Do you filter who you are?: Excessive self-presentation, social cues, and user evaluations of Instagram selfies

Innovation in the areas of social media, mobile devices, and wireless connectivity fosters new reflections on communication research, specifically in the area of self-presentation. In this paper, selfies publicly posted on Instagram (N = 1873) were analyzed to see if excessive self-presentation, operationalized as the use of photo filters in selfies, is negatively related to social media users’ evaluation of the person in the selfie. The data showed that using photo filters in selfies was associated with fewer likes received from other social media users. In addition, use of social cues in selfies is positively associated with higher number of likes on Instagram. Theoretical and practical implications of these phenomena are also discussed.