This document summarizes Martine Gjede's qualitative research on social media self-presentation and context collapse. Her thesis examined how private individuals experience context collapse on Facebook and the consequences for their behavior. She defined context collapse and discussed challenges in collecting qualitative Facebook data. Her method involved asking open-ended questions on Facebook to gather user perspectives on networking, privacy, and performance of self.

1. Qualitative Datacollection on Social Media
and
Selfpresentation

2. Hello there!
∞ Martine Gjede @mgjede
∞ Digital Design and Communication
∞ Main interests while studying:
∞ Social media .. that is...
∞ communication and online selfpresentation on social media
∞ digital identity and privacy on social media
∞ online marketing on social media

3. Where I work
www.atcore.dk
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4. What I do
∞ Social Marketing Manager
∞ Tweeting: @atcore
∞ Facebooking..pinning..instagramming.. linkedining.. and you get the
point
∞ I market Atcore
∞ I blog... a lot about online marketing and social media:
www.atcore.dk/blog
∞ pressreleases, writing guides etc.

5. I am also an author ... to be published this month...

6. I’m looking for interns...
Spring 2013
You must be fluent in Danish...
(sorry)
www.atcore.dk/praktikant

7. Agenda
∞ A little about what my thesis was about
∞ What is context collapse?
∞ Selfpresentation
∞ Research dilemmas
∞ Creating a new method
∞ Things to consider
∞ Formulating questions
∞ Ethnographic things to consider when you are a researcher on Facebook

8. Thesis introduction
∞ Significance and consequence of context collapse on Facebook
∞ Problem formulation: How does the private human being experiences
context collapse on Facebook and what are the following consequences
for the behavior on the medium?

9. What is context collapse?
∞ In my OFFLINE life people know me from different situations:
∞ Colleagues
∞ School
∞ Family
∞ My mother in law
∞ My drinking buddies
∞ My pole dancing class
∞ My church friends
∞ All different sides of me.. and that’s great
because I am used to adjusting my behavior and selfpresentation accordingly

10. But on Facebook all my friends, my past and present come
together....
That is context collapse!!
How do we deal?
Do we deal?
Do we choose a certain selfpresentation?

11. I define context collapse through three theoretical angles
∞ 1. Network – how do we behave when we are a part of a network?
(synergies, hierachies, roles, messages we send out)
∞ 2. Privacy – we apply certain behaviors to feel in control and private
(technological, thing we say/ don’t say, social guidelines and rules)
∞ 3. Digital selfpresentation (Goffman( new theory) Facebook is a theatre
and everybody is meddling in our performance and also we invent an
audience. (Selfpresentation, definition of who is performing and who the
audience is)

12. More digital selfpresentation: Performance
∞ Selfpresentation through choice: action, interaction and control:
∞ Agency: How well we do it and getting reactions from others
∞ Rhetorical talent and intellect.
∞ Irony, exaggerating
∞ Performing through technological affordances: Tagging, timeline
∞ Technological affordances enhances the selfpresentation
∞ We are not the only ones performing in our own self presentation....

13. More digital selfpresentation: Audience
∞ Audience is very important in our selfpresentation
∞ The audience confirm and justify our selfpresentation
∞ 1. The invisible audience
∞ 2. The immediate audience: Announcing themselves
∞ 3. The invented audience:
∞ Changes according to who we deal with offline, geographical location, and
the invented audience is also merged with the immediate audience

14. Research dilemmas
∞ How do I collect qualitative data quantitavely? :-/
∞ quantitative vs. qualitative
∞ what is the state of things vs why is the state of things
∞ macro level (objective) vs. micro level (subjective)

15. More research challenges
∞ I wanted opinions, motivation and insights into the navigation and actions
on Facebook from many
∞ I wanted answers on Facebook
∞ I wanted juicy answers and not pleasing answers from tech savy ITU
students (my own network)

16. Presenting ”Qualitative Datacollection on Facebook”
∞ Using Facebook as a method-case
∞ Getting in contact with users through private statusupdates
∞ Asking the users questions and getting them engaged
∞ Supplemented with 7 semistructured interviews for more in depth answers
from the results I gained

17. Example

18. Asking questions
∞ An observation I had made or a presumption I had (theory or an answer to
a question)
∞ Purpose: To get as many users to talk to me as possible about networking,
privacy and selfpresentation through rhetoric and technological behavior
∞ Open and simple questions (not too academic)
∞ Talking about: How do they perform, who their audience is, gaining a
feeling of control (privacy), synergies in networks and technological
affordances

19. Purpose of asking questions
∞ To get into contact with as many users as possible
∞ To weigh in answers: are they thematical, cultural, social? – to use in an
analysis
∞ To keep or discard hypothesis’ I have had through reading the theoretical
material

20. How I did it
∞ I asked a question
∞ I needed to conquer the Edge Rank by attaching a photo

21. How I did it
∞ I lured them in.. with chance of winning a very nice (and slightly used)
book
∞ They could comment (or write to me privately)

22. How I did it
I collected all answers on a blog
collapsedcontexts.blogspot.dk/
structure,
accessibility
everybody could look at them

23. Targeting other networks: Ambassadors
∞ reaching out to networks that I cant reach
∞ preventing the tech savy ITU students
∞ Choosing them:
∞ Tempted to ask social influences but recruited through asking in a status
update and people volunteered

24. Example

25. Questions
∞ open questions: such as:
∞ ”Do you share videos on your Facebook wall? Why”
∞ narrow questions: such as:
∞ ”Sometimes you write a status update and sometimes you don’t. And
sometimes you want to share, but change your mind. Why do you share
and what makes you change your mind?”

26. Working with a medium in real time
∞ what time should I post a status update?
∞ Users use Facebook at different times. (Smartphones, work, students).
∞ Targeting different networks
∞ Some ambassadors posted statusupdates at 11:30 resulting in
∞ 1. Very few answers or
∞ 2. Drunk answers

27. Ethographic considerations
∞ It is an advantage not a disadvantage to have a pre-knowledge of
Facebook:
∞ Understanding the medium, the constant changes in technology, how
people navigate
∞ The method supports the ethnographic tradition and embraces the
subjectivity: That the ethnographer is also an avid user on Facebook
∞ Although the ethnographer will have established strong ties with some of
the users which will include not serious answers, not in depth answers

28. Some advantages and disadvantages
∞ Advantages:
∞ crossing networks
∞ talking to the users about the medium on the medium
∞ comments generate more comments
∞ Disadvantage:
∞ The spontanousness in answers will be killed by the written format
∞ Users are effected by eachother’s answers
∞ The medium is fleeting and no one is obligated to anything: ”I agree”
∞ Context collapse hinders answers

29. Any q’s for me?
∞ Thank you for your attention.
connect with me: @mgjede
write to me: mg@atcore.dk