Cultural Differences in Self-Expression on Facebook: A Comparison of Facebook Status Updates in Turkey and the U.S.A.

Facebook behavior can reflect people’s cultural norms and motivations. Despite being a global platform, there is limited cross-cultural research on self-expression on Facebook. Compared to collectivistic cultures (e.g., Turkey), people from individualistic cultures (e.g., European-Americans) are more likely to have self-enhancement motivation about their internal attributes (e.g., accomplishments, preferences), to emphasize their uniqueness, and to display positivity bias. In this study, we examined people’s actual Facebook status updates and found that European-Americans were more likely than Turkish users to post updates about their personal achievements and positive attitudes. Moreover, Turkish users were more likely to post negative attitudes than positive attitudes. Furthermore, European-Americans’ self-enhancement and uniqueness motivation was positively associated with their likelihood of posting achievement updates, whereas Turkish users’ self-enhancement motivation was positively associated with their likelihood of posting relationship updates. This research is the first to examine actual Facebook status updates in relation to cultural differences in motivations.