Profile picture usage in social media as a representation of transgender people's identity and gender expression

To discover how transgender people use social media tools for their gender expression, the profile picture and presence of pronouns in the biographies of 300 profiles from the social media platform Twitter were analyzed. Using Chi-square analysis, no statistical differences are found between the transgender and the comparison group in terms of the likelihood of using a photo of oneself, but there is a difference between the groups in the use of photos that do not depict the account user. Specifically, transgender people are more likely to use representative illustrations, while people in the comparison group tend to use more photos of other people or even not change the default picture. The two groups use pronouns in their biographies in different ways. Transgender people use them in an explicit manner, and people in the comparison group use them in an implicit manner. Both findings point to the idea that transgender people seek to strike a balance between an idealized and an authentic representation of themselves on social media.