“WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?”

An explorative study about how youngsters use notions of time

and space on Facebook

Mathias Decuypere (Presenter)Steven Bruneel (Co-author)

Overview

• Two little remarks…• Previous research• Research question(s)• The Facebook ‘Wall’• Results

Two little remarks…

1. What we report here should be considered as work in progress

2. Identity construction is a concept elaborated upon in a lot of presentations of this workshop– In our paper, we try to capture how youngsters perceive

themselves and behave on social networking sites as well.– However, time constraints do not allow to elaborate upon this

point (and other parts of the conceptual framework) in detail here

– For additional information, you are kindly referred to the conference proceedings

Previous research

• “Where are you?” phenomenon: people tend to ask each other this question often in cell phone conversations (Ferraris, 2006; Plant, 2002)– Do students pose/answer this question in text messages as

well?– Other spatial/temporal elements in text messages?

• Questions answered in Decuypere et al. (Submitted)• 494 text messages could be stored in six different

clusters:

Previous research

• Cluster classification

1. Where are you (16.1%)

2. What are you doing (20.0%) (Links with)

3. Last-moment modifications (23.7%) Present

4. Reporting of near events (6.8 %)

5. Very-near future (24.4 %) Future

6. Far from present (8.8 %)

Research question(s)

• Are there differences, and if so, which differences are there, between cell phone usage and Facebook usage concerning the use of time (and the clusters found in our previous research)?

• [ + A research question dealing with the already mentioned self-understanding and space, see paper]

Subject of analysis: The Facebook ‘Wall’ (cf. Selwyn, 2009)

30 Days, 12 respondents, 652 messages

Results

Results (comparing SMS with Facebook data)

Results

• More SMS messages dealing with the present• More wall messages dealing with the future

• Wall messages dealing with the past (often reporting what happened during period of offline activity) required devising additional clusters, since almost no SMS messages dealt with this past

Mathias DecuypereVesaliusstraat 2 Box 037613000 LeuvenBelgium

mathias.decuypere@ped.kuleuven.be