouse choosing formed by years of socialization and personalization but also their social gender role identity as well as their attitude to marriage and family. Simultaneously, as a "barometer", the context and the way of self-presentation will reflect the change direction of social-cultural values and gender relationship.From the standpoint of social gender combined with the traditional theory of marriage and spouse-choosing, through the analysis of 222 paragraphs from"Pie Bridge"forum of LQQM which is the most popular BBS with Chinese Universities, and by making dialog to authority research, this study analyzed the self-presentation's context and gender difference to explore the changes in social gender schema, patterns of family and social-cultural values behind these differences.After a brief outline of"Pie Bridge"and a quantitative description of its users'group identity, the study begins a detailed analysis by distributing the key words context to eight categories: title, motives and reasons for network spouse-searching, physical characteristics, personal nature and interests, economic status and competency, political and social relationships, life attitude and sexual experience, request for the other side.The study found out that there are gender differences in all of these eight aspects. Some changes have taken place in social gender scheme and gender role identity, but these changes have obviously different effect on the self-presentation of men and women. Furthermore, men own the leading discourse in the self-explanation of"older age"and the request for the other's chasteness. Also, the pursuit of pure-relationship has become the mainstream change direction of modern gender relationship and family patterns.