Unfriend, Unfollow, Unsubscribe: Unsociability on social network sites
GUTIERREZ LOPEZ, MARISELA (2012)
2012
Vuorovaikutteinen teknologia - Interactive Technology
Informaatiotieteiden yksikkö - School of Information Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2012-06-13
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-22712
https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uta-1-22712
Tiivistelmä
Social network sites (SNSs) are virtual spaces for social activity where users can “undo” their social interactions, returning to a previous system state. In this thesis I study this “reversed” sociability – unsociability – as a novel way to approach and support online social interactions.
Using focus groups as research method, I explore the practices and perceptions of users engaging in unsocial events over four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. As focus groups enable people to discuss their opinions in a relaxed yet moderated environment, I gathered opinions of participants expressed in their own terms. Subsequently, I used two data analysis techniques, content analysis and grounded theory, to explore participants’ utterances and group dynamics.
The results show that the structure of each site reviewed is determinant to understanding how they support unsociability. Most notably, it was found that people follow a social-over-technical pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of its technical capabilities. By following this pattern, people engage in unsocial events to save face and regulate their privacy boundaries.
I found that people try to keep their unsocial behaviors as positive as possible to reduce accountability for these behaviors. Consequently, they prefer using features that place a self-boundary around them, which I call the soft unsocial features. The hard unsocial features place a dyadic boundary, producing increased social costs. Nevertheless, different people interpret these features in different ways, as I found three distinctive attitude styles towards them: the experimental, cautious, and restrictive.
As these platforms become ubiquitous, I argue that unsociability should become an important consideration for designers of SNSs. I propose that SNSs should offer integrated options to revert social interactions in a silent, easy, and flexible way, to support users to “reverse” the increased sociability enabled on these sites.
Asiasanat:social network sites, features, unsociability, design
Using focus groups as research method, I explore the practices and perceptions of users engaging in unsocial events over four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. As focus groups enable people to discuss their opinions in a relaxed yet moderated environment, I gathered opinions of participants expressed in their own terms. Subsequently, I used two data analysis techniques, content analysis and grounded theory, to explore participants’ utterances and group dynamics.
The results show that the structure of each site reviewed is determinant to understanding how they support unsociability. Most notably, it was found that people follow a social-over-technical pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of its technical capabilities. By following this pattern, people engage in unsocial events to save face and regulate their privacy boundaries.
I found that people try to keep their unsocial behaviors as positive as possible to reduce accountability for these behaviors. Consequently, they prefer using features that place a self-boundary around them, which I call the soft unsocial features. The hard unsocial features place a dyadic boundary, producing increased social costs. Nevertheless, different people interpret these features in different ways, as I found three distinctive attitude styles towards them: the experimental, cautious, and restrictive.
As these platforms become ubiquitous, I argue that unsociability should become an important consideration for designers of SNSs. I propose that SNSs should offer integrated options to revert social interactions in a silent, easy, and flexible way, to support users to “reverse” the increased sociability enabled on these sites.
Asiasanat:social network sites, features, unsociability, design