Friendology: the negotiation of intimacy on Facebook
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2012
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Melbourne Authors
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Arts - School of Culture and Communication
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PhD thesis
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Lambert, A. (2012). Friendology: the negotiation of intimacy on Facebook. PhD thesis, Arts - School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne.
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© 2011 Dr. Alex Lambert
Abstract
How does Facebook influence intimacy as it relates to identity and relationships? I answer aspects of this question through a grounded ethnography of Australian Facebook users. Research into social network services has produced a range of disparate concepts, in part due to highly specific quantitative investigations. Though some ethnography has been produced, there remains a need for finegrained, qualitative research. This thesis responds to these issues, combining ethnographic methods with Grounded Theory techniques in order to produce a conceptually rich account of everyday social processes. Six participants were recruited, interviewed multiple times, observed on Facebook, and had their Facebook profile information downloaded. A Grounded Theory was inductively developed in which intimacy, identity and friendship emerged as core concepts. The benefits of this approach are a focus on process and the clarification of ideas through abstraction and conceptualisation, rather than thick description.
Facebook influences identity and friendship, I argue, by making intimacy problematic. Interpersonal intimacy is a primary quality which defines friendships, and my participants self‐reflexively perform intimacy on Facebook in order to reproduce their friendships. I conceptualise this endeavour in terms of spatiality and social capital. However, participants encounter a host of sociotechnical contingencies which jeopardise this process. These can negatively affect interpersonal intimacy in a variety of ways. In response, participants develop reflexive techniques to ‘negotiate intimacy’. I give a detailed constructionist account of these, focusing on how participants control spaces, mobilise resources of identification, and develop self‐protecting forms of public, social intimacy.
These processes respond to broad problems and describe nascent norms, rather than individual tactics. Hence, I believe they are indicative of a ‘culture of reflexive intimacy’. This is a ‘friend culture’ stemming from changes in the nature of modern relationships which are institutionalised on Facebook. Hence, Facebook is a ‘friendology’, a friendship technology, but also a realm in which the logos of friendship becomes an object of reflexive thought and action. Although the apogee of this thesis cannot capture this culture’s broad structures, I explore how they may emerge through symbolic interactions in a novel socio‐technical environment in respect to a particular cultural group.
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Facebook, intimacy, identity, reflexivity, performance, privacy, cultural studies