In 1939, Norbert Elias was writing, in a Simmelian fashion, about society understood as a web of relations. We are all born and raised within a group of people, we are shaped as unique individuals through our links with those around us, and we go through life weaving our purposes, wishes, and dreams in the fabric of an ever-changing, but always present relational universe. To make his stance easier to grasp, Elias invites us to imagine something as simple as a conversation between two people and to analyze the replies of one of them āas a separate unity existing with its own order independently of the network-figure of the conversation: that would be much as if one were to consider a personās individuality as something independent of the relations in which he finds himself, the constant weaving of threads through which he has become what he isā (Elias 2001, p. 25).
Around 70 years later, I, like most of the people I knew, decided to join Facebook and I immediately felt the first-hand experience of the imaginary scenario about which Elias talked. Every post seemed a piece of a conversation I did not know, which, in turn, was part of a relation I did not know about. Everyone seemed to be saying something to someone else and the conversation partner(s) remained undisclosed more often than not. The only posts I fully understood were my own and, sometimes, those of my close friends, but for most of the time, I was missing the context behind peopleās posts. The very assumption of an existing background to which the content belonged was very intriguing. I had not reflected on the relational core of that background, but there was an unshakable intuition about there being something more to what was displayed in public posts. It encouraged me to speculate about the larger situations, relations, conversations which generated the published image or text and it brought me in front of various puzzles, of which very few pieces were ever given. At the same time, these contents were labeled as āpublicā, a term I found somewhat misleading. Publicness, in my understanding, involved an audience regarded as a whole. On Facebook, though, each and every member of oneās audience had a specific relation with the owner of the profile and that added to my feeling of fragmentation.
In 2010, I started chatting to people who were using Facebook about what it meant to them, how they employed it, and how they read it. And despite receiving very diverse answers, all of them had something in common, namely, the reference to their own social bonds. A 25-year-old smiled and told me, āitās a waste of time, but I like it because itās like reading a glossy magazine about people you actually knowā. Several years later, someone said with mild frustration he joined ābecause everyone is thereā. In between these answers, I heard stories about romantic interests, work conflicts, old rivalries, political mobilization, and home party planning. Social bonds, and often somewhat consolidated ones, appeared to be the main underlying thread which gave coherence to this wide array of narratives.
Looking back into Norbert Eliasā and othersā work on the importance of social relations, my claim is that it provides crucial tools for understanding developments in social networking sites, despite the different setting specific to digital media. According to Elias, āThe historicity of each individual, the phenomenon of growing up to adulthood, is the key to an understanding of what āsocietyā isā (Elias 2001, p. 25). He goes on to elaborate on how the abovementioned individual historicity is constructed through bonds and how sociality constitutes the main precondition for the formation of individuality and unicity themselves. By pursuing this logic, Elias highlights the intrinsic interdependence rather than opposition between individual and society.
Of course, his words refer to the formation of individuals in groups that are in some ways traditional, in which people are copresent and have direct contributions on each otherās lives. The online world, on the other hand, is something many associate with solitude and with disengagement from social life. It is argued people spend more and more time with their phones and laptops than with each other. Yet, in the case of social networking, and to a lesser extent in gaming, the time spent with oneās phone is, from a certain perspective, time invested in the relation with the other (although not necessarily in the form of time āspent with the otherā, as I will show later on). Moreover, the typical Facebook practice of maintaining links with people with whom one was in contact at certain stages in oneās life evokes and contributes to shaping the very relational historicity of each individual, on which Elias was insisting.
Research Approach
Despite the growing volume of research on social networking, the ways in which Facebooking practices are connected with social bonds between users are still unclear. This situation is paradoxical, as social ties are one of the main points of focus for scholars working with Facebook and new media more broadly. However, this preoccupation translates into a significant amount of work on ties and Facebook from a behavioral quantifiable large-scale perspective, and a lack of research of Facebook and ties from an in-depth subjective, phenomenological standpoint (Lambert 2016). For instance, important findings show that that intensity of Facebook use strongly predicts the number and quality of weak ties in a longitudinal analysis (Steinfield et al. 2008). On a similar note, Donath and Boyd (2004), Ellison et al. (2007), Resnick (2001), and Wellman et al. 2001 point out social networking supports loose social ties and helps users create and maintain relationships they constructed for accessing resources. As far as stronger bonds are concerned, Johnston et al. (2013) did not find a significant relationship between Facebook use and their development. However, Kwon et al. (2013) highlight a gap within this literature. Namely, they ask, ādoes Facebook have the same social effect on an individual who spends an hour a day composing messages and commenting and on an individual who spends an hour a day simply surfing pictures of parties that they were not at?ā (Kwon et al. 2013, p. 35). They answer following a similar behaviorist approach. All this research highlights broad trends about Facebook users and their ties, showing correlations which are worth exploring. At the same time, in order to gain insight into the processes of tie construction, negotiation, or maintenance on Facebook, this work must be complemented with a qualitative approach. Kwon et al.ās question about what exactly that someone does on Facebook has an effect on ties highlights precisely that need to understand the mechanisms which lead to particular links between Facebook use and tie strength or social capital formation. The apparently simple question of how Facebook actually works in the context of social ties has been overlooked.
One reason for this is the isolated nature of Facebook within social life. There is a directly experienced limit between what happens on Facebook and what happens outside of it. So, Facebook is in this sense a predefined research field. This experiential online/offline, log in/log out switch draws attention away from the existing, underlying social bonds, which act as a background for online (inter)actions. An interesting exception can be found in discussions about dead users, where bonds are a major component (Kasket 2012; Irwin 2015). Yet, most advancements have been made in other directions. For example, Facebook scholars insist on how social network users present themselves in conformity to social expectations (Birnbaum 2008; Strano and Wattai Queen 2012; Farquhar 2013). It is often suggested people lose their genuine connections with others in an effort to display certain characteristics (Hogan 2010; Walther et al. 2008). The isolating process of self-exposure is doubled by an altered experience of togetherness and a lack of reciprocally oriented communication (Turkle 2011; van Dijck 2013; Hilsen and Helvik 2014). Although different on many levels, the perspective based on roles and normativity is equally individualizing. The user is part of a social system, which encourages, favors, rewards a series of behaviors, and sanctions others (McLaughlin and Vitak 2011; Tufekci 2008). The political impact of Facebook campaigns and mobilizations (Auter and Fine 2017; Beyer 2014; Vaccari 2017; Alduiza et al. 2014), the links between Facebook and particular consumer behaviors (Duffett 2015; Dehghani and Turner 2015; Heyman and Pierson 2013), and the construction of an identity with profound structural roots (Aguirre and Davies 2015; Micalizzi 2014; Kebadayi and Price 2014) have all been thoroughly discussed and documented.
Nevertheless, it is the links between each other that users emphasize most. Facebookers love to talk about stalking romantic interests; being judgmental of old colleagues; gossiping with good friends; getting closer to popular, powerful, and successful others; and assuming personal problems their boss might be facing. Thus, the purpose of this book is twofold:
- It explores the ways in which the exchanges of information unfolding on Facebook impact the universe of the usersā social bonds;
- It looks into how the underlying fabric of social relations influences the dynamic of Facebook contents.
Speaking of Facebookās broad social background, there is no doubt about the fact that Facebook networks of friends typically consist of those with whom one has at least been acquainted. It is Facebook etiquette to have a recognizable name and/or profile picture and not to invite unknown people in oneās network. In a conversation about her early experiences of social networking, a young girl explained to me, amused, about her move, as a teenager, from Hi5 to Facebook. This was a different environment, she would observe, and, if on Hi5 connecting with strangers was standard practice, it was ālameā to do the same on Facebook. Another user was bothered by a friend request he received from someone with a common first name followed by an initial (e.g. John W.), who also happened to have a cat as a profile picture. John W. never made it in my intervieweeās network. Thus, besides the manner in which interactions unfold on Facebook, they are part of a larger relational narrative, to which they contribute and by which they are shaped, as we will explore, in more ways than by simple acceptance or exclusion. This being said, this book sets out to advance current debates on interpersonal relations in conditions of non-copresence, offering a relational alternative to the self and identity-oriented approaches to social networking.
Methodology
In describing the offline and online side of social relations which unfold partially through Facebook, and showing how the two levels of experience converge in meaning making, I have drawn on empirical research I conducted between 2010 and 2014. This work consisted in observation of Facebook profiles and public exchanges of information but, most importantly, 40 open-ended interviews with users about their practices and their understanding of social networking and of Facebook in particular. The interviews were conducted face to face, initially in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca and, after 2012, in Barcelona. ...