Thesis Title: Subtitle

Observation

In order to contextualise participants’ interview accounts, I also asked them if I could ‘friend’ them on Facebook in order to observe their visible Facebook activity. This allowed me to observe Facebook interaction ‘in situ’ and note participants’ posting patterns and interactions over time. Due to the way in which the sample was constructed, some participants were also friends with each other (and my research account) on Facebook.

This meant I was able to observe interaction between parties over time. Observation included collecting data from status updates and comments made on other participants’ status updates. Gathering naturally occurring data can provide insight into the construction of meaning and identities, which is important in assessing question of the self as posed by in this research (Mann and Stewart 2000; Barker 2008). Using observational methods to collect data is consistent with the previously stated emphasis on depth, complexity and multi-dimensionality of data. From a more pragmatic perspective, non-participant observation is the best way of collecting data to investigate the self presented on Facebook, and whether this is congruent with participants’ accounts. This data is not available in any other form. While I could have asked participants to recount their
experiences to me, situational dynamics can never be fully recounted (Manson 2006). Non-participant observation retains the form, content and chronology of the data as well at capturing the interactional features of Facebook, i.e. conversations playing out in public in response to a status update. Comments and actions of Facebook are also time-stamped allowing further analysis of the interactional order. This observational data gleaned from Facebook has a temporal element in addition to the more obvious collaborative, relational and self-representational aspects.

Characteristics of the Sample

In total from the 155 responses to the questionnaire 39 agreed to be contacted for an interview and 116 declined. For the 39 that agreed to be contacted 9 either did not respond to follow up emails, did not turn up for interviews or where unable to finalise a convenient interview time. The basic demographic characteristics for the structured questionnaire and interview (which also included a period of observation) are presented below.