Thesis Title: Subtitle

Contribution to Knowledge: The Big Picture

This research has also contributed to broadening our understanding of Facebook. This research has focused on understanding how adults conceptualise Facebook. To date there has been limited research that has explored adult’s understandings of Facebook outside of institutional frameworks such as universities and workplaces. Creating a cross- national sample, that also targeted participants outside of typically studied populations, further expands our understanding of how users who have not grown up with Facebook as part of their media ecology might understand Facebook’s role in their lives. The focus on instrumentality that was articulated by the participants is perhaps indicative of the broader and more diverse sample. As adults are at a qualitatively different stage in their self- development, using Facebook to articulate their selves was not an immediate concern.

Thus, some of the findings of this research particularly with regards to self-presentation and identity work are not congruent with other research most likely due the age of the sample. For example Papacharissi (2011: 51) emphasises that Facebook offers its users a “performative palette” through which they can represent their selves. Despite the fact that much research has emphasised Facebook’s capacities for performativity (Lui 2008; Donath and boyd 2004) these aspects were not emphasised by participants who chose to tell me about the seemingly instrumental and practical roles Facebook played in their every day life, such as enabling them to effectively communicate and coordinate their social schedule. This difference in emphasis suggests that adults’ patterns of use that are distinct from those of young adults and teenagers and reflect their position in the life
course. The adults who took part in this research did not feel the need to explore their self- identity amongst others, while the literature tells us that for teenagers and younger adults, this project is a more central concern, as they are attempting to establish an identity that is often geographical and temporally distinct from the family unit. Thus, understanding how adults understand and conceptualise their use of Facebook represents a focus that is distinct from the previous literature. It is unsurprising then that adults’ motivations for Facebook use centre on keeping up-to-date with the lives of their friends and family. The empirical data generated in this research demonstrates that adults’ use of Facebook is different to that of young people. These differences in use require a shift in theoretical focus, as the tools provided by previous research are not fully able to address these discrepancies.

As part of understanding the data generated from this research, I have also sought to re- emphasis the concept of ‘space’ as central to understanding Facebook. As stated in Chapter 3, a critical realist ontology was central to this effort. That is, the research assumed that there are generative mechanisms, often beyond the scope of our immediate perception. Critical realism allows for the creation of theories and concepts that go beyond what is possible from strict inductive or deductive reasoning and emphasises creativity and reinterpretation in the process of analysis. The use of theorists of urban space and the built environment – such as de Certeau (1984) and Lefebvre (1991) – are characteristic of a critical realist approach that emphasises analysing phenomena through new frames of meaning, in order to make connections between generative mechanisms and their observed effects. Using theory from urban sociology and applying it to Facebook is one that illuminates the generative mechanisms that shape Facebook, and users’ experience on Facebook.

This research has aimed to generate descriptive theory about Facebook. Descriptive theory as advanced by Danermark et al. (2002) is broadly linked to an explanatory social science. Descriptive theories attempt to identify and describe the properties and structures associated with a social phenomenon. Broadly, as it relates to critical realism, Sayer (1992) suggests that there are two types of descriptive theories; ordering frameworks and theory as conceptualisation. Ordering frameworks often produce formalised models.

However, in keeping with the critical realist approach of this research I have focused on producing conceptualised knowledge. The concepts from which theory is built gives a
framework through which to talk about and understand various, “qualitative properties, structures and mechanisms” of social phenomena (Danermark et al. 2002: 120).

While the idea that SNS are spaces is not new, emphasising the qualities and production of this space represent a focus that is different from previous research. Much research follows from boyd’s (2011) argument that SNS are a type of networked public, and the idea that spaces such as Facebook are public continues to be produced in other related research. Examining what type of space Facebook is as a central question of this research, I have been able to interrogate the assumption that SNS are a type of public. As a result, I have identified Facebook as a reflexive reimagining of the pre-modern village square. This re-emphasises the importance of place and space as social constituted but objectively bound. This approach reflects the critical realist grounding of this thesis, which is primarily concerned with a focus on mechanisms, not events. In this case, the event is what people do on Facebook, or how they use it. The mechanism is Facebook itself.