Ethnographic Study Of The Effect Of Facebook

Daniel Holder, 16 April 2006 Page 1

Ethnographic Study of the Effects of Facebook.com on Interpersonal Relationships
By: Daniel S. Holder University of Chicago Abstract: This paper attempts to assess the effects of Facebook.com, a social networking website, on interpersonal relationships via the unique “birthday” feature on the site. The study finds that this technology augments existing relationships and social obligations. The study also suggests the network becomes part of the user’s “trans-active memory.” Facebook.com was created in 2004 and has quickly become a nationwide college phenomenon. It is now among the 100-most-visited websites in the world. At its most basic level, the site redefines social networking by allowing users to
The word “friend” was broadly defined to be someone the participant would recognize by first name, know a fact about, and approach if met unexpectedly. 1. 2. 3. 4. How many immediate (family) and distant friends do you have? How many Facebook.com friends do you have? How often do you check your Facebook.com account per day? How often do you update it? How do you make new friends on Facebook.com? Are they people you met in person first? Is there a portion of people you invited based on their Facebook.com profile alone? How many events over the past year have you attended in part because of their placement on Facebook.com via messages from groups you’ve joined or advertisements? More generally, what role do group events play when organized on Facebook.com? How often do you leave friends a message on their phone or write them for their birthday? Are you more likely to add someone you’ve never met to your friends list if you see they are part of your social network (i.e. you share one of more friends with them) or would you invite them regardless? How has Facebook.com more generally affected your interpersonal relations (i.e. high school
Subjects 1 and 3 mentioned a forgetfulness regarding birthdays and said that Facebook.com’s method of “remembering” them had among the greatest effects of any feature in the network on interpersonal relations. In this way, the Facebook.com network seems to have become part of the user’s “transactive memory” per se.7 Since the Facebook.com is structured primarily to support college-specific interactions,8 my original assumption was that group messaging on this network (users select what groups they join) and targeted advertisements would facilitate face-to-face interactions in real-life events: essentially, that groups formed on Facebook.com would meet in person based solely or in part on their digital association. This hypothesis, however, was severely wrong- each user reported having attended only 1 event or so over the past year based on the influence of advertisements or messages received on Facebook.com. Only Subject 1 felt that this had been useful for organizing events. This Subject was a Resident Head for a Dormitory, however, and had multiple