Thesis Title: Subtitle

Identifying Parochial Spaces Online

Undoubtedly, the internet has spatial properties and is commonly spoken about in spatial terms. Regarding social networking sites like Facebook, scholars like boyd (2011) have argued that the structural and spatial qualities of SNS mean that previous distinctions like public and private become meaningless. Instead, this lack of dichotomy means there is a

distinct need for tools that allow us to examine online spaces with more nuance and differentiation. Thinking of online space in terms of public/private invariably means that scholars resort to awkward terms like semi-public in an attempt to describe the overlapping spheres that exist online. The lack of clarity regarding the use of spatial terms when discussing Facebook limits the ways we can theorise these places and their relationship to their users. Looking beyond the confines of technology studies and into sociological theory, particularly theories of space provided by urban sociology, affords many tools to help think about how spaces are formed, who they are formed by, and for which purposes they are formed.

Facebook, in its broadest configuration contains many different kinds of spaces. Like the city described by Lofland (1998) it is possible to identify numerous type of social configurations on Facebook. Analogies include the tribe, the village, and the small town (Lofland 1998). Tribes, villages, small towns and cities are differentiated the types of social space they contain. Lofland (1998) argues that the former are characterised by the dominance of private and parochial space, while the city, although it contains both private and parochial space, is not limited to just those types of spaces because a city also contains the public realm. This is very similar to Facebook, which contains some spaces that are inherently and purposefully public, like pages used to promote a brand, product, cause or band. The purpose of these pages is to capture a diverse audience, but also to give people the opportunity to publicly engage with each other as well as the owner of the page. Similarly, Facebook also contains private spaces; the instant messaging function of Facebook allows people to communicate with each other away from the gaze of others.

Nonetheless, for the most part, Facebook is a parochial space. That is, as Lofland (1998: 19) argues, it is characterised, “by a sense of commonality among acquaintances and neighbours who are involved in interpersonal networks that are located within ‘communities’.” Theorising the totality of space provided by Facebook is beyond the scope of this thesis, although it presents an interesting area of future inquiry. Therefore, this thesis has focused on investigating users personal Facebook pages as a social space as these pages represent the locus on social interaction for the uses in this study.

Facebook, the way most people use it, seems to sit very comfortably within the first portion of Lofland’s definition of a parochial space. Facebook, as used by participants, exhibits a sense of commonality between users. However, this commonality is not the place-based corporeal type identified by Lofland. Facebook as a parochial space is created through

connections with Facebook creating a place in which these connections can manifest. Facebook is not an intrinsically parochial space like the communities identified by Lofland. There are many ways that Facebook could be configured. Facebook’s history and initial design meant that from the beginning users where encouraged to use Facebook to mimic their offline connections. Facebook provides a place for those detached to be reassembled anew on Facebook. This process means that Facebook has become a space in and of itself. The way offline connections are clustered on Facebook, an untidy mess of friends, family, workmates and acquaintances means Facebook has become its own parochial space. It has simply become its own community in which interpersonal relationships are located.

The characteristics of this parochial space were the primary focus of this research. Lofland lists three different types of settlements, which she defines as parochial: the tribe, pre- modern village and the small town. Lofland (1998) argues that the characteristics of the tribe, village and small town are that they are homogenous and intimate. These examples exist on a continuum, with a tribe being the most homogenous and intimate of the three.

As demonstrated in Chapter 6, the Facebook experienced by the participants in this research definitely experienced Facebook’s homogenous or as I termed them homophilic aspects. Some participants were uncomfortable about the extent to which Facebook allowed them to live in their own world. Participants also mentioned the intimate social hum of Facebook as one of its most compelling aspects, and acknowledge that Facebook served as a site of gossips and information about their friends, family and acquaintances. Of these parochial spaces Facebook, I argue, has most in common with a village. It is too small and diffuse for the most part to be called a tribe, therefore it is either a village or small town. The architecture of Facebook, as identified in Chapter Four generates a social hum via that news feed which reports users’ statuses, likes, and other actions. This constant flow of news creates a sense of constant social activity and pseudo-intimacy born out of the continuous flow of personal information. This flow of intimacies has more in common with a pre-modern village than a small town – which is more dispersed than immediate. However, unlike the village, Facebook is reflexive and voluntary. In the pre- modern village participation was not optional as inhabitants relied on each other practically. Unless one was a hermit (a socially sanctioned position), it was difficult or nigh impossible to avoid mundane social interactions. In contrast, what Facebook offers is incidental constant social proximity of habitation via the news feed, which fosters intimate knowledge of others. This allows users to get a sense of the ebb and flow of their social
world and to keep abreast of what it going on. To continue the metaphor, the Newsfeed represents the village square, a places where people can go to find out what is happening with little effort. However, unlike the village where engagement is compulsory, Facebook users can come and go from the square without being seen, noticed or put upon.

Lofland’s (1998) typology of social spaces enabled me to identify what type of space Facebook might be. However, de Certeau provided further insight into how this space was constructed. Facebook, despite the fact that it is non-corporeal, abstract and dis- embedded does have objectively present architectural features that shape users’ experience of Facebook. Within these limits users have the ability to shape their own social space in accordance with and sometimes resistant to Facebook’s architectural features. By examining how users used Facebook, who they included and excluded and how they spoke about the effect Facebook had on their friendships and their presentation of self were all crucial in examining how they ‘walked the city’, that is, how they constructed their own experience of Facebook within the options available to them. In this research I found that participants liked to construct Facebook as a parochial space. This meant that they were careful, and sometimes reticent about the amount of self presentation they engaged with on Facebook. As Facebook contained people who were known to them, this meant that they had to navigate the possibly of reputational damage when presenting their self of Facebook.

More broadly, producing Facebook as a reflexively re-imagined village square provides a place where users can go to experience the incidental social contact that used to be characteristic of face-to-face communities like the pre-modern village. Incidental social contact is possible on Facebook, because its architecture provide a consistent structure that facilitates these interactions regardless of geography and mobility. Facebook’s non- corporeal structure provides it with a resilience that allows it survive and thrive in the fast- paced context of late modernity, even though it is undoubted a product of these circumstances. Without the technological advances that produce many of the conditions of late modernity Facebook would not be needed, nor would it be possible. Thus, Facebook provides the affordance to its user to reimagine post-modern village square using the tools of late modernity, that many argue disrupted these parochial forms of community.