Zeynep Tufekci

I am currently circulating two of my papers. Email me at zeynep at umbc dot edu if you would like to receive a copy my manuscripts in progress, listed at the bottom, when I start circulating them. My other papers are chapters in a forthcoming book.

Papers

Zeynep Tufekci. (2008). Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society. Available here.

 

Can You See Me Now? Audience and Disclosure Regulation in Online Social Network Sites

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, we investigate the mechanisms used by a sample (n= 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. We find little to no relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames, but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, like walls, locks and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. We also find significant racial and gender differences.

Keywords: privacy, disclosure, social network sites, Goffman, Altman, presentation of the self, Facebook, Myspace

Zeynep Tufekci. (2008). Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and Myspace: What Can We Learn About Social Networking Sites from Non-Users. Information, Communication and Society. Volume 11, Number 4, June 2008 , pp. 544-564(21). Available here.

 

Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and Myspace: What Can We Learn About Social Networking Sites from Non-Users

 

This paper explores the rapid adoption of online social network sites (also known as social networking sites) (SNSs) by students on a US college campus. Using quantitative (n = 713) and qualitative (n = 51) data based on a diverse sample of college students, demographic and other characteristics of SNS users and non-users are compared. Starting with the theoretical frameworks of Robin Dunbar and Erving Goffman, this paper situates SNS activity under two rubrics: (1) social grooming; and (2) presentation of the self. This study locates these sites within the emergence of social computing and makes a conceptual distinction between the expressive Internet, the Internet of social interactions, and the instrumental Internet, the Internet of airline tickets and weather forecasts. This paper compares and contrasts the user and non-user populations in terms of expressive and instrumental Internet use, social ties and attitudes toward social-grooming, privacy and efficiency. Two clusters are found to influence SNS adoption: attitudes towards social grooming and privacy concerns. It is especially found that non-users display an attitude towards social grooming (gossip, small-talk and generalized, non-functional people-curiosity) that ranges from incredulous to hostile. Contrary to expectations, non-users do not report a smaller number of close friends compared with users, but they do keep in touch with fewer people. Users of SNS are also heavier users of the expressive Internet, while there is no difference in use of instrumental Internet. Gender also emerges as an important predictor. These findings highlight the need to differentiate between the different modalities of Internet use.

 

Keywords: social network sites, Goffman, Dunbar, presentation of the self, social grooming, Facebook, Myspace 

Manuscripts in Progress:

Tufekci Z.         On the Internet, Everybody Knows You’re a Dog: Presentation of Self for Everyday Surveillance. (Presented at American Sociological Association, 2007)

Tufekci Z., Cotten, S. Gender Differences in Computer Use and Perception Among Middle School Students.

Tufekci Z.         Gender and Social Network Sites: Yes, Women Communicating and Men Searching.

Tufekci Z.         Social Capital's New Face: Gender, Race and Ethnicity Differences in Social Capital Formation in Facebook, Myspace, and Other Online Social Networks.

Cotten, S., Tufekci Z., Anderson, W. Cell phone Usage and the Gender Gap in Digital Technologies Among Youth.