Archiving the self? Facebook as biography of social and relational memory

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the claim that online communication technologies are detrimental to off‐line communication practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on material from focus groups with students from the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), and in‐depth interviews from a mixture of employed people and students. The breakdown is as follows: three focus groups in total are ran, two cohorts of participants were students from University of Cambridge, and the third group from ARU. Six individuals aged between 21 and 36 were interviewed in‐depth on their Facebook use. Questions relating to personal use of Facebook are asked. All names of participants have been changed.

Findings

The research findings show that opportunities for communication are increased by using Facebook. Facebook use also impacts on how other types of communicative technologies are used – such as the phone and email. From the small participant sample, it is founded (with only one exception, the Facebook user had accepted a request from a “stranger” on recommendation from her friend, only to reject this friend within a short time from her network due to his reliability. Since the study, it is founded that one individual who has befriended individuals that were not known to him. When asked about this, he explained that many of these friends were developed after playing online games with them. In his mind, he had built up trust through game‐playing and used this as a measure of their reliability. Whilst he only joined Facebook in early 2008, he has now accumulated over 350 friends.) that off‐line encounters were a prerequisite for a friend connection to be made online in Facebook. Finally, it is founded that the participants rarely interact with the majority of their Facebook friends and it is this dormant archive of relationships that hold the most interest as it provides an archive of relationships that would have dissipated without these technologies.

Originality/value

The key value of the paper lies in understanding this technology as an archive of human relationships.

Citation

Richardson, K. and Hessey, S. (2009), "Archiving the self? Facebook as biography of social and relational memory", Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 25-38. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779960910938070