The Social, Less Social and the Fecund Aspects of Social Networking Sites

This work attempts to highlight the unique characteristics of SNS and explore some of the social externalities of SNS and how these sites are influencing the dynamics of social networking and everyday communication practices. Social networking sites (SNS) have been with us for a few years. Throughout this time, these sites have evolved and are having significant social implications especially, amongst young people. This work analyses these application against social and media theory, mainly in the field of identity, self-exploration, exhibitionist behaviour, network effects and community. While the main data gathering is based on analysis of secondary data, the major issues and conclusions are based on in-depth interviews and a validation workshop with experts in the field. Findings suggest that SNS provide more room for self-expression, another means for socializing, as well as innovative ways of creating and maintaining personal networks. However, these sites are also changing the dynamics of privacy, mainly as a result of public disclosure of social ties and the different levels of play with identity and self-exploration. This work also observes how the technical affordances (for instance, status update on Facebook) of these sites are reinforcing different levels of technology addiction and exhibitionist behavior. Based on these results, this study proposes further analysis on whether personal networks can be used as a proxy to study sense of community. This work will be based on a triagulation of personal network analysis and an anlaysis of psychological sense of community index through interviews based on the respondent's personal offline, online and mobile networks.

CACHIA Romina; 

2009-07-15

European Cooperation in Science and Technology - COST

JRC51481

http://miha2.ef.uni-lj.si/cost298/gbc2009-proceedings/papers/P209.pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC51481,