In 「The Theory of the Leisure Class」published in 1899, Veblen pointed out that the leisure class spent time and money for conspicuous leisure activities and consumptions to show off their wealth and, at the same time, attain and maintain the fame....
In 「The Theory of the Leisure Class」published in 1899, Veblen pointed out that the leisure class spent time and money for conspicuous leisure activities and consumptions to show off their wealth and, at the same time, attain and maintain the fame. Also, Simmel interpreted the trend in the classes of social status as activities for 'distinction' between the classes, and Bourdieu explained it as a cultural taste of an individual and the tendency of preference, using the notion of Habitus. In this way, the conspicuousness was, in the first place, related to excessive consumption driven by the distinguishing activities from the others, and it was defined as a negative notion by many studies. This study investigated whether self-assertion tendency observed as a general psychological mechanism in any societies and any classes had a positive impact on information sharing activities and reliability of the information in the space of SNS. Accordingly, it was performed empirical analysis to find the effect of the self-assertion tendency on the information sharing activities and the reliability of the information in the space of SNS and compared by the types of SNS categorized as open- and closed- types to obtain significant results.
Currently, the penetration rate of smart devices in the country reached over 90%, and the members of the SNS were explosively increased in recent years with the spread of the mobile devices like smart phones. A 'connection', a mutual form of communications in the SNS, meant network expansion through connections between individuals, an individual and a group, and groups. It did not mean just simply expanding the network, but social interactions between the connected networks were occurred in the space. Therefore, it indicated that the initial motive for using SNS was the self-assertion tendency, the general mentalities of humans, to be considered as a better person by the others.
The online survey was performed to collect the data for the empirical analysis; total 251 adults from the twenties to the fifties who used the SNS until a recent date participated in this survey. The target SNS was chosen from the most frequently used services in the country and it was categorized as open- and closed- types; the services of the open-type SNS were Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Blog and the closed-type SNS were Kakao Story, Naver Band, Cafe, and Minihompy. As the result of the analysis, the effect of self-assertion tendency on the information sharing activities and the reliability of the information was statistically significant both in the open- and closed- types of SNS groups. In the verification analysis for the mediation effect of the information sharing activities in the relations between the self-assertion tendency and the reliability of the information, the open-type SNS group had a partial mediating effect and the closed-type SNS group had a full meditating effect; thus, it inferred that the mediating effect of the information sharing activities was greater in the closed-type SNS group.
This study was meaningful to interpret the self-assertion, which was negatively considered one of the human's general psychological mechanisms to show off oneself to the others in many studies, as a positive factor to have an impact on the information sharing activities and the reliability of the information; and it evaluated the relations between the psychological mechanism of an individual and the types of SNS in comparison of the effect of SNS categorized by the open- and the closed- types. Furthermore, the academic contribution of this study was to expand the study area regarding the SNS with relation to the psychological mechanism of an individual, suggesting the self-assertion tendency and the information sharing activities as the factors influencing on the reliability of the information in the space of SNS.