Revealing the commercialized and compliant Facebook user

Abstract

Purpose

Facebook users are both producers and consumers (i.e. “prosumers”), in the sense that they produce the disclosures that allow for Facebook's business success and they consume services. The purpose of this paper is to examine how best to characterize the commercialized and compliant members. The authors question the Facebook assertion that members knowingly and willingly approve of personal and commercial transparency and argue, instead, that complicity is engineered.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey of Facebook users was conducted between December 2010 and April 2011 at one private and four public universities. Respondents were questioned about: the level of their consumer activity on Facebook; their knowledge of Facebook advertiser data sharing practices and their attitude toward such; their use of sharing restrictions and the groups targeted; and their assessment of transparency benefits versus reputation and consumer risks.

Findings

No evidence was found to support the Facebook account of happy prosumers. Members reported that they avoided advertisements as much as possible and opposed data sharing/selling practices. However, many respondents were found to be relatively uneducated and passive prosumers, and those expressing a high concern for privacy were no exception.

Research limitations/implications

Due to the nonprobability sampling method, the results may lack generalizability.

Practical implications

To avoid unwanted commercialization, users of social networking sites must become more aware of data mining and privacy protocols, demand more protections, or switch to more prosumer‐friendly platforms.

Originality/value

The paper reports empirical findings on Facebook members' prosumption patterns and attitudes.

Citation

Lilley, S., Grodzinsky, F.S. and Gumbus, A. (2012), "Revealing the commercialized and compliant Facebook user", Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 82-92. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211226994