"In this together": The importance of social networking sites as to the shape of personal relationships
Final Report Abstract
As far as the interviewees are concerned, I can generally say that even on Facebook, the relevance of personal relationships depends on mutual availability, and in my discretion, the Facebook membership does not lead to more personal availability either way. Most personal relationships on Facebook merely exist as a record of the possibility to re-establish contact at any time, whereas exercising this option seems to be bound to the emergence of specific occasions. Since the study participants, being adult, seasoned Facebook users who are principally suspicious of the Facebook public, rather maintain a low profile on Facebook – which is, as far as I can say, also true for their Facebook “friends” – not many points of personal contact arise which would exceed a birthday greeting or a thumbs-up for a pretty picture or a funny video. Against the backdrop of my findings, I suspect that at least in the private sphere, Facebook is of little importance to actual ‘social networking’, while membership itself fosters the important feeling of being connected and included. Therefore, Facebook has enormous suggestive power, which in the meantime seems to apply not only to the perception of social connectedness, but also to the perception of the execution of free speech.
Publications
- Die unangreifbare Phantasie vom Ich - Eine Analyse der Pragmatik und Sinnstruktur des Bloggens als Selbstveröffentlichungspraxis. Sozialer Sinn, vol. 21. 2020, no. 1, pp. 87-131.
Inken Sürig
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1515/sosi-2020-0004)
