Domesticating Facebook: The Shift From Compulsive Connection to Personal Service Platform

Abstract

As one of the largest social media platforms, the meaning and role of Facebook is widely contested, where many argue that Facebook's cultural importance especially for younger generations, is declining. Popular thinking and common assumptions often position Facebook as a boring platform taken up by older generations. Yet, despite these claims, Facebook's user base continues to grow and it is still one of the most dominant global platforms in today's media ecology. This article provides insight into this apparent contradiction through longitudinal research conducted with young adults, aged 18 to 30 in 2013, and aged 24 to 34 in 2017. Informed by research on youth and young adults, this article returns to domestication theory to understand how personal economies of meaning are shaped over time through changing patterns of use, in relation to an ever-evolving Facebook platform. Although respondents share contradictory accounts of their understandings of Facebook, they also share commonalities. Notably, respondents shift from a highly emotive framing of Facebook marked by "compulsive connection" in 2013 to a routinized use of Facebook for performing personal and often mundane services such as scheduling, micro coordinating, archiving, and to some extent, relationship maintenance. We argue that this shift illustrates the domestication of Facebook from a wild social space to a "personal service platform," thus providing an important insight into Facebook's continued user growth and cultural dominance.

Social Media in the Marketing of Higher Education Institutions in Poland: Preliminary Empirical Studies

“…Polish HEI still lack a consistent strategy on how to utilise social media for communication. Similarly, HEIs need to adjust the channels of communicating with their stakeholders, whereas alumni and graduate students still can be researched with Facebook, younger generation of potential students are more likely to be present on other social media platforms (Sujon, Viney, & Toker-Turnalar, 2018). Our study revealed how much there is still to be done by HEIs in Poland.…”

“…The value an organisation gains from utilising social media is inseparably determined by the specific platform taken advantage of. And therefore, when it comes to the scope and the purpose of the utilisation of social media, it is necessary to stress that Polish HEIs tend to consider Facebook a social media platform of the biggest significance -both now and in the future, despite its importance among students is diminishing (Sujon, Viney, & Toker-Turnalar, 2018). Snapchat is rather disregarded, despite the fact that it is becoming even more popular than Facebook among those who are soon going to be applying for admission to higher schools and universities.…”

“…Still, for HEIs Facebook seems to be the major social media platform for the contact with students. Despite of this, it still remains one of the largest platforms, its cultural importance for younger generations is declining (Sujon, Viney, & Toker-Turnalar, 2018). It seems that HEIs still lack knowledge which social media tools might be most interesting for their current and potential students.…”

Domesticating WhatsApp: Family, friends, work, and study in everyday communication

“…Research suggests that trends in mobile communication are tied to different life stages (David-Barrett et al, 2016; Sujon et al, 2018). To make sense of the role that different stages play in our data set, we draw upon basic notions from the life course perspective.…”

Careful Co-presence: The Transnational Mediation of Emotional Intimacy

“…I see these local daily circumstances as giving meaning to practices of allotting time for more extended phone calls and direct communication without other distractions. Given my respondents' middle-class background, this practice might also be seen as part of a wider shift that has been recently argued that Facebook is undergoing in its domestication process in middle-class user environments, a stage characterized by fewer emotional affordances and more mundane uses such as "scheduling," and "archiving" (Sujon, Viney, & Toker-Turnalar, 2018). This may be a way in which new media forms change the meaning of, or augment the affordances of, older media forms (Bolter & Grusin, 2000), or how multiple platforms used in parallel take on meaning with relation to one another as polymedia .…”