Thesis Title: Subtitle

Some definitions

To position this thesis clearly within existing literature, this section defines some frequently used terms. This thesis employs several terms which are often used in common parlance, although they still need to be defined for analytical clarity.
Firstly, this thesis uses the term ‘social networking sites’ (SNS) when referring to Facebook and other similar sites; not ‘social media’. While these terms are related and often used interchangeably in everyday conversation, for the purposes of this thesis, they will be understood as two different terms referring to two different, but related phenomena. Boyd and Ellison’s (2007) article is widely regarded as the authoritative definition of social networking sites, which they term social network sites, as the word ‘networking’ implies the creation of new connections even though most social network sites are concerned with the maintenance of existing ties. Despite boyd and Ellison’s (2007) many good reasons for using network as opposed to networking, networking appears to have become the more commonly used and understood term both in scholarship and conversation. As such, this thesis will use the term ‘social networking sites’ not ‘social network sites’ when referring to technologies that fit these typologies. In my definition of SNS I have followed boyd and Ellison (2007:11) who describe SNS as
web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.
This definition clearly separates SNS like Facebook and Twitter from other forms of social media like YouTube or instant messaging services like MSN as neither of these have all three elements which boyd and Ellison identify as being unique to SNS. Despite some
conjecture from Beer (2008) that boyd and Ellison’s definition is too broad and lacks nuance, it has still been generally adopted within the field.
Recently Ellison and boyd (2013) have updated their definition of SNS to reflect the changing technoscape. They acknowledge that their definition of SNS has been complicated by the proliferation of this technology across a variety of platforms. Now listing friends and contacts has spread across media-sharing websites, gaming websites (such as Steam) and locative media like Foursquare. The technological affordances of SNS are no longer as distinct as they used to be.
Boyd and Ellison (2013: np) now define SNS as:

“A social network site is a networked communication platform in which participants

1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-level data; 2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site.”
This definition is newly focused on the production of user-supplied content in an attempt to differentiate it from other sites, which have the features of an SNS, but without the content. However, the assumption that there is an inherently publicness to SNS is still present. This updated definition has not yet supplanted the former, with the 2008 definition still being the most widely cited.
This thesis also uses the terms, architecture, space and place in specific ways. The ways in which these terms are used in this thesis are defined below:
Architecture
For the purposes of this thesis architecture is defined, as per the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as, “Construction or structure generally; both abstract and concrete” (2014: np).
With particular reference to computers and computing systems the OED (2014: np) defines architecture as, “The conceptual structure and overall logical organization of a computer or computer-based system from the point of view of its use or design; a particular realization of this.”


Place
Place, as it is used in this theses refers to both physical and non-physical places like Facebook. While place has generally been part of the corporeal realm, the nature of the internet challenges the assumption that places can only be found offline. Since the early days of the internet spatial language, which brings to mind an arrangement of place has been used to describe the internet. Early work, such as Rheingold (2000) reflect this understand of the internet as a place structured by its architecture.


Space
Space is the social manifestation of physical places, which are, in part, shaped by their architecture (de Certeau 1984; Lofland 1998). It is what people do in places that gives them meaning, and defines their use. Space is defined by the types of relationships it contains (Lofland 1998).


Social Space
The use of the term social space is this thesis follows from Lefebvre (1991: 26) who defines social space in the following way,
"(Social) space is a (social) product [...] the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action [...] in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.”