Online Self-Presentation and Impression Management (SPIM) among Malaysian Tertiary Level Students on Facebook HUSNITA HABSAH YON (Universiti Putra Malaysia - husnita@gmail.com) TAN KIM HUA (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - kimmy@ukm.edu.my) SAADIYAH DARUS (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - adi@ukm.edu.my) ABSTRACT Facebook is the most visited social network site in Malaysia and is popularly used by Malaysian tertiary level students. Its increasing popularity has led to the rise of issues highlighting the effects of social media on today’s youths. Inappropriate use of the site could negatively affect youths, society, and the nation as a whole. Context collapse, undefined audience, and limited physical cues within “nonymous 1 ” environment pose challenges to Facebook users. Despite the applications afforded by Facebook such as photos, videos, and audios, interpretation of self- presentation by the audience mostly relies on the textual content. Just as in face-to-face communication where individuals are being judged by their physical attributes and speech, Facebook users are being assessed through their writing and language. Thus, this research seeks to investigate how tertiary level students present themselves online by emphasising on language as a tool for self-presentation and impression management (SPIM). The question of how language is employed as a tool of SPIM was taken up through content analysis of 441 Facebook status updates supported by a linguistic software programme – LIWC. The analyses revealed linguistic aspects of which interpretations of SPIM are manifested in the messages. Expressive and assertive speech acts followed by positive emotion words were primarily used, suggesting that students strategically used emotions as a means of SPIM. The findings demonstrate how youths express themselves in social media which could address implications for online self- presentation. The findings also add an important dimension to the existing theory and research in language and computer-mediated communication. Keywords 1 the opposite of “anonymous”