Being, Knowing, and Being Known on the Facebook

Being, Knowing, and Being Known on the Facebook

Jenny Ryan and Sarah Jeffrey

Qualitative Research Methods - Professor Rachel Russell

Introduction

As a relatively new medium of social interaction, people are still adjusting and reacting to the Facebook . During the past two years, the site's popularity has exploded, and its existence is now universally recognized by college students across the nation. The Facebook was originally designed as a social-networking website in which college students could post information about themselves and keep track of their friends. It has since expanded to include photo albums, a news feed, an events section, status updates, and many other features. One thing is certain: Facebook has become a well-known facet of the social lives of American college students. Most college students have at one point had a Facebook account. Since it has become part of the lives of so many, it is important to look at the ways in which the Facebook is shaping the projected and perceived identities of its users. Furthermore, Facebook also impacts cultural notions of public and private in ways that require further exploration.

Disjointed from time and space, social interaction in the virtual realm lacks certain physical markers and meanings by which we would otherwise assess one another. In the absence of such categorical attributes, we create new hierarchies of meaning. These meanings are in part created through experiences with what Jacques Lacan (1977) coined "the gaze", where agency is attributed to the object through the process of being seen by a subject. What does it mean to be the subject or the object of the public gaze? In what ways do Facebook users project their ideal ego, and what are the perceived effects? We will be looking at the range of responses generated by our participants to each of these lines of questioning.

There is a range of opinions regarding the Facebook- from "conspiracy theorists" thinking that it is a medium through which the government can keep tabs on us, to activists who think that using Facebook as a method of organizing people can help save the world, to any number of people who check Facebook for photos capturing their antics at weekend parties. There are people who view it merely as something fun and people who take it quite seriously. As Facebook users ourselves, we have contemplated some of the same questions as our interviewees and find the topic to be personally interesting and theoretically compelling.

Conceptual Framework

As Facebook users, we entered into the study with a lot of ideas of our own. We felt that it would be best to acknowledge our own experiences with and thoughts about the Facebook in addition to those of our participants, because it was our own experiences that inspired us to do the study in the first place.

Sarah:

The summer before entering Wesleyan, I was ardently against Facebook. I had recently deactivated my AOL Instant Messenger account because I thought that online communication was artificial (and therefore not worth my time) and assumed that Facebook would feel the same way to me. In early August I received notification from Wesleyan of who my roommate would be and was very curious to learn more about her, so I logged onto my stepsister's Facebook account to scope her out. Over the course of messaging my roommate my stepsisters managed to convince me that having a Facebook account was essential if I wanted to "be anyone" at college.

Time passed and now I have been using Facebook for about a year and a half. I think that I probably use it less than the average person, but it is still a part of my life. I go onto the site once every 2-3 days or whenever I get a friend/event/group request. When I am on the site, I basically read the news feed and check out anything that seems exciting. I rarely update my own profile and don't use the "wall" function too often (more often than not I choose to call the person). I still find online communications to be a bit artificial, but I recognize that Facebook can be useful and fun and so I remain a member.

Going into this study I assumed that people who self-selected as high usage Facebookers would take it way too seriously and would probably not have much of a social life outside of the Facebook. I was positively surprised by the wide range of personalities and stories that we encountered. The study has really made me think about the Facebook in new ways and has been a wonderful experience overall.

Jenny:

My own engagement with the Facebook has led me to ponder many of the experiences discussed throughout these interviews. Most pertinent to my interest is the language evoked by the topic of the Facebook, and the myriad ways in which it visibly and invisibly affects gossip. With the advent of social technologies come new modes of understanding what is public and what is private. Recently, I came across the following post on a Wesleyan blog:

I think Facebook has taken the mystery and excitement out of romantic social interaction, especially at small schools. it allows us to investigate more than just the person but his/her friends. it perpetuates cliches and exclusive social circles. it perpetuates perceived assumptions. it makes you dislike them on false grounds b/c you see who they socialize with. the mystery is gone. i only feel free on other college campuses. i don't hook up here. i only watch. ...its been long awhile since i cared.

The poster describes the way in which the Facebook "perpetuates perceived assumptions," rendering the social world into neat textual and visual schematics by which ones friends, interests, romances, and past-times are formally presented and thus demystified. Particularly interesting to me is that, in this perspective, the Facebook itself is granted agency over the consumption and creation of social knowledge. Replies to this post encouraged the original poster to quit the Facebook. "It's okay to quit," someone writes, "I did it and never looked back." The Facebook, indeed, seems to possess a power and will of its own, which must be alternately resisted or succumbed to.

Another point of interest is the incongruence I've noticed between upperclassmen, who were freshmen and sophomores already when the Facebook became popular, and underclassmen, many of whom were aware of the Facebook but not allowed access to it until they were officially recognized as students at Wesleyan. I have noticed that underclassmen seem to describe experiences in which they felt social pressure to join the Facebook as a way of affirming their identities as Wesleyan students. Upperclassmen alternately seem to view Facebook interactions as extensions of real-life relationships, and expressed the lack of importance with which they viewed this particular medium with regard to their self and group identities. This leads me to wonder how, exactly, the Facebook serves to consolidate one's perceived personal identity and group affiliation.

One of our participants, Maria, noted that only when Facebook developed a feature for uploading a limitless number of photos to one's profile did the site's popularity truly explode. I recall the very night this feature made its debut, and the excited phone call I received from a friend. "Facebook is going to be so much more creepy ," she said, "...and addictive." That entire night, my friend sat at her computer, uploading her photo albums to the site and "tagging " her friends. By further fusing physical reality with virtual interaction, what had often been dubbed the "new Friendster" became instead an arena for a novel form of gratifying voyeuristic and narcissistic desires. In the weeks that followed, I recall conversations in which friends bemoaned their work ethic, attributing their astounding ability to procrastinate to the elusive and addictive power of the Facebook. However, the site's popularity continued to increase. Given that the Facebook is now a fact of life for most college students, we seek to explore the site's impact on perceptions of identity, social gossip, and new conceptualizations of what is public and what is private.

Research Methods

For our study we interviewed 6 participants. Since this is a pilot study, participants were recruited using convenience sampling. This technique was employed in order to ensure that a full range of opinions were included. We selected participants who we knew to have ranging opinions regarding the Facebook. Two of the participants self-selected after reading a flyer that was distributed to their psychology class. In the final analysis, names and other identifying information about the participants were changed. What follows is a brief "character sketch" of our participants:

Isabelle: A sophomore, Isabelle enjoys using the Facebook on a daily basis, and is relatively unconcerned with such matters as privacy and surveillance. She enjoys her Facebook use, often at the expense of her homework. Our interview was conducted online.

Albert : A senior, Albert quit the Facebook after having been a member for the first year and a half of the Facebook's development. He discussed at length the privacy issues he has with the Facebook, particularly government involvement. Not one to feel excluded, he is relatively unconcerned about the trend. He feels it is fine for others, but not a way he chooses to spend his time.

Carla: A sophomore, Carla eventually quit the Facebook with the help of Albert after finding herself increasingly frustrated with the amount of time spent on the site and the judgmental attitude and frustration she felt was induced by the medium. Recently, she lost her cell phone and rejoined the Facebook for the practical purpose of regaining lost phone numbers, immediately finding herself once again spending long periods of time on the site. Our interview was conducted online.

Jordan : A senior, Jordan has been a Facebook user since its conception at Wesleyan and thoroughly enjoys the medium as a way to catch up with old friends, to share affections, and to flirt. Pertinent to his position is that he views the Facebook as a pragmatic social tool that makes certain kinds of information simply faster to obtain and more accessible.

Ben : As founder of the Facebook group "400,000 Faces," Ben sees the Facebook as a useful and simple medium for amassing a large number of people together in a common cause. Though hesitant about his own personal divulgences on Facebook for fear of negative repercussions, he is optimistic about the potential of using Facebook to inform and organize the collective student body. Our interview was conducted online.

Maria: A sophomore, Maria was aware of the Facebook before it became available to high school students. Upon obtaining her Wesleyan e-mail address, she and other pre-frosh friends instantly joined the Facebook. She emphasized the way in which the Facebook plays a crucial role for many in creating a sense of a "Wesleyan identity".

The interviews were loosely based off of an interview guide to ensure that each participant covered the topics we were interested in. However, we made sure to be flexible with our line of questioning for each participant in order to tap into the topics that they were most passionate about. All of the participants were college-aged students, and thus either immersed in, or at least quite familiar with, Facebook culture. The questions were phrased in a way that encouraged open-ended responses and rich detail. Furthermore, the interviews were conducted both online (using AOL Instant Messenger) and in-person. We thought that doing some of the interviews online would give us insights into the differences between interactions in the virtual and person-to-person mediums. This was also a convenient way to interview one of our participants, who is a non-Wesleyan student. Furthermore, the anonymity and ability to self-edit in online conversations may be conducive to responding to interview questions in a format that is more comfortable and familiar to some of our respondents.

In Appendix 1, we offer our own Facebook profiles. They serve not only to familiarize the reader with Facebook (and let them get to know the researchers), but also allow the readers to familiarize themselves with some of the themes that the paper discusses.

Being on the Facebook

Relevant to deeper analysis is an understanding of what it means to be a Facebook member. In this section we will look at various features of the Facebook and how they impact the youth experience. American culture often tends to ascribe a great amount of control to the individual self. In the virtual realm, such physicals markers of appearance and socioeconomic status are rendered invisible, and those qualities that define the self are encapsulated primarily through textual representation. What is unique about Facebook is the way in which it visually represents social networks that are formed from one's physical interactions. In the very process of representation, the individual is frozen in time and space two-dimensionally. Such an experience necessitates the question "Is this an accurate representation of yourself?" This question consistently led to confusion for our interviewees:

Jordan: And that really boils down to the question of what defines the self? Is it how I view myself? Is it how I represent myself? How you interpret what you see about me? Is it the sum total of everyone's experience of me? So like, I guess I kind of have ontological issues with that question.

Rather than responding directly to the question, Jordan instead deflects it through a smokescreen of deconstructive questions. It would seem that social technologies beg one to examine the nature of the self and the ways in which we define our world through language. The Internet is an enormous textual landscape that seems infinite in its possibilities to make meaning, wreak havoc, create art, and communicate with other minds across the globe. This barrage of information can cause those engaged with the Internet to feel paralyzed by the seemingly vast possibilities for controlling the information they consume and share.

Desire to immerse themselves in this multitude of information and other motivations cause some of our participants to spend a lot of time of the site. This has affected them in various ways. Carla, a Facebook "quitter", recalls

...spending hours looking at people's profiles and writing on people's walls and being worried about people writing on my wall and how much they liked or cared about me based on this...you know I'd be on [x's] profile and I'd write him some message and he wouldn't reply to me, but I could see he'd been writing little messages to [y] all day and it would make me crazy! And I was like, "well, I do NOT need this in my life."

It seems that for Carla, hours spent on the Facebook fed her feelings of social paranoia and eroded her self-esteem. She recounts the frustration and anxiety she felt with the nature of seeing and being seen on the Facebook. Isabelle expressed a similar habit of extended Facebook use, but she viewed her Facebook activity as enjoyable and was unconcerned about the effect of habitual use: "I don't really find the experiences on Facebook to be representative of real life at all, but I still enjoy them and I will continue to waste 45 minutes to an hour online every day." Isabelle not only enjoys using the Facebook, she is proud of it as well. With this statement Isabelle also brought up an issue that was important to most of our participants; how "real" is the world of Facebook?

Jordan is aware of the allure of the Facebook, which "just makes that stuff...it makes a lot of stuff a lot faster." Information posted on the Facebook is public so that people can go on Facebook "to learn about, oh, where [someone is] from, who else they are friends with, this that and the other thing. And like, you know, what groups they represent," according to Jordan. In comparison to face-to-face interactions, Facebook interactions are much more public in nature. Jordan said that the information that is gathered through the Facebook could be gathered using other (more conventional) methods, such as word of mouth. With the advent of the Facebook, many have described finding out about new relationships without even observing or speaking about them. For some, like the anonymous blogger quoted previously, such forms of knowing detract from the intrigue of gossip, rendering such gossip easily consumed with the click of a mouse.

Many of our participants commented on the differences between online/Facebook interactions. Maria said, "I think there's almost no scenario in which [Facebook interactions are] more important than real life." Many other participants felt the same way; nobody equated Facebook interactions as equivalent to real life interactions in importance or sincerity. Albert, who didn't react strongly to most questions, responded "oh no, certainly not!" when asked if he uses any online communities that involve virtually interacting with other people. He justified this by explaining that "its not a very subtle medium...one can only write text which is not nearly as expressive as like talking to someone in person". While all participants believed that Facebook interactions are different from interactions that occur in person, many pointed out the particular utilities and pleasures offered by this medium.

For example, some people use it to promote causes that are important to them. In order to gauge how Facebook is used for activist purposes, we interviewed the founder of the Facebook group "400,000 Faces", which seeks to promote public awareness of the genocide in Darfur through accumulating 400,000 Facebook group members. A wide critique of these kinds of groups is that little is actually accomplished: one can consider herself an "activist" simply by clicking a button to join a group. This perspective was exhibited by Isabelle:

Isabelle: The only time that people really get devoted to a cause on Facebook is when it's a stupid, useless thing that barely affects their life. If everyone in the 400,000 faces group volunteered to do awareness work for Sudan that would be one thing, but joining the Facebook group does not make you an activist.

Ben, the founder of the group, responded to this critique optimistically:

Ben: I would say that most members of the group are people who care but aren't willing to do anything, but in every 100 members there are 4 or 5 that are willing to put forth the effort to make change in whatever way they can. This is collecting those people and spear heading their efforts into one movement...while their effort is small when you get 400,000 members to stand together, even if passive their efforts accumulate and have an extremely powerful result.

Indeed, "400,000 Faces" has reached across North America, and, Ben states, "[it was all done by] friends inviting friends inviting friends...I would guess that there are very few schools throughout the entire nation that do not have at least one member of 400,000 Faces." Facebook makes it easy for its users to express shared interests and connect with others. While this ease may signify a lack of effort or commitment, it also allows for the creation of communities based on shared interests and concerns.

Our participants also acknowledged one of the newer Facebook features, Facebook Events as being practically useful. With this feature (that has rapidly increased in popularity), a member can create a separate page for events such as parties, plays, or lectures, and invite other users to RSVP to the posted event. Isabelle quite enjoyed this feature; as a transfer student she felt that it helped connect her to what was going on socially on campus. In contrast, Carla emphasized the "non-essential" nature of Facebook Events:

A lot of people nowadays are inviting people to parties and events via Facebook and that is useful, but I found when I deleted my account I still found out about these parties because the people I hang out with have Facebook and get invited to events that way.

Though Carla has detached herself from the immediate experience of the Facebook, she nevertheless emphasizes the role the Facebook plays in promoting awareness of campus events. It is only because her friends have Facebook that she has access to such information, and thus she remains somewhat dependent on the information it makes accessible.

In addition to adding new features to the world of social interaction, Facebook has also changed it by impacting the definition of the term "friend" and how people go about pursuing "friends" and romantic interests. It may be unfair to say that the Facebook trivializes the concept of friendship (though criticism makes sense when we see friend counts in the hundreds), but our participants did feel that Facebook friendship is defined more loosely than other kinds of friendship. To illustrate this point, Maria told an interesting story:

I have ah, one friend who made it her goal - and I had known her before - but she made it her goal to friend every person on Facebook. And um, every single member of the freshman class on Facebook before she got to Wesleyan...well, she tried to, I think some people didn't accept, but she had a ridiculously high friend count.

Facebook allows preemptive "friending"; it allows people who haven't even laid eyes on each other to be friends. In this same line of reasoning, it changes the way that people build relationships with others. Carla, after meeting someone at a party, sent him a Facebook message immediately afterwards saying that they should hang out again. She also started a fling with another man she had been admiring from a distance by way of Facebook messaging.

Jordan provided a more extreme example of the role Facebook has played in relationship formation. He once looked up all the people who were going to a music festival that he was going to attend and found a cute girl he had never seen before. He described:

So I looked at her profile, and I looked at her (she did look pretty) and I saw...there was something about her profile...I think she liked some music artist I liked, I dunno, so I messaged her about it and I was like 'hey, I like your music' or 'I like your something or another'. And we started up this conversation and e-mailed back and forth a few times...and it never really went anywhere until like, 6 months later and we were at some party...and I see this girl and I'm like, "holy shit," and I went over and I was like, "is it you?" and she said, "oh my god, it's you!" And so she ended up coming back to my house and hanging out with my friends, and we actually ended up sleeping together that night... And then the next day, she came over again, and ended up meeting the girl who she ended up becoming long-term girlfriends with.

These and other anecdotes from our participants made it clear that the Facebook is transforming social interactions. Facebook users are granted the capacity to sustain chance encounters and long-distance friendships. For the most part, interactions in the Facebook realm center around playfulness and are quite casual. A person one normally sees only in random chance encounters can instead be virtually (and thus less aggressively) contacted, or at the very least, one is able to see which parties he has RSVP'd to for the coming weekend. Increasingly, Facebook users evoke the term "stalking" in a casual manner when referring to Facebook activity. While casually used, its very existence as a term specific to Facebook lends credence to the suspicions held by many (particularly older generations) with regard to virtual stalking.

The Experience of the Gazer

In exchange for putting their own information into the public sphere, Facebook users get to view information about all the other members. In this sense, they are simultaneously cast as both the object of the gaze as well as the subject of the gaze. From the vantage point of the gazer, our participants were able to make many pertinent observations. For example, they had a lot to say about how accurately people's true selves are captured by the Facebook. With great amusement, Isabelle described many instances of closet homosexuals listing such things as "girls" and "Pamela Anderson's boobs" in their Interests sections. She also mentioned, "I have a friend who changes his birthday every month, so there are always posts from people who haven't figured it out yet who are like 'yay happy birthday Alex!'... but it's a lie." However, she does mention that she garners much "fairly accurate" information about people based on the photos available of them due to her ability to critically read people's profiles. In this instance, she is the subject of the gaze, and from this distant but observant perspective is placed in a position of power. By catching people in their acts of misinformation, she maintains a "savvy" and somewhat superior status. Our participants enjoyed viewing others' information for other reasons as well as can be indicated from the following two stories:

Isabelle: (as a response to what did you use it for during the summer before entering college) You know, scoping out boys, finding potential friends...At this school its kind of crucial to look at the sexuality. My instincts are pretty good, but you know, mistakes happen.

Jordan: Sometimes my house will sit around and look at the Facebook, showing each other different people we've discovered, and you know, we'll go on for an hour...

Above, the participants describe the pleasure they garner in observing, unseen, with no risk to the self but the feelings that may arise from the gratification of viewing others. However, nearly every one of our participants described experiences in which the Facebook instigated social awkwardness, particularly when bringing Facebook into the realm of the "real". As Isabelle put it, "You never want to be the one to say 'hey, I met you on Facebook!'" How people talk about the Facebook is a very powerful way of understanding this norm. Frequently, our participants made it a point to emphasize the seriousness with which other people take the Facebook, and asserted their distance from such a viewpoint.

Jordan: I'll be in a situation or a conversation where someone will be like, 'hey man, I saw on Facebook that you like, did this or you're like this' and everyone will be like [mockingly] 'ohhh, Facebook' and it's like, 'shut up guys, you know you're on it, too'.

Carla: I think some people take Facebook way too seriously, and their friends make fun of them for it. I especially like to make fun of my friends for being on it all the time because I don't do it/usually don't/won't have it. Hell, I'm laughing at myself for having to reactivate my account to get my phone numbers back.

It is likely that this tendency arises from peoples' hesitancy to seem voyeuristic.

Even though it isn't discussed in the public sphere, Facebook users regularly engage in voyeuristic activities. They view information about other people and have to decide how seriously to take it into account. Our participants were hesitant to express the degree to which they personally made judgments of others based on information posted on the Facebook. All of our participants agreed that Facebook profiles provide only a partial "first impression" of an individual. Albert elaborated on this:

Albert: You could probably read the content of any person's profile in uh less than certainly five minutes... um, but I don't know...do you think you could get to know a person talking to them in person about these things for five minutes?... No, usually it takes more than five minutes to get to know people.

Maria and Jordan agreed, comparing Facebook profiles to the sort of partial information one could garner from a person's bookshelf, or a short conversation with her mother, and stressed the importance of engaging in actual conversation with someone. Jordan went on to express his concerns over first impressions made through the Facebook:

Jordan: I mean, you know, somebody certainly has an accurate representation of what bands I listen to, what hometown I'm from. They have an accurate representation of, ah, you know, what classes I'm in...So that's like, definitely accurate, I mean it's a great way of sharing information on their profiles...I don't treat it as if I'm being judged entirely by what's on the Facebook. That would be... that would be awful.

Jordan goes on to emphasize that while people do make judgments about others based on their Facebook profiles, they are more willing to be "proven wrong" than if those judgments had been formed in person. He said that he thought people who put up inspirational quotes or sappy movies were "pretty lame", but he also made the distinction that it was "not 'this person's lame', but like, they chose to put that quote up, like, I find that kinda lame." Carla expressed similar sentiments:

Carla: I mean, it's a weird sort of social atmosphere. We make judgments all the time about people from their appearances and this I believe is a hard enough arena to function in, but when people can essentially come with a little disclaimer about their interests and beliefs which can be accessed at the click of a button...crazy! Its kind of like virtual yearbook pages, right. Well there are two different situations for the judging. Because most of the people whose profiles I look at I know, the judgments I'm making are more along the lines of why did that person who I know what their tastes and interests are choose to represent themselves this way and is that successful or unsuccessful. For people I don't know, I guess long cheesy song quotes are a big turn off. ...I think Facebook brings out my judgmental/bitchy side.

Carla points out the widely-recognized dissonance between who a person is and how she chooses to represent herself. From Carla's perspective, a "successful" profile is one that capture's the person's identity accurately, granting the object of the gaze legitimacy. Isabelle stressed the point that people can decide how much information they want to put towards their online identity. She remarked, "The beautiful thing about the Facebook is that your account can be as detailed or as blank as you want." However, in every representation (sparse, elaborate, ironic, creative) there is meaning- meanings that are affected by perceptions of the public gaze. Maria broached the issue of the cognitive dissonance she encountered between perceived and projected identity:

I think there's kind of a disconnect between, like, my actual self and what my Facebook profile portrays... and, like, my profile portrays more what I want to be or how I want to be seen, you know? And less necessarily what I actually am.

However, there are many explanations for why one might choose to display inaccurate information about herself while under the scrutiny of the public gaze:

Carla: Let's just say that the [certain frat] brothers really like to use Facebook to compare, contrast, and hunt down the women they have or would like to get nasty with...

The above statement, detailing the predatory gaze of men, encapsulates some of the fears expressed by our participants. Just who, exactly, is watching? How does this affect the way in which one chooses to portray her identity? Once one puts her information out into the public sphere of the Internet, control is lost over who sees it and for what purposes, as well as how that information is interpreted and judgments made. It is here that we turn the tables, and discuss the complex experience of being the object of the gaze.

Being the Object of the Gaze

What about Facebook users as objects, rather than subjects, of surveillance? Albert, Jordan, and Maria all touched upon the caution with which they provided publicly accessible information about themselves. Maria commented that she really likes reading what other people write on her friends' walls, but she also said that it is "really creepy actually. I don't want other people to see what I write on other people's walls." Facebook is unique in that an outsider can observe "private" dialogue between two other people. Herein lies a dynamic of power, in which agency is attributed to the gazer at the expense of the one being gazed upon, mediated by awareness of the public gaze.. The implications of this agency vary depending on who is at the other end of the lens: friends, random college students, predators, superiors, corporations, or the government.

Albert, who quit Facebook about a year ago, discussed his reasons for doing so. "The privacy policy is very strange, and uh, not a privacy policy really," he said, and went on to elaborate:

I learned that um, they won't share your information with anyone at all unless it is uh, a company or an individual that owns any of the hardware they own, 'cause they don't own like all their own servers and like hardware and stuff like that. Um...so all of those people have direct access to your information, also all the people that own the bandwidths that Facebook sends through...all those people have direct access, and also any government agencies.

He also mentioned that the information posted on the Facebook is never actually deleted. Both he and Carla expressed the surprise they felt when, upon rejoining the Facebook, all of their old information and friend networks were intact and waiting for them. Albert even got emails from Facebook during the time in which he had quit telling him that he had friend requests. Thus, though Albert made the decision to disengage from the Facebook, he remains nevertheless "plugged in".

The majority of the fears people had about the Facebook centered on the fact that their information was accessible to others. For one thing, it is accessible to all other people on the Facebook, a population not limited solely to college students. Over the course of the last year the website has expanded to allow people outside of the academic community membership. Now anyone can be on Facebook, including professors, employers, and politicians. With the exception of Carla, all of the participants mentioned fears about employers looking up their information on the Facebook. Maria, who is a Resident Advisor, told an interesting story about her training:

At the beginning of the year, they gave us a sheet of paper that like, outlined for us 'be careful of using Facebook' and told us to take down any pictures that might be incriminating, or any information...and that, um, we can be held responsible for any information that is found on the website...

Some Facebook users seem to be very aware of the corporate nature of Facebook. However, Facebook's ties with the corporate world don't stop with the screening of potential employees. It is important to mention here that even though some of our interviewees expressed these opinions, it doesn't mean that everyone is aware of those ties. As Maria's quote reveals, many are surprised that they would need to be cautious in what they imagine to be a "fun" and "playful" medium for interacting with friends. Some interviewees (with Isabelle as the prime example) really didn't think about the potential dangers of Facebook and just used it for enjoyment. However, Jordan mentioned at one point that he "was reading in Newsweek how like, corporations... there's like this bidding war between corporations over who has access to that marketing information. 'Cause that's like, you know, a marketer's wet dream right there."

Then again, Jordan summed it up nicely in saying, "social investigation is hardly a new phenomenon". One way to view the uncertainty expressed by Facebook users is merely adjustment to a novel mode of social technology. For some of our respondents, interactions on the Facebook were assuredly regarded as "real", or extensions of "real". For others, however, the Facebook was described as distinct from real life, a world of idealized projected identities that must be interpreted with caution. It is within this context that negative emotions generally arise, and thus such an interpretation may be regarded as a source of cognitive dissonance and social tension.

Ben explained this more generally:

Ben: Sharing your life and details with the world has a tendency for repercussions

Interviewer: What kind of repercussions?

Ben: Well, it's different for every situation. For instance, an employer that is looking to hire you and won't because there is drinking and rude comments on your Facebook profile

When probed further about potential repercussions, Ben elaborated, "my friend blogs a lot... on Facebook and other sites. She shares stories about her life and when the people who she is writing about read it they get upset at her." Due to his own large exposure to the public gaze, as well as his friend's experience, Ben exercises a great deal of caution with regard to posting personal information online and values a sense of privacy that Facebook does not afford.

Despite these fears, Facebook is still being used by an extraordinarily large number of college students. When individuals delete their accounts, however, privacy issues seem to be the key motivation for members. Many swear off Facebook forever- or, at the very least, until they need to find a phone number. "The Man" is watching, most certainly, and he is represented by job employers, large corporations, and the federal government. Yet, despite the common fear of exposure to authorities, Facebook members remain attached to their institutional and social memberships, perhaps because as one of our participants was told early in her freshman year, "you don't exist if you're not on Facebook".

Conclusion

Online social networking has bred a new language of communication between individuals, one that is publicly monitored. Our participants expressed a similar feeling of unease regarding such exposure, but nevertheless were generally accepting of the sacrifices to their personal privacy in return for the vast amount of information available at their fingertips. This information was often touted as being useful for interacting with others. Though our participants equally recognized that information garnered through the Facebook provides only a partial glimpse of individuals, this information is comprehended and given meaning in myriad ways.

In conducting this research, we hope to have illuminated some of the ways in which our peers experience the Facebook as both subjects and objects of the public gaze. Many find the experience of observing and interacting with others on the Facebook to be pleasurable. Though heavy use often results in ridicule from others, browsing through profiles and photo albums is nevertheless a popular activity (particularly for procrastinating schoolwork). While some individuals expressed contempt for the "superficial" nature of social interaction on the Facebook, others see it as a fun and casual way to perpetuate friendships and pursue romantic interests.

However, the experience of being observed can cause great discomfort. Comparison with others is made easier through the quantification of social capital (eg; number of friends, wall posts, messages, etc;), and can lead to a lowering of self-esteem and social paranoia. There is also a fear of the public nature of having one's identity captured on the Internet, which causes some users to edit the information they choose to display. There are many ways in which people choose to present themselves on the Facebook: through irony, humor, blunt honesty or blatant lies. Laden with intrigue as well as suspicion, the voyeuristic and narcissistic world of the Facebook can evoke feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety, and embarrassment.

It is crucial to keep in mind that the words of our participants represent only a snapshot of the Facebook community, for "words only permit us to handle a unified reality by maneuvering arbitrarily excised chunks" (Brecht, 1966, p.4). What is evident, however, is that the Facebook is subtly transforming the nature of what is perceived as public social knowledge. It provides not only a mirror of one's idealized self-identity, but also a looking glass that empowers the viewer with social capital. While the Facebook can serve to consolidate group affiliations in the "real world", our analysis of the language used in talking about the Facebook in everyday interactions reveals a hesitancy to attribute one's social knowledge to it. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance often comes into play when one is asked about the experience of being the object of the public gaze, suggesting a need for further research into the psychological implications of this trend.

References

Brecht, George. (1966). Chance imagery. Retrieved December 12, 2006 from http://www.ubu.com/resources/feature.html.

Lacan, Jacques. (1977). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis . New York: Norton.

Facebook was initiated at Harvard in February, 2004.

When a person is "tagged" in a Facebook photo, a link to that photo is added to that person's own personal profile.