Intrapersonal Communication in the Perspective of WeChat’s Circle of Friends Self-presentation Analysis

School of International, Hebei University, Qiyi East Road, Baoding, China

^* Corresponding author: 20202501015@stumail.hbu.cn

Abstract

In the mobile Internet era, social media as a medium based on virtual platforms has dramatically changed the form of people's social interaction. the Circle of Friends, as an essential social module in the most used instant messaging software, carries the function of users' self-presentation and communication and creates an online social platform for WeChat users that is not only in line with the actual social relations but also relies on the virtual platform. The expression of the "self" relies on the regulation of the "guest me" to the real reflection of the "master me", and the online socialization platform provided by WeChat's Friend Circle encourages users to express their own emotions, and the same time, it also encourages users to express their emotions. The online social platform provided by the WeChat Friendship Circle encourages users to express their own emotions and provides users with social feedback with personal cognitive significance due to its social interaction method that is both dependent on the virtual network environment and rooted in real social relationships. Through the comparison of different sharing contents and personal expression forms, users can obtain more accurate psychological expectations of social feedback and a form of self-presentation that is more in line with their personal psychological needs, to realize their needs for a good social experience and the regulation and development of self-expression within the social media platform. This paper takes the social media context provided by WeChat's Circle of Friends as the entry point, starts from the perspective of intra-personal communication, disassembles the process of self-perception and presentation, the two comparative cognitive methods of "vertical" and "horizontal" are used to categorize the process of WeChat users' self-recognition on the platform of the Circle of Friends and the regulation of self-expression in the online environment, and to discuss the situation of users' self-representation in the online social environment of the Circle of Friends.