Date: April 2023

Title: Impacts of social media content exposure on users’ perceived career possibilities and capabilities: A possible selves theory lens

Advisors:

• Assistant Professor Julie Hui

• Assistant Professor Nazanin Andalibi

Overview: Possible selves are ideas of what people may become, would like to become, and avoid becoming. The possible selves theory, developed by Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius in 1986, has recognized entertainment media as one of many factors that can affect people’s ideas of what they may or may not become by providing models, images, and symbols of possible futures. Given the large shift to new and digital media, research has also acknowledged the role social media may have in providing models, images, and symbols for possible selves with particular focus on academic, professional, and work-related aspirations. To expand conversations on social media’s impact on career possible selves, I proposed an interview study to investigate how the social media content that users are exposed to in their everyday social media use contributes to their career aspirations through the lens of possible selves.

Date: December 2023

Title: Social Media as a Lens into Careers During a Changing World of Work: An Application of the Possible Selves Theory

Committee:

• Assistant Professor Julie Hui, chair

• Assistant Professor Oliver Haimson

• Professor Nicole Ellison

Overview: As the world of work continually shifts, observing others’ job experiences on social media may be useful for understanding the landscape of work and making sense of one’s own career trajectory. My pre-candidacy project applies the possible selves theory to understand how social media might affect people’s career-related and future-oriented expectations, hopes, and fears. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 social media users with different career trajectories, and found that social media can expose people to a range of career paths and support them in developing informed career intentions, often through online social comparison. Through an affordances approach, findings also indicate that the social media affordances of visibility and persistence were particularly relevant in developing and assessing possible selves in the career context and were sometimes strategically managed through leveraging platform algorithms. This project provides empirical contributions to the possible selves theory in the digital age and highlights the significance of social media affordances in developing and assessing possible selves. This milestone was developed into a research paper, published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Human-Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687053

Date: August 2024

Title: How Browsing User-Generated Social Media Content Shapes Emerging Adults’ Career Awareness and Aspirations

Committee:

• Assistant Professor Juiie Hui, chair

• Assistant Professor Oliver Haimson

• Assistant Professor Hang Lu

Overview: Careers encompass a large portion of our lives from school to jobs to retirement. Emerging adulthood, ages 18 to 25, is a significant developmental period marked with career exploration. This is particularly relevant in the US where ideas of the American dream and individualism persist, perpetuating career success as a societal value and source of personal fulfillment. Social media platforms are environments where people may discuss their perceptions and experiences related to these career ideals which can contribute to broader societal narratives and expectations of the working world. These posts are known as user-generated content–online material that provides insights into everyday social media users’ thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Much research has explored more intentional use of social media platforms to aid their career development, such as networking, acquiring job-related information or support, and finding potential job opportunities which can help emerging adults during this period of personal and professional growth. However, less is known about how everyday browsing of user-generated content on social media may contribute to emerging adults’ career aspirations despite social media’s ubiquity in emerging adults’ media use and the potential for social media to offer vast career-related perspectives and information.

My field preliminary paper explores this phenomenon by synthesizing literature from sociology, psychology, communication and media, computer-supported cooperative work, and human-computer interaction. This field prelim describes how user-generated content on social media may affect emerging adults’ career aspirations through a complex interaction between social and personal factors. One’s family, educational institutions, and media can play a significant role in how emerging adults’ career aspirations form, and these factors may affirm or contest what emerging adults encounter on social media platforms. Moreover, research concerned with social media use broadly highlights the effects that browsing social media content may have on individual experiences such as self-evaluation and social comparison, which can affect what emerging adults aspire toward (or against) and may incentivize what careers emerging adults see themselves in.

I end my field prelim with a longitudinal interview study proposal with emerging adults that can advance empirical knowledge on social media’s role in their career aspirations as they experience a critical developmental period in their lives.

I am currently working on my dissertation!

Title: Career Messages on Social Media and their Effects on Career Development during Young Adulthood

Committee:

• Associate Professor Julie Hui, chair

• Associate Professor Oliver Haimson

• Associate Professor Hang Lu

• Assistant Professor Michael Humphrey, Johnson County Community College

Abstract: Career messages are significant takeaways or themes that people derive from occupational information and give meaning to. Career messages can inform one’s career trajectory and are disseminated by various sources including parents, peers, and media. Young adulthood (ages 18 to 25) is a developmental period where career messages may be most impactful as young adults explore their identity, make sense of their environments, and are tasked with making decisions that can shape their future careers, such as if and where to attend college. Social media platforms are increasingly integral to the everyday lives of young people and given the seemingly endless scroll of social media content, young adults might derive career messages from social media that shape their understanding of the working world and development of career aspirations. Thus, my dissertation takes a multi-method approach to investigate 1) what career messages young adults might be exposed to on social media, 2) how such messages might affect young adults’ career development, and 3) how online career messages compare to those from other influential information sources.

Ongoing work: My dissertation is comprised of three studies. I am currently conducting the first study, a qualitative content analysis of short-form videos on TikTok, to examine what career messages young adults might encounter as they scroll through social media. This study aims to uncover the types of messages people share surrounding careers, such as motivational or inspirational content or informational and prescriptive messages. I also explore how these messages are communicated on social media by investigating the visual and rhetorical strategies that people employ in their videos, such as special effects, music, or humor, as a way to convey different work experiences or career trajectories.