Strategic use of video face filter types: Influence of audience, gender, and culture

Video face filters play an increasingly important role in digitally mediated self-presentation for people around the world. We interviewed young adult video filter users from China, India, South Korea, Spain, and the United States, asking what video filters they use, who they use filters with, and how. Participants demonstrated sensitivity to public versus private spheres when determining what filter type was appropriate for particular audiences. Those audiences included the self-only, in what we call the “dressing room,” extending Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor for self-presentation. We further identify a tendency for the women and East Asians we interviewed to be more attuned to different kinds of audiences, as well as East-West differences in acceptance of beauty filter enhancement. Implications for video filter research are discussed.