Study On Self-Construal On The Wechat Socializing

With the development of WeChat, the virtual social relationship has had an apparen t tendency towards the strong tie due to WeChat’s settings and its users’ psychologica 1 mechanism. Initially, WeChat has caught the attention in the internet industry with e mphasis on implications, and then it gradually infiltrates into the academia which relie s heavily on laws and theories. Overall, the systematic, in-depth researches on WeCha t haven’t been taken shape right now.This dissertation is based on 200 WeChat users’ experiences as well as the author’s, and 10 active, stable users of them are picked out as the research targets. Having their interviews analyzed by text analysis, this paper focuses on the self-constructions of WeChat users when they deal with online social behaviors and their purposes to achieve identities and confirm roles, which have further effects on the strong ties and weak ones during their virtual social works.The research shows that there are high overlaps between WeChat users’virtual, social circles and their real ones dependent on WeChat’s functions and users’ psychological requests; the virtual social circle is the complementary part to the real one, meanwhile, the real social circle has had some reflections on the virtual one. The subject develops three images of activist, observer and aspirant according to the idealized self, role setting and psychological projection during the process of WeChat socializing. With the union of exact social behaviors and psychological requirements, WeChat user finishes his self-construction on the following three aspects:one is highlighting the real "Self" through narrative and circle of acquaintances; the second is uncovering the hiding "Self" through backstage demonstration and self-exposure; the third is expressing the idealized "Self" through the embellishing the ego and projecting the other. Besides, the results of self-construal are achieved on two sides: one is to confirm the identity by fulfilling the role of "We media" and conveying the group image of pragmatist; the other side is to improve the individual’s all-round social activities by means of maintaining both strong and weak ties.