Liquid Love, Facebook and Friendship: a case study PDF

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Identity representations and practices Editors Silvia Valencich Frota Marianela Barrios Aquino © Marianela Barrios Aquino & Silvia Valencich Frota, 2016 Published by CELGA-ILTEC (Coimbra, 2016) Copy Editing by Lili Cavalheiro Cover by Inês Mateus Printed by Europress - Portugal ISBN 978-989-20-6...

Description

Identity

representations and practices

Editors

Silvia Valencich Frota Marianela Barrios Aquino

© Marianela Barrios Aquino & Silvia Valencich Frota, 2016 Published by CELGA-ILTEC (Coimbra, 2016) Copy Editing by Lili Cavalheiro Cover by Inês Mateus Printed by Europress - Portugal ISBN 978-989-20-6521-2 DL: xxxx All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of CELGA-ILTEC.

Identity: representations and practices Editors

Silvia Valencich Frota Marianela Barrios Aquino

Table of contents

Preface Carlos A. M. Gouveia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Notes on contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Notes on editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Editors’ Introduction Marianela Barrios Aquino and Silvia Frota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Cultural travel and cultural prejudice Adrian Holliday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Representations of Basque-American Identity in the 21st Century Monika Madinabeitia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Please, Take Your Shoes Off! The Slovenian Rules of Changing into Slippers Alenka Švab and Peter Stanković . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Dictatorial Ethos in Presidential Inaugural Addresses from the Estado Novo Micaela Aguiar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Genred discourse as social practice: collective and individual identities in academic literary criticism Julia Ludewig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Discursive constructions of the family as a gendered social space: conflicting values and identities Maria Krebber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Liquid Love, Facebook and Friendship: a case study Konstantinos Gogalis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Creolization, an Identity Building Process for Europe? Arijana Medvedec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Notes on contributors

Adrian Holliday is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Canterbury Christ Church University, where he is program director for the PhD in Applied Linguistics. He is also Head of The Graduate School, where he provides academic management for research degrees across the University. His research interests include Intercultural communication and ideology, discourses of culture, the politics of international English language education, English in the world, cultural imperialism, qualitative research methods.

Alenka Švab obtained her BA in Sociology at the University of Ljubljana. She also holds a MA in Sociology from the Central European University and University of Lancaster. Currently she is a professor of sociology at the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests focus on everyday life, family, life course, sexuality, body, gender and GLBTQ issues.

Arijana Medvedec studied English and French Languages and Literatures (BA) at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She also holds a MA in Comparative Literature: Portuguese and French Literatures from the Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal. She is currently a PhD candidate in Culture and Communication at the University of Lisbon, funded by a FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) doctoral grant. Her research interests include cultural studies, namely island and urban studies, comparative literature, utopia and utopian modes, narrative and/in different media, and traditional literature. Julia Ludewig holds a BA in Cultural Studies at the University of Frankfurt/Oder (Germany) and a MA in European Linguistics from the 13

University of Freiburg (Germany). She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the Binghamton University (State University of New York). She will be graduating from Binghamton in 2016. Her research interests include literature and linguistics, especially questions of gender.

Konstantinos Gogalis studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; he holds a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from Harokopio University, Athens. He is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Peloponnese and teaches Modern Greek (International Baccalaureate Programme) at the Hellenic American Educational Foundation, Athens. His research interests focus on online communication, virtual communities and psychosocial aspects of identity development.

Maria Krebber obtained a MA degree at the University of Jena in Germany. At the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon, she completed a PhD thesis about gender identity construction resulting from the great social changes that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century in Portugal, using a linguistic approach. She analyses discourse from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. Apart from issues related to gender relations, her research interests include the discursive construction of interpersonal relationships, the use of language in the service of power and language change.

Micaela Aguiar studied European Languages and Literatures at University of Minho. She also holds a MA in Portuguese and Comparative Linguistics and is now a PhD student in Language Sciences at the University of Minho. She is currently working on her thesis entitled “Presidential Images in Inaugural Addresses in the 100 years of the Portuguese Republic”. Her research interests range from the construction of ethe to literary and political Discourse Analysis.

Monika Madinabeitia holds a BA in English Studies from the University of the Basque Country, a MA in Western American Literature from the University of the Basque Country and her PhD (University of the Basque Country) thesis was about the Basque-American writer, Frank Bergon. She is an associate professor at Mondragon University, Huhezi 14

(Eskoriatza, The Basque Country). Her main research field is identity in multicultural contexts, with an emphasis on Basque identity in the homeland and in the diaspora of the American West. She also works on the field of Basque emigration (past and present) and current immigration into the Basque Country.

Peter Stanković  obtained his BA in Sociology at the University of Ljubljana. He also holds a MA in Sociology from the Central European University and University of Lancaster. Currently he is a professor of cultural studies at the University of Ljubljana. His research interests focus on theories of culture, film studies, popular music studies and identities.

Notes on editors Marianela Barrios Aquino obtained a BA in Sociology at the University of Salamanca (Spain). She was also a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration of the Georgetown University and is currently a PhD candidate in the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include issues regarding the experiences of migrants and the contexts they live in, issues of identity negotiation as well as citizenship studies.

Silvia Frota holds a BA in Journalism at the Faculty of Social Communication Casper Líbero (Brazil) and a BA in Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). She holds a MA and a PhD in Culture and Communication at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). Currently she is an assistant professor of communication theory and cultural studies at the University of Lisbon. Her research interests focus on identity studies, nationalisms, culture and media studies and communication theory.

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Liquid Love, Facebook and Friendship: a case study Konstantinos Gogalis University of Peloponnese

Abstract According to Bauman’s Liquid Love (2003), the advance in virtual proximity makes human connections frequent and shallower and simultaneously intense and shorter. It makes us wonder if “friendships” on social networks are for “the good, the pleasant or useful” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII). The aim of this study is to investigate three different types of relationships between young Internet users; exclusive Facebook friend, recently added Facebook friend and exclusive face-to-face friend with regard to social attraction, self-disclosure, predictability, trust, gender, length of relationship, self-esteem and sociability. A questionnaire was distributed in a private school of Athens to 158 students with active accounts on Facebook (case study). The findings show that students with the largest number of friends in real life, also have a larger number of friends on Facebook. There is moderate negative correlation between self-esteem and hours spent on Facebook and moderate positive correlation between sociality and the number of friends on Facebook. The values of friendship (social attraction, self-disclosure, predictability and trust) within the Facebook “environment” are always more intense than in that outside Facebook. It was also found that boys have higher levels of self-esteem and sociability, but the differences are more pronounced in the former than in the latter. Teenagers use technology, specifically social networks, to meet their needs. This use must be understood and analyzed according to their circumstance and not according to the expectations of adults. Technology is fully integrated into the their daily routines (Livingstone, 2008: 395), thereby reshaping the environment in which they live, by negotiating their identities and interacting mostly with peers they know (boyd, 2014: 9-10). The search for self and identity is associated within the context of sociability and friendship. A social network like Facebook is the frame of reference. 175

Introduction “O my friends, there is no friend ” J. Derrida, The Politics of Friendship

The above quotation, attributed to Aristotle by Derrida1, and the ensuing debate on friendship (Foucault2, Agamben3) are quite indicative of the ways in which the notion of friendship bisects the social, psychological and political fields. In recent years, the phenomenal growth of social networks —particularly Facebook— contributed to make it clear that social networking constitutes the most prominent choice for developing interpersonal relationships between adolescents, consequently impelling social scientists to produce relevant studies. Bauman in his book Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (2003) criticizes the relationships in our liquid modern world. The notion of “liquid love” describes connections as virtual relationships. Those who were born after 1980 have been nicknamed “Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001) or the “NET Generation” (Tapscott, 1998). Their lives are intensely connected with technology and revolve around the use of computers, video games, digital devices that can reproduce music, mobile phones and all the other tools of the digital era (Prensky, 2001). Technology is fully incorporated in their daily routines (Livingstone, 2008:395). In the liquid modern setting of life, relationships are perhaps the most common, acute, deeply felt and troublesome incarnations of ambivalence. He maintains that the circulation of instant messages between Internet “friends” is actually of greater value than the messages themselves. Bauman’s approach reminds us of Anderson (1991), who coined the term “imagined community” to describe the mystery of one’s tendency to identify within a broad circle

1

To define friendship is to define an absolute sense of mourning. In the presence of the friend we mourn subjective autonomy and come to the realization of its inherent impossibility (Derrida, 1996).

2

“… a relationship that is still formless, which is friendship: the sum of everything through which they can give each other pleasure” (Foucault, 1997:135).

3

The friend lies at the very heart of philosophy; ‘philos’ (Greek) meaning ‘friend’ (Agamben, 2009:25). “…to recognize someone as a friend means not being able to recognize him as ‘something’ “(Agamben, 2009:31).

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of total strangers, with whom he or she feels that the things they share in common are important enough to make them a member of such a community. According to Bauman, the advances in virtual proximity make human connections more frequent and shallower, whilst simultaneously being shorter and more intense. It makes us wonder whether Internet “friendship” lean towards “the good, the pleasant or the useful” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 3). This study aims to investigate whether certain psychological traits of adolescent Internet users could provide similar behavioral patterns within the context of their Internet friendships. It focuses on the differences between three types of relationships between adolescent Internet users (Facebook-exclusive friend, recent Facebook friend and non-Facebook friend), in particular among students of a private high school in Athens (case study) considering social attraction, self-disclosure, predictability, trust, gender, duration of the relationship, self-esteem and sociability. Friendship, Adolescence and Facebook The main issues influencing this study (Internet – Friendship – Adolescence) pertain to its dynamics and its affinity towards rapid change which make for a fickle nature, as a result of its own dependency on fast growing technology. Technology, in turn, is constantly urging individuals and society to embrace it. Through our social relationships, we build our social identities. It is quite natural that the behaviors of adolescent individuals should be interpreted in their own terms, ignoring —as much as possible— adult desires and expectations. The discipline towards self-discovery and the articulation of one’s identity is associated and fundamentally demonstrated through sociability and friendship, with the internet as its context. The Internet lives and real lives of teenagers are psychologically intertwined; adolescents make use of new forms of technology to cover key areas of their development, such as sexuality and familiarity, and also for increasing their autonomy and researching their identity (Christie & Viner, 2005). Teenagers use social networks to cover such needs, with technology on their side. It is their way of reforming their living environment, negotiating their identities and interacting with their familiar peers and, to a lesser extent, with adults (boyd, 2014: 211-213). The advent of Facebook has been viewed as having modified the definition of the word “friend” between its millions of registered users. 177

However, this does not necessarily mean that the psychological importance of friendship, even in cyberspace, has been reduced in any way. One of the tools available to the users of social networks is accepting or declining a friend request made by another user, who is looking to add them to their “friend” list. The choice to accept (or decline) certain users reflects an individual’s desired self-image. In boyd’s study, teenagers claim to understand the difference between a real-life friend and an Internet friend (boyd, 2006). Similarly, Miller (2011:167) believes that friendship is a diverse concept and, despite the fear that Internet friendships have reduced the ability of people to maintain real-life friendships, there is no scientific proof advocating that idea. According to boyd (2006), for many teenagers the participation in a social networking site is not only desirable, but also necessary. “If I am not on MySpace (a social network similar to Facebook), I do not exist” (words of a teenager). This does not only reflect the reason why teenagers are attracted to similar sites but also how their participation in them affects the perception of their own selves, of their identities. The codes of conduct and the rites of communication are just one way to outline their identity and manage their image through their choices (Goffman, 1959). This is achieved through the careful concoction of a profile, which deviates from the original, a process that takes into consideration other users’ profiles and is adapted accordingly. Through the use of images, sound and video (multimodality) a virtual entity is created. The identity seems associated not only with the user him or herself, but also with whom he or she is connected with. Therefore, in such a context, the term “friend” might be deceitful, since such a connection does not necessarily imply friendship, as it is perceived in our everyday life (boyd, 2006). Teenagers claim to be able to understand the difference between a real-life friend and an Internet friend (boyd, 2006), something which could be interpreted as a social literacy practice (Davies, 2012), i.e. attributing to the sense of “friendship” an unconventional definition in accordance with their own cultural environment. Ellison and her team (2007) have concluded that most people use Facebook as a means to keep in touch with older friends and current friendships. Although Facebook has a worldwide reach, its users mostly prefer to communicate within those in their geographical vicinity. In the same spirit, relevant studies have investigated the relationship between Internet communication and real-life communication. For example, Lampe, Ellison and Steinfield (2006) have concluded that Facebook users 178

are most likely to use the “search” function when looking for individuals with whom they have a real-life connection with, rather than connecting with strangers. Similarly, a study conducted by the Pew Research Center has concluded that 91% of American social networking teenagers are looking to connect with pre-existing friends (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Theoretical Framework According to the theoretical framework which formed the theoretical basis of this study (Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Theory of Social Penetration, Model Construction of Identity) the concepts of social attraction, selfdisclosure, predictability and trust are important qualitative characteristics of both friendships in face-to-face relationships and in online relationships. Big Five Factors of personality. The model divides human personality into five dimensions with corresponding characteristics (Costa & McCrae, 1995). The first feature, extraversion, reflects the tendency to be sociable and able to experience positive emotions. The second feature, agreeableness, is another aspect of interpersonal behavior, reflecting a trend of compassion and cooperation. The third characteristic, conscientiousness reflects diligence and meticulousness. The fourth characteristic, emotional stability, is coupled with balance and maturity. The fifth feature, openness to the experience, shows willingness to consider alternative approaches, being a mentally restless person and enjoying artistic pursuits. Ross and his colleagues (2009) and Amichai-Hamburger and Vinitzky (2010) specifically examined the relationship between the Big Five and the use of Facebook. Their results showed that a number of these factors are associated with specific patterns of user Facebook users. For example, extroverts generally have more friends (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010) and are much more integrated into groups on Facebook (Ross et al., 2009) than introverts. Uncertainty Reduction Theory. This theory was introduced in 1975 by Charles R. Berger and Richard J. Calabrese to predict and explain the development of relationships between strangers. A key point of the theory is each individual’s effort to reduce the uncertainty for the individual choices that interact with various strategies to reduce uncertainty (Berger & Calabrese,...