Suicide announcement on Facebook

The media and the Internet may be having an influence on suicidal behavior. Online social networks such as Facebook represent a new facet of global information transfer. The impact of these online social networks on suicidal behavior has not yet been evaluated.

“Facebook Style”: The use of non-standard features in virtual speech conditioned by the medium Facebook

Facebook is a medium of social interaction producing its own style. I study how users from Malaga create this style through phonic features of the local variety and how they reflect on the use of these features. I then analyse the use of non-standard features by users from Malaga and compare them to an oral corpus. Results demonstrate that social factors work differently in real and virtual speech. Facebook communication is seen as a style serving to create social meaning and to express linguistic identity.

Envy on Facebook: a hidden threat to users’ life satisfaction?

The wealth of social information presented on Facebook is astound-ing. While these affordances allow users to keep up-to-date, they also produce a basis for social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale. Even though envy may endanger users’ life satisfaction and lead to platform avoidance, no study exists uncovering this dynamics. To close this gap, we build on responses of 584 Facebook users collected as part of two independent studies. In study 1, we explore the scale, scope, and nature of envy incidents triggered by Face-book. In study 2, the role of envy feelings is examined as a mediator between intensity of passive following on Facebook and users’ life satisfaction. Con-firming full mediation, we demonstrate that passive following exacerbates envy feelings, which decrease life satisfaction. From a provider’s perspective, our findings signal that users frequently perceive Facebook as a stressful environ-ment, which may, in the long-run, endanger platform sustainability.

Online disclosure and privacy concerns: a study of Moroccan and American facebook users

In using online social networks to connect and interact with people has become extremely popular all around the world. Thelargest Social Networking Site (SNS), Facebook, offers its services in over 70 languages and increasingly relies oninternational users to grow its membership. Aiming to understand the role of culture in SNS participation, this study adopts a‘privacy calculus’ perspective to examine the differences in participation patterns between American and MoroccanFacebook users. Survey results show that Moroccans users disclose less on Facebook than US users, yet perceive moredamage should their privacy on Facebook be violated. American users, on the other hand, have lower privacy concerns, trustfellow SNS members and legal system more, and disclose more in their profile. From a practical standpoint, the resultsindicate that SNS providers cannot rely on the same methods to encourage user participation and disclosure in differentcountries.

I like it because I (‘m) like You – measuring user attitudes towards information on Facebook

Limited in motivation and cognitive ability to process the increasing amount of information on their Newsfeed, users apply heuristic processing to form their attitudes. Rather than extensively analysing the content, they increasingly rely on heuristic cues – such as the amount of comments and likes as well as the level of relationship with the “poster” – to process the incoming information. In the paper we explore what impact these heuristic cues have on the affective and cognitive attitude of users towards the posts on their Newsfeed. We conduct a survey on based on a Facebook application that allows users to evaluate Newsfeed posts in real time. Applying two distinct panel-regression methods we report robust results that indicate that there is a certain relationship primacy effect when users are processing information: only if the level of relationship with the “poster” is low, the impact of comments and likes on the attitude is considered, whereby likes trigger positive, whereas comments – negative evaluations.

Cognition or Affect? - Exploring Information Processing on Facebook

Recognizing the increasing amount of information shared on Social Networking Sites (SNS), in this study we aim to explore the information processing strategies of users on Facebook. Specifically, we aim to investigate the impact of various factors on user attitudes towards the posts on their Newsfeed. To collect the data, we program a Facebook application that allows users to evaluate posts in real time. Applying Structural Equation Modeling to a sample of 857 observations we find that it is mostly the affective attitude that shapes user behavior on the network. This attitude, in turn, is mainly determined by the communication intensity between users, overriding comprehensibility of the post and almost neglecting post length and user posting frequency.

‘Stop spamming me!’: exploring information overload on Facebook

The problem of information overload on Facebook is exacerbating as users expand their networks. Growing quantity and increasingly poor quality of information on the Newsfeed may interfere with the hedonic experience of users resulting in frustration and dissatisfaction. In the long run, such developments threaten to undermine sustainability of the platform. To address these issues, our study adopts a grounded theory approach to explore the phenomenon of information overload on Facebook. We investigate main sources of information overload, identify strategies users adopt to deal with it as well as possible consequences. In-depth analysis of the phenomenon allows us to uncover individual peculiarities for identification of relevant information. Based on them we provide valuable recommendations for network providers.

Orientación espacial en las redes sociales en línea Facebook y Tuenti

El objetivo de investigación es cómo los usuarios de Facebook y Tuenti de la ciudad de Málaga utilizan los deícticos espaciales aquí, ahí y allí en dichas redes sociales en línea. En el centro de atención no está cómo o qué es el espacio sino cómo los hablantes interpretan el espacio mediante la lengua, en otras palabras, es la percepción del espacio lo que nos interesa. La Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) ‘comunicación mediada por ordenadores’ es un campo relativamente nuevo. Uno de los fenómenos más interesantes dentro de la comunicación mediada por ordenadores son las redes sociales en línea, que en pocos años se han convertido en un medio de comunicación muy difundido y en expansión continua. No sorprende por eso que la lengua y la comunicación misma se vean afectadas. La condición virtual es importante para comprender los nuevos medios electrónicos de comunicación. Se considera el espacio virtual como una realidad virtual, llena de imágenes, algunas de las cuales no existen sino en un formato electrónico, y otras son representaciones simbólicas del mundo físico, es decir, es un universo paralelo creado y sostenido por las líneas de comunicación y redes de ordenadores que se enlazan por medio de la infraestructura que da Internet. El espacio virtual es básicamente un espacio-sistema relacional. Su realidad se construye a través de la interacción y del intercambio de información; es espacio y es medio. Este carácter emergente del espacio virtual hace esencial vincularlo con aquello que determina su surgimiento: con la comunicación. El espacio virtual surge en y por la comunicación, de ahí su doble naturaleza de espacio y medio. Teniendo en cuenta lo anteriormente dicho, lo que nos interesa analizar es cómo funcionan los deícticos espaciales, en tanto rasgos orientativos de la lengua relativos al lugar del acto de habla. El estudio que presentamos se basa en un corpus elaborado a partir de enunciados de informantes en Facebook y Tuenti. Se ha efectuado un análisis cuantitativo mediante la herramienta AntConc y también un análisis cualitativo. A partir del corpus y su análisis se muestra que los deícticos pueden hacer referencia tanto al espacio real como al virtual, es decir, operan en varios niveles. Su percepción y la interrelación del espacio virtual y real son elementos esenciales que condicionan la orientación espacial en Facebook y Tuenti.

“Facebook Style”: The Use of Emoticons and Graphic Signs by Users in the Cape Flats

Over the last few years Facebook has become a widespread and continuously expanding medium of communication in Africa and worldwide. Being a new medium of social interaction, Facebook produces its own communication style. It is a style conditioned by the medium and the community of users. My focus of analysis is how Facebook users from the city of Cape Town create this style by means of emoticons and other graphic signs in order to reflect the reality of living in Cape Town’s underprivileged areas. This study is based on a theoretical framework which combines sociolinguistics with Computer-Mediated-Communication to study the emergence of a style peculiar of the online social networks. In a corpus of Coloured Facebook users from the Cape Flats, I have analysed the emergence of emoticons and other graphic signs related to Capetonian gang culture and then tracked the spread of these features to the extensive use by users not related to gangs. It can be deduced that in this process the analysed features amplify their meaning and are employed in a much broader context as their original use. Due to the development and spread of these features we can consider the peculiar electronic communication of Facebook as a style constrained by the electronic medium and its users. It is a style which serves the users to create social meaning and to express their linguistic identities.

La orientación espacial en las redes sociales en línea Facebook y Tuenti

La condición virtual es importante para comprender los nuevos medios electrónicos de comunicación. Se considera el espacio virtual como una realidad virtual, es decir, es un universo paralelo creado y sostenido por las líneas de comunicación y redes de ordenadores que se enlazan por medio de la infraestructura que da Internet. El objetivo de investigación es cómo los usuarios de Facebook y Tuenti utilizan los deícticos espaciales aquí, ahí, allí, acá, allá en dichas redes sociales en línea. En el centro de atención no está cómo o qué es el espacio sino cómo los hablantes interpretan el espacio mediante la lengua. Se ha efectuado un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo que muestra que los deícticos pueden hacer referencia tanto al espacio real como al virtual, o sea, operan en varios niveles. Su percepción y la interrelación del espacio virtual y real son elementos esenciales que condicionan la orientación espacial en Facebook y Tuenti.