Self-disclosure In Enacting Friendship in Facebook

Abstract

People have always disclosed information about themselves to enact virtual friendship in social networking sites particularly in Facebook. The types of messages disclosed about themselves posted in Facebook wall have shown the initiative of Facebook users to share the happenings in their life with their Facebook friends. The case study aims to examine the ways in which Facebook users reveal themselves to others through their Facebook wall posts, in order to better understand self-disclosure as a resource for enacting friendship in Facebook. Facebook posted messages from the participants’ Facebook profiles were collected in one year’s time, then the messages were analysed and categorised into various types of self-disclosure. Content analysis was used to collect data. The majority of the posted messages are self story-telling through state and action statements and affective statement. The Facebook users act as story-tellers were noted as they story about their personal experience as a form of self-disclosure to enact friendship. The implications in term of self-disclosure and friendship are discussed.

Keywords: Self-disclosurefriendshipFacebook

Introduction

What is self-disclosure? Self-disclosure is a main key for people in establishing and developing relationships in online settings in the same way as it is in offline contexts (Dindia, 2000). Researches on self-disclosure focus more on revealing highly delicate information such as personal fears, deep religious faiths, and potentially disgraceful information. However, self-disclosure also attends to less serious information (e.g., “I love home-made pizza”) (Greene, Derlega and Mathews, 2006). Self-disclosure of “superficial” information or everyday activities plays a significant role in starting and maintaining a relationship. Continuous disclose about personal information bring consequences to relationship development and maintenance. This is because self-disclosure is an important component of how researchers view friendship (West, Lewis and Currie, 2009) and romantic love (Gibbs, Ellison and Lai, 2011).

The online spaces provide new platform for users to enact self-presentation that may also be different from face to face settings. Previous studies have examined self- presentation online (McKenna, 2002) and internet dating site (Gibbs, 2006). The popularity of Facebook has attracted scholars to pay attention to self-presentation issue on this social network sites. Kim (2011) for example, examined the effects of self-presentation on subjective well-being on Facebook as paths to happiness. They found out that an honest self-presentation strategy may increase happiness that originated from social support provided by Facebook friends. However, Mehdizadeh (2010) studied the influence of narcissism and self-esteem to self-presentation on Facebook. The study revealed that individuals with higher narcissism but lower self-esteem were associated to greater online activity and self-promotional content. Online users perform different self-presentation strategies in different online settings.

Methodology

This case study tried to describe self-disclosure phenomenon among Malaysian youths who are Facebook users. This study applied case study design as the study can be conducted within naturalistic research methodologies. The research was designed as a holistic single case design, which enable a single unit to be analysed holistically to investigate all the changes and the process (Creswell, 2007). Table 1 presents the research questions, data collection tools and data analysis methodology.

Findings

The findings are explained in detail below according to the research questions.

The messages posted in Facebook consist of two statements, which are state and action statements, and affective statement. From the findings, Facebook users used more state and action statements compared to affective statement. In state and action statements, disclosing personal information strategy has the highest frequency compared to other strategies. Facebook users described the matters they have done and the people they have interacted in their life. One of the Facebook users posted messages about one of her family members especially her beloved youngest daughter, named Hannah. The posted messages are ‘Hannah & d mannequin…’ , ‘I can fly!’, ‘Little Hannah cried all day!’ and ‘Homework time with mama’. These posted messages are mostly described her youngest daughter have indicated the bond of a mother and her daughter. The Facebook user perform her identity as a mother and also a friend to her daughter revealed intimacy in a relationship. Secondly, Facebook users also revealed her working condition. As working is a part of real life, the posted messages have revealed the attitude of Facebook users toward her work. The Facebook user continue her work even though it was raining, ‘working in the rain…..’ . The posted message ‘gotta get them done…..’ portrayed her determination to get her work done. Besides, Facebook users also disclosed activities they done such as traveling such as ‘back to serdang….’, ‘mothers’ day in bahau…..’ and ‘back to penang servicing princess felicia….’. Facebook users also posted her shopping and outing activities such as ‘enjoying myself in s’ban…food, new clothes, bag, n titbits of coz….’ and ‘Had a great movie ,marathon.. 2 great movies in one night…Water for elephant n Thor..’. Gathering with people, ‘i had a BLAST dinner lazy nite n an AWESOME gathering with students’. Moreover, Facebook users tend to post their current state on Facebook. They shared with friends the activities they were doing at that moment and hopefully their post will be viewed by their Facebook friends. The posted messages revealed the Facebook users’ current state are ‘is pondering over the sign coding schemes’, ‘Now going 2 keningau’, ‘anticipating brasil-portugal match tonite!’ , ‘office stuff are making my head bigger and bigger’ and ‘is having fun time in ump's library….’. In sum, Facebook users described themselves, happenings and people around them through state and action statements.

On the other hand, Facebook users described their life through affective statement. In affective statement, the strategy of disclosing feeling and emotion come after disclosing personal information. Facebook users expressed their feeling in posted messages. The posted messages contains affective words such as ‘like’, ‘want’, ‘love’, ‘hate’, ‘miss’. These can be found in the examples like ‘i hate the smell of hospital’, ‘i love dancing to MJ’s smooth criminal! Ow!’, ‘But i like yesterday’s match btwn argentina n korea.’, ‘is very satisfied with brazil’s performance in group stage.’, ‘I’m so lovin’ travelli’ alone.’, ‘i miss my social life back in kuching.. I miss swimming@stampark with my fren, i miss kook mi, i miss d busy uptown kuching.. I miss my bed n burke the cat..’.The Facebook users were expressed either their positive or negative feeling toward things they encountered in life.

Facebook is a platform for Facebook users express their thought or personal opinion freely. Facebook users encountered experience they think should be spoken and shred with their friends in Facebook, for example ‘Omg I saw a handsome doctor at d hospital juz now. He looked cool with a drink in his hand.@_@‘. The Facebook user personally thought the doctor she saw was good-looking. The other two posted messages were interrogative sentences such as ‘Will Italy succeed or succumb to failure like france?’ and ‘Will Spain live up 2 my expectation of will they be a let down?’. Facebook users expressed their uncertain thought about the situation thus their thought were expressed through interrogative sentences. From the examples above, the messages posted by the Facebook users was aimed to update their friends about happenings occurred in their life.

On the other hand, Facebook users disclosed their high encouragement towards their friends. This can be seen as Facebook users encouraged their friends and themselves not to give up in the process of completing the task. They persuade themselves and think in a more positive way for instance ‘Maybe i can shed sum weight fast this way. Think positive. There must be a reason why i’m sent here’. Besides, Facebook users also posted the first plural pronoun “we” to indicate Facebook users and their friends were in the same boat. Thus, encouragement shown toward their friends indicated they have more intimacy bond in their friendship. The firs plural pronoun ‘we’ has been used repeatedly in these posted messages, ‘v r not alone…v fight together’ and ‘v gotta keep holding on… no matter is a project or a thesis’.

Last but not least, Facebook users posted the result of personality tests from other websites, such as ‘Super Birthday Code’ and ‘Which Historical Character Are You?’ Facebook users wanted to know more about themselves thus they took the personality tests which related to their interest.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, the posted messages in Facebook disclosed users’ physical and mental activities. Their self-disclosure were summarised as how they presented part of happenings in their offline life to cyberspace. The messages posted by users showed that most of the posted messages fall into personal disclosure category as Facebook users disclosed their everyday activities, working life, family members, location and social activities (e.g., gathering, festival celebration, wedding ceremony and holiday vacation). Furthermore, Facebook users also disclosed their feeling and thoughts toward some occurrence in their Facebook profile. As an implication, Facebook users revealed part of themselves such as inner-self, thoughts, interaction with other persons and share their life on cyberspace. High disclosure of personal information about daily life influence relationship development and maintenance (Greene, Derlega and Mathews, 2006). This is because self-disclosure facilitates the formation and development of interpersonal relationships (Laurenceau et al., 1998). Self-disclosure is the main way how Facebook users perform friendship to maintain offline relationship and at the same time keep their information “up-to-date” among their Facebook friends.

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