What happens in the Facebook,

stays in the Facebook.

---

Reflective Essay for BCM101 New Media

© Kaitlyn Carlia 2009

“...teenagers must and do disclose personal information to sustain intimacy, but they wish to  
be in control of how they manage this disclosure”

­ Livingstone, 2008

This essay will define ‘online presence’ and critically evaluate it in personal terms, as well as 
examining the idea of the ‘performative self’ and presentational media. It will look at the 
purpose and function of social networking platform Facebook and how it facilitates the 
sharing of personal details, control over information and privacy issues. It also examines the 
possible ulterior motives and uses of Facebook and the repercussion these have on young 
people.
Online presence is a term that describes user activity online: the way that we communicate,
interact and participate in virtual worlds such as MySpace and Facebook (Langley, 2009).
Studies have indicated that students spend approximately 30 minutes a day on Facebook and
my personal online presence certainly matches this time period. While I am present on
Facebook I communicate in a one-to-many style, posting comments and links, editing content
and messaging others, although a greater percentage of my online presence is spent observing
content than actually posting it (Pempek et al, 2009 and Westlake, 2009).

The functions of previous popular social networking tools, such as MySpace, Flickr, Weblogs
and Instant Messengers have all converged in one platform: Facebook, and this is the only
site where I have an account. The purpose of Facebook is to “give people the power to share
and make the world more open and connected” (Facebook, 2009). Members of the Facebook
community use it to communicate and stay in contact with friends, and upload personal
information (Roberts and Roach, 2009, 3 and Westlake, 2009). Westlake (2009) calls the
sharing of personal details “performance of the online self”, which may seem like
exhibitionism in some cases, but is essentially the embodiment of the adolescent need for
intimacy and energetic engagement.

Indeed, the sharing of information is a principle function of Facebook. When signing up for
an account, the site encourages users to share their date of birth, home neighbourhood,
relationship status, sexuality, political and religious views, contact information, job and
education details, as well as favourite movies, books and quotes, and photographs (Westlake,
2009). All of this information is displayed on the user’s profile and is available to friends1 and
networks (Westlake, 2009). I choose not to display a majority of these details, as I feel some
details will create a portrayal or presentation of myself that others may potentially view
negatively. An example of this might be a boy who lists his favourite band as ‘Good
Charlotte’ being negatively perceived as an ‘emo’.

‘News Feeds’ are another way that my information is shared. When I comment on a friends
Wall2 or photograph, update my status, relationship or profile picture, these details are
published in a reverse-chronological live-feed available to all of my friends (Boyd, 2008, 12).
Because of this, I need to be aware that anything will be viewed by a wide audience, not just
the friend I am writing to. This can limit or affect what I want to say. Facebook describes
 itself as “a social utility that helps you...to learn more about the people who work, live, or
study around you”, but there are concerns that News Feeds were going beyond the purpose of
learning, and bordering on stalking:

CASE STUDY 1

On  5 September 2006,the social network site Facebook launched a feature called ‘News Feeds’. Upon
logging in, users were faced with a start page that listed and time-stamped every act undertaken by their
friends within the system. This included who had befriended whom, who changed profile pictures, who had
written on other people’s Walls and what they wrote, who had posted new photographs, who had altered
their relationship status, who had joined or left a group, written a public note or altered their list of
favourite books and movies. Many users were unnerved by the fact that their every move would be seen by
such a wide audience. Although none of the information displayed in the News Feed was previously
private per se, previously one had to go searching for it, but now News Feed announced details to
everyone in a Facebook circle and made the material far more accessible and visible. Within hours of the
launch, users were forming groups such as “Students Against Facebook News Feeds” (which gathered
over 700, 000 members) to express their frustration. Some users became worried about stalking: “It makes
stalking way too easy...it scares me!” and “Facebook was creepy enough before...this is definitely crossing
some sort of line”. Why did users feel this way? Because News Feeds disrupted the social dynamic. They
now felt vulnerable, exposed and invaded when disclosing their data, and for many it affected the way they
behaved on Facebook.

Facebook has privacy settings in place so that users can control their information, but only to
an extent. I have my privacy settings as ‘friends only’ so that only people in my friends list
can see my profile and posts – but that includes 280 people from my jobs, university, school,
family and social groups, so I can’t hide anything. Other privacy options include ‘friends of
friends’, ‘networks and friends’ and ‘everyone’. Figure 1 shows that 75% of participants
allowed ‘everyone’ to view their profile. Almost 10% listed their phone number and home
address on their profile for ‘everyone’ to see.

Figure 1. College Students and Social Networking Website Characteristics

% 
Variable Mean (SD)
(Frequency)

Do you allow anyone to view your profile(s)?

 Yes 73.6% (117)
 % 
Variable Mean (SD)
(Frequency)

 No 26.4% (42)

Do you include a picture of yourself on your profile(s)?

 Yes 86.2% (137)

 No 13.8% (22)

Do you include your e­mail address on your profile(s)?

 Yes 35.2% (103)

 No 64.8% (56)

Do you include your phone number on your profile(s)?

 Yes 9.4% (15)

 No 90.6% (144)

Do you include your home address on your profile(s)?

 Yes 9.4% (15)

 No 90.6% (144)

Do you include information about your interests on your profile(s)?

 Yes 83.0% (132)

 No 17.0% (27)

Do you use your real name on your profile page(s)?

 Yes 81.8% (129)

 No 18.9% (30)

Approximately how many “friends” do you have on all your 
239.41 (268.44)
profile(s)?

Fogel and Nehmad (2009, 159) say that 72% of young people feel that their peers post too
much personal information on Facebook. Fogel and Nehmad’s study (2009, 158) also showed
that some young people realised the danger in posting too much information online, and
listed their reasons as avoidance of embarrassment or evaluations by others, protection of
information about the self, and of the undesired self. Figure 1 indicates that while some users
are privacy-savvy and aware of their actions, others are indifferent to the level of control they
actually have over their information.

A particularly daunting section of Facebook’s (2009) Terms and Agreements state that
Facebook can use and distribute your information in any way:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant,
to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable,
fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy,
publicly display, reformat, and distribute such User Content for any
purpose”.

The privacy statement (which many users, and indeed myself neglected to read when signing
up) states that Facebook may collect information about you from completely unrelated
sources, such as “newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services and other users of the
Facebook service” and that by using Facebook, you are “consenting to have your personal
data transferred to and processed in the United States” (Facebook, Privacy Policy). This
raises many unnerving questions, the most important being:

What is Facebook really doing with my information???

Some sources boldly declare that Facebook is partly owned by or affiliated with the U.S
Department of Defense and the C.I.A. for the purpose of profiling all members, most
comprehensively documented in Vishal Argawala’s 2006 VIDEO (Argawala, 2006, and
Greenop, 2007).

In her blog post, O’Brien describes how information that we add is given to advertising
companies who limit the target and scope of their audience, and show specific advertisements
in the margins of pages (O’Brien, 2009). She also points out that Facebook does not “inform
you that this information will be shown on your profile” (O’Brien, 2009).
 Other’s are concerned not with whom Facebook are sharing our details, but with who can
access them independently. As Henry Jenkins points out, “in an age where all information
sources are interconnected and where privacy is breaking down at an alarming rate, there is
an immense amount that one can dig out about a person...” (Jenkins, 2006, 36). For example,
(Roberts and Roach, 2009, 2) reveal that Facebook pages are now being used as reference
checks by HR personnel, and those with jobs can be fired as a result of Facebook comments
(see case study 2).

CASE STUDY 2

In November 2008 Virgin Airlines sacked 13 cabin crew staff after they criticised some of the airline’s passengers
on Facebook. The messages on the social networking site described the passengers as ‘Chavs’ and criticised
passengers who put boarding passes in their mouths before handing them to staff at the departure gate, and also
said they had little time for celebrity passengers with “stupid American accents”. The airline workers also wrote
that one aircraft was full of cockroaches and that the airlines jet engines were replaced four times in one year.
There was found to be no justification for the use of Facebook as a sounding board for staff of any company to
bring their company or its customers into disrepute.

Vassou, Andrea-Marie, 2008

Others are more concerned with stalkers and infiltrators (Abelson et al, 2008, 13), although
Facebook is generally a more trusted site than others such as MySpace (Fogel and Nehmad,
2009, 159). Case study 3 shows how potentially dangerous unknown friends on Facebook can
be:

CASE STUDY 3

In 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier made friends online with a 16-year-old boy named ‘Josh’. When
‘Josh’ turned against her, writing “You are a bad person and everybody hates you...the world would be a
better place without you,” – Megan committed suicide. When police investigated the motivations behind
the incident, they discovered that ‘Josh’ did not exist. He was a MySpace creation – a fake profile. Police
tracked the account to the mother of a girl in the neighbourhood who acknowledged ‘instigating’ and
monitoring the account. The actual sender of the final message was never identified.

Abelson, Ledeen and Lewis, 2008

Teenagers must and do disclose personal information, sometimes with little or no regard for 

privacy. Some do not seem to consider the negative repercussions of sharing personal details 

in a virtual world accessible to wide audiences, such as cyber­harassment, damage to 

reputations and consequential loss of employment, and even disclosure to advertising and 

other agencies without their knowing. On the other hand, there are young people, like myself, 

who are wary about what they disclose online, and who utilise privacy settings to gain control 

over this information.

Notes:

1
The term ‘friend’ is used in social network sites to indicate a consensual connection between 
two users. Not all connections represent a relationship that sociologists would recognise as a 
friendship – these kinds of friends can be acquaintances, friends of friends, someone you 
don’t know but have something in common with, or someone you simply find interesting.

2
The ‘Wall’ is a space on an individuals’ profile where their Friends can leave messages that 
are viewable to anyone who has access to that profile. 

Bibliography:

Abelson, Ledeen and Lewis (2008). Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty and Happiness After
the Digital Explosion. Addison-Wesley: Indianapolis
Agarwala, Vishal, 2006. Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? (VIDEO)
Accessed 7/6/09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wogtTQs8Kzw

Boyd, Danah (2008) Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion and Social
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Buckingham, David (2000) After the death of childhood: growing up in the age of electronic
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Buckingham, David and Willett, Rebecca (2006). Digital Generations: Children, Young
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Fogel, J and Nehmad, E (2009) Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust and
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Greenop, Matt (2007). Facebook, the CIA Conspiracy. In the New Zealand Herald on
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Jenkins, Henry, 2006. Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. NYU Press:
New York.

Langley, Emma (2009) Week 5 – Blog Question 1, Twitwall Post to BCM101_DrMoore on

20/4/09, accessed on 5/06/09 at http://twitwall.com/view/?who=emmalangley

O’Brien, Melanie (2009) Untitled, Twitwall Post to BCM101_DrMoore on 19/4/09, accessed

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sacked

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