The adventures of an Academic on Facebook:

Your Friend has just tackled you. Bite, lick, or tackle them
back, or click here to theorize about what this all means.

Dr. Kim De Vries

California State University Stanislaus
kdevries@csustan.edu

Though Facebook was initially the province of college students, it has

become popular with a broad range of users since opening its door to anyone
with an email address in September 2006. However, most research on
Facebook continues to focus on the student demographic rather than
exploring how Facebook is growing into a massive online society that is
inhabited by many different groups using Facebook in a variety of ways for a
variety of reasons. The academics studying Facebook generally join it and
use it in order to observe students; now that more faculty are using Facebook
outside the classroom, to organize events and to socialize, we must turn the
focus to our own use of Facebook as well.

As of May 2008, Facebook is one of the most rapidly growing social networks,
boasting 80 million active users, translated into twelve European and a
growing number of Asian and african languages. Currently the most rapidly
growing group of users is those over 25 years old. While some of these are
simply early users aging, more older users are joining in order to test the
professional applications, both to communicate to some group of
constituents, such as professors to students, and for more direct, individual
communication as well.

Academics on Facebook also risk crossing social boundaries. Just as we warn

our students, we have to consider who we add as friends and what they can
see us doing. A number of articles have recently focused on the risk of losing
students' respect by using Facebook, yet this does not seem to stop most
faculty from using Facebook. What about the risk in what our colleagues
may see? What do we gain from taking these risks online, and how is our use
of Facebook affecting offline scholarly communities?

Possible explanations for participants' devotion to Facebook and willingness

to play are suggested by recent research on the problem of establishing co-
presence online (Zhang 2007), how embodiment and presence are
experienced in online communities (Marshall 2004), and through
consideration of the hybrid foam metaphor recently suggested as a
replacement for network (Schäfer 2007). This paper is an early report on
research in progress.
In September 2007, Facebook released its Application Interfaces (API) and
new applications began appearing. In addition to being able to post notes on
each other's profiles, send messages and other basic practices, applications
began appearing that allowed users to send each other virtual drinks, gifts,
and gestures. Further, a variety of games allowed friends to compare views
on movies, on what not to do on a first date, and to rank their friends in a
variety of categories.

Facebook focuses almost exclusively on social interaction and provides novel

and amusing ways for people to connect. More importantly, the connections
feel more embodied, so that users may believe they are getting to know
people in a more personal way than through an email list or chat room.
Participants may also be more inclined to display ludic behavior because by
virtue of meeting on Facebook, which is a rather un-serious place, a certain
level of playfulness is assumed. However, the fact remains that while we
may participate in a variety of communities via Facebook, including fan,
artistic, social, familial, and professional, these traces of this communication
are visible to all of our communities, though the communications may only
be appropriate to one. Thus, our participation in various spheres actually
does not happen in separate 'bubbles' but rather in a sort of foam in which
there may be shared borders or interpenetrating cells (Schäfer 2007).

Jonathan Marshall has argued that participants in online communities often

experience "asence" or ontological uncertainty experienced online because
"there is no marker of existence beyond the act of communication itself
(Marshall 2004)." Facebook differs not only in combining the permanence of
the homepage/profile with email- and bulletin board- like functions, but
especially in offering games and other applications that mimic physical
experiences and leave highly visible traces. Thus on Facebook even if
participants are not in steady communication, asence is reduced.

A striking aspect of this shift is the transgressive behavior often exhibited as

a matter of course inside Facebook toward those who are colleagues and
may become friends. Marshall has suggested that members of online
communities may use sexual behavior to establish intimacy and maintain
contact, much more so than in face-to-face relationships. Many email lists
explicitly warn participants away from overly personal chatter, but this
stricture would seem at best counter-productive and at worst stodgy in an
environment like Facebook. The flirtatious tone of many Facebook
applications may attract users because it perfectly addresses this already
established mode of online communication. the appearance of this dynamic
in a space that is at least partially professional however, is a shift, and may
seem far-fetched to those who have not experienced it. This flirtatious
dynamic can be seen clearly with some of the most popular applications.
For example, the widely used Superpoke application allows users to send
gestures and actions to friends who have also added Superpoke. The
possibilities range from seasonal or holiday greetings, to romantic or sexual
acts, to mean or even violent gestures. Wishing someone Happy Chinese
New Year is fairly unequivocal, but the actual meaning expressed when one
user licks, tackles, whips or throws a sheep at another is open to a wide
range of interpretation and sexual innuendo can easily be conveyed. In
addition to strengthening a feeling of intimacy through sexual behavior,
ambiguity may also contribute to making Superpoke seem both so risky and
so entertaining.

An example of how Facebook promotes transgressive behavior but may yield

professional benefits may be drawn from the exchanges that have taken
place between myself Hans Bernhard, and Lizvlx who together constitute
the artist group Übermorgen. Through a good friend that I know in person, I
met Hans and Liz (a couple) on Facebook. Since I have never met either of
them in person, I was polite in messages, but also attacked them with my
vampire. We sent each other drinks, then various gestures. Hans and Liz
seemed flirtatious, but since they seemed aware of each other's actions, I
read it as harmless enough. To someone outside this immediate group of
friends, perhaps it would appear far less innocent. Within a matter of weeks I
was messaging regularly with Hans and Liz, and sending gestures and
actions that if carried out in person would signal quite intense regard of
some kind. As this silly exchange went on, Hans and Liz and I also began
trying to arrange for them to both travel to my university as visiting artists.
Had I not gotten to know them on Facebook first, would I have been able to
just casually ask within a few weeks if they'd like to visit?
When friendships form online, they often reach a moment when the new
friends would meet face-to-face and the relationship would be carried out
offline as well, but when this is prevented by distance or any other factor,
the online channels must carry quite a load of information and feeling, which
may serve to intensify the virtual exchanges (Marshall). Participants in this
kind of relationship often become extremely intimate on an emotional level
because physical intimacy is impossible. Note though that this does not only
apply to romantic or sexual relations, but to all connections. With those who
are physically proximal, we can easily exchange hugs or handshakes, share
meals, go to museums or engage in hundreds of other physical activities
which because they are public and common may not seem terribly significant
or intimate. But shared physical experiences of any kind cement bonds
between people, and also reveal a great deal about the participants. We
have an ongoing feeling of being together, or 'co-presence” (Zhang 2007).
So while in many ways the exchanges on Facebook seem to stand in for
physical encounters--going to lunch or for drinks, attending cultural events,
etc.--do we really get to know people in the same way, or if not, what impact
does the difference have on our personal/professional connections?

In addition to asence being reduced and co-presence maintained between

individuals, this occurs also in groups and communities. On Facebook we can
not only communicate one to one with those we add as friends, but we may
also encounter each other in Facebook groups, such as the intriguingly titled
'Critical Theory and Theorists are Hot.' In fact, many serious scholarly groups
now have a presence on Facebook, such as the Institute for Distributed
Creativity, Theory.Org, the Electronic Literature Organization, the Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts, and the Association for Internet
Researchers, to name just a few. On the last for example, members can
identify who else is attending the conference and find any friends shared in
common. In these groups, members interact in a manner that may feel more
embodied and 'authentic,' but it is the conjunction with the other interactions
facilitated and even prescribed by Facebook applications that we see a real
shift in the way we are meeting and establishing hybrid social/professional
relationships.

Examining the Facebook application "Nexus" reveals that though network

visualization applications are supposed to reflect participants' social
connections, in fact they often offer a distorted view, suggesting that
Facebook itself may offer a distorted view. At the same time, we can see
that Facebook seems to allow certain kind of expansion of the social network.
For example, the Nexus screenshot appears to show a dense network among
some of my friends/colleagues
Any user can of course see where these kinds of representations are
distorted in their own relations, but from the outside, there is no way to know
how accurate they are, unless one has offline knowledge to draw on. In this
case, not everyone would know that 'Monty Cantsin” is in fact not a real
person. Further, unless they are well known outside of Facebook, even
among people in one's own network may interpret notices from Facebook
applications that they share movie taste, life goals or other preferences as
accurate representations, but are they? In many ways distortions may be
introduced that are not discovered until a relationship moves beyond the
prescribed interactions of Facebook applications to actual conversation or
meeting in person. But it seems that seeing behavior that is occasionally
inappropriate actually leads people to perceive it as more authentic and
trustworthy and the person observed as more candid and 'real.'

A challenge in conducting this research is data collection. Because most

Facebook users restrict their profiles to friends, observing a representative
sample becomes quite difficult. While surveys are being attempted, relying
on self-reported behavior has some problems. So the best approach now
seems to design a Facebook application and that represents the next step
proposed in order to determine the wider impact on scholarly communities
and connections.

In spite of the risks of transgression and distortion, forming connections that

are playful and emotionally more intimate can be positive in personal and
professional terms. People with whom I have formed multi-valent
relationships online are also becoming people with whom I might collaborate
on research, or organize conference panels, or at least go to for advice when
visiting their home countries/cities. Thus I ultimately argue that along with
the playful air pervading Facebook, there can also be a feeling of risk, and
that users sharing experiences that give rise to this tension actually
strengthen their social and professional bonds. In academic circles there
aren't many venues where play and risk are valued or even possible, which
may explain why Facebook has been so attractive to many of us who by
rights ought to be the most resistant to its charms.

Bibliography

Boyd, Danah. "Choose Your Own Ethnography: In Search of (Un)Mediated

Life." Paper presented at 4S, Montreal, Canada, October 13, 2007.
http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/4S2007.html

Marshall, Jonathan. “The Online Body Breaks Out? Asence, Ghosts, Cyborgs,
Gender, Polarity and Politics.” Fibreculture Issue 3, 2004.
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue3/issue3_marshall.html

Schäfer, Mirko Tobias. “From Network to Foam: Heterogeneous and hybrid

relations in online sociality,” presentation at New Network Theory,
Amsterdam, June 29 2007

Zhao, Shanyang & Elesh, D. “Copresence as ‘Being With’: Social Contact in

Online Public Domains.” Information, Communication & Society, V. 11, No. 4
June 2008, pp 565-583.

Zimmerman, Eric. “Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games,” First Person.

MIT Press: 2004, remediated at
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson
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