Affordances supporting mothers’ engagement in information-related activities through Facebook groups

Abstract

<jats:p> Social networking sites have become indispensable information and communication tools in everyday life. This qualitative study investigated the information-related activities and affordances of a Facebook group for foreign mothers living in Sweden. Four key information activities were identified: posting, monitoring, commenting and searching. These activities show how the group members accessed the information resources embedded within the group in a variety of visible, invisible, active and passive modes. The article concludes with a discussion of how these different modes are facilitated by the affordances of visibility, accessibility, persistence and associations. </jats:p>

Collective Privacy Management Practices: A Study of Privacy Strategies and Risks in a Private Facebook Group

“…Information disclosure on SNSs may involve both benefits and risks. On the one hand, previous research argues that disclosing information offers opportunities to connect to new people, to sustain and strengthen existing relationships, to validate and experiment with one's identity, to document important life milestones, and to access information-and-support resources from heterogeneous networks [4,20,25,26]. In particular, recent research has claimed that talking about stigmatizing or traumatic experiences with others on SNSs may help people get proper information and support to adjust and better process their experiences and traumas [6-8, 12, 27-29].…”

“…This makes it difficult for members to use a fake or separate Facebook account [8,13], or a temporary account [61], which would allow them more anonymity in the group. The possibility of linking information with a named person and profile poses further risks due to Facebook's affordances of visibility and persistence, since not only current but also future members can access older postings in the group [4]. This means that in this current iteration of Facebook's design, members' information disclosures can potentially be seen and used beyond the original context and the current audiences of these posts, creating not only the risk of context collapse but also of "time collapse" [62].…”

“…Facebook groups enable users to find and connect with local and global communities who share similar interests, experiences, or beliefs [2]. In these groups, users can exchange information, discuss mutual concerns, build solidarity, and mobilize around different causes [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. As such, these groups can provide dynamic, collaborative, information-rich environments where users can extend their personal networks by joining wider, potentially heterogeneous communities of strangers [1,5,9,10].…”

“…As such, these groups can provide dynamic, collaborative, information-rich environments where users can extend their personal networks by joining wider, potentially heterogeneous communities of strangers [1,5,9,10]. Several studies suggest that Facebook empowers various social groups (such as e.g., parents, college students, and people with chronic illnesses) by providing private spaces to seek and provide information and support on topics that are deemed to be inappropriate or stigmatizing to share with one's close networks [3,4,[6][7][8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Members of Facebook groups can disclose and discuss information with people with whom they have no preexisting or long-term relationships, which may be considered less costly than doing so with their close social circles [7,8,12,13].…”

“…The recent few studies (e.g., [3,5,9]) that have addressed this perspective have studied privacy management as part of broader information practices and research questions, with the result that the findings are limited in depth and details. Further, although several studies of personal profiles on Facebook have focused on individual and collaborative privacy management among users, their findings can be limited in their applicability when it comes to collective and more dynamic sociotechnical environments, such as Facebook groups, where mutual information sharing and collaboration are the norms [4].…”