Studying the Relationship between Types of Self in Self-Disclosure of Youths in Social Networks: A Case Study of Cloob.com

The research problem of this paper is how 'Cloob' social network users, among types of selves, introduce and disclose themselves in it. The theoretical foundation of this research has studied scholar's ideas in the fields of symbolic interaction, self, and self-presentation. The statistical population consists of all young active users of 'cloob.com.' Its sampling procedure was convenience sampling, and it did with 370 persons. The research method is the online survey, and the main data collection tool is a questionnaire that its validity and reliability confirmed by doing a pretest. In addition to the questionnaire, observation of user's profiles used as a second data collection tool. For empirical judgment, the paper has used descriptive and inferential statistical tests. The research findings show that users present themselves as successful, elite, positive and skillful persons and rarely introduce themselves as irreligious and as opposition to the political system. Explanatory findings reveal that there is a significant difference between gender and the way of self-disclosure. Observation of user's profiles also showed that they try to present themselves as positive, idealist and perfectionist, which can be far from reality and according to Goffman, they play roles somehow.