The selfie of courage on Instagram: The moderating role of anonymity in the relationship between political use and courage

Does the use of political social networks require courage? Social networks empower political participation and activism by facilitating new forms of communication, collaboration, rapid sharing and remote access to information. Previous studies have addressed the negative effects of social network anonymity, such as cyberbullying, or its positive effects, such as its contribution to moral courage, but the relationship between courage and political use has been ignored. This study examines the relationship between courage and political use on social networks and the moderating role of anonymity based on profile photo privacy on Instagram. Moreover, unlike previous studies that measured the perception of anonymity as self-report, a new method based on the real profile photo anonymity of the Instagram user was used. The time spent on Instagram was obtained via the platform data. Data collection was conducted through an online survey with 306 undergraduate students in Turkey. Our findings show that courage on Instagram is strongly positively associated with political use and that anonymity is a significant moderator of this relationship. There was a stronger relationship between Instagram courage and political Instagram use for users who used their own photo as their profile photo, while it was weaker for users who used their photos of friends as their profile photo. However, this relationship was irrelevant for users who did not use any photo on their profile. Overall, the findings suggest that courage is important in the use of social networks for political purposes, but users may still prefer anonymity to protect themselves from any kind of pressure and surveillance.