Abstract
The use of information technologies by young people is commonly understood to be a separate, often risky, activity and a distinct form of sociality. Challenging the dominant understanding, this article applies Haraway’s cyborg theory to explore how Facebook-mediated relationships are interconnected with material relationships and daily social life. Young people’s perspectives are privileged through 40 face-to-face interviews in two rural Victorian towns. The cyborg metaphor highlights the fluid melding of various conceptual dualisms altered in the overlap between the virtual environs of Facebook and the material, everyday lives of the young participants, analysed here using the cyborg metaphor. In this sense, Facebook can be best understood as an individualised extension of young people’s broader social lives, part of a larger suite of information technologies, social media and other mediated sociality that is interconnected with materially based, face-to-face interactions.
Facebook is a social networking site (SNS) which seems to have enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity during the last eight years (ACMA, 2009; Hitwise, 2011). With a highly visible position as a mediator of social interaction, it is cast as the domain of young technophiles (boyd, 2008). Unsurprisingly, Facebook is an SNS which boasts an extensive membership (Facebook, 2012) and attracts a significant youth demographic (boyd, 2008). Owing perhaps to the central position young Internet users occupy in the public imagination, the topic of young people and their uses of SNSs has attracted much comment from various spheres, including academia (boyd and Ellison, 2007; Livingstone, 2009; Robards, 2010; Takahashi, 2010; Waite, 2011) and popular discourse (Brenner, 2009; Buttler, 2011; Keepyourchildsafe.org, 2013;, Lee, 2011; Mennie, 2011; Whitlock and Martinez, 2013). Dominant narratives within this discourse construct online spheres in particular ways, articulating consequences for those engaging in these ‘worlds’. Primarily, these narratives are characterised in terms of risk and danger, where young Internet users move from the ‘real’, everyday ‘world’ to a shadowy, uncontrolled online sphere.
Consistent themes emerge most plainly within popular discourse, but are also present in academic writing which implicitly cast virtual spaces as separated, disconnected spheres beyond the control of ‘real-world’ actors. In this way, online technologies are understood as deterministically impacting on users, particularly young, vulnerable users (Livingstone, 2009) by exposing them to negative consequences and risk (Barnes, 2006; see also Dobson, 2012; Ybarra and Mitchell, 2007). Parents, in particular, are pressingly urged to maintain vigilance and employ policing strategies with regard to young Internet users. A sense of urgency is imparted with reports of inadequate levels of security and increased levels of criminal activity (Brenner, 2009; Buttler, 2011; Keepyourchildsafe.org, 2013; Lee, 2011; Mennie, 2011; Whitlock and Martinez, 2013). Online risks inherent in the ‘complex threat of social networks’ (Lee, 2011) are often reported in terms of privacy breaches (Barnes, 2006) and harassment in the form of bullying behaviour (Ybarra and Mitchell, 2007). Warnings from authority figures are cited expounding users to ‘know the risks’ because ‘when you’re on[line] … you don’t know who’s on the other end’ (Buttler, 2011). This discourse casts online spheres as separate spaces characterised by their chaotic, dangerous, risk-laden nature (see Beck, 1986), underpinned by assumptions of a dualistic disconnect dividing the virtual from the ‘real world’.
While dichotomous ways of conceiving online/offline or virtual/material pervaded much early Internet literature (see for example Turkle, 1996) and are still present in popular opinion (Brenner, 2009; Buttler, 2011; Keepyourchildsafe.org, 2013; Lee, 2011; Mennie, 2011; Whitlock and Martinez, 2013), a new generation understands the incorporation of the Internet into everyday lives in a more complex and integrated manner (Bakardjieva, 2005; Campbell, 2004; Dobson, 2012; Jurgenson, 2012; Livingstone, 2009: vii; Miller and Slater, 2000; Sterne, 1999: 258; Petersen, 2007; Takahashi, 2010: 6; Wajcman et al., 2010; Wellman et al., 2002). The aim of this article is to extend previous research and advocate for clearer, more detailed understandings of young people and their relationship with common online environs. This article questions dominant understandings that cast young users as vulnerable risk-takers and offers a re-thinking of the relationship by privileging the perspectives of young people themselves. Donna Haraway’s (1991) cyborg theory is employed to articulate complex interconnections between Facebook and young users.
Background
Commonly perceived as bounded and discrete, the ‘real world’ and the ‘virtual world’ are seen by some as mutually contradictory and separate entities (Barraket and Henry-Waring, 2008: 153). This suggests users cannot simultaneously occupy both contradictory ‘worlds’, but must move from one to another, focusing on one ‘life’ at the expense of the other. This assumption is evident in research and opinion which conceives of incompatible ‘realms’ precluding concurrent material/virtual lives (Barraket and Henry-Waring, 2008; Campbell, 2004; Miller and Slater, 2000). For example, in her oft-cited study Turkle (1996) conceptualised cyberspace as a discrete ‘other’ world, as a ‘liminal’ space where normal social rules do not apply (Sterne, 1999: 35). Commonly understood as the ‘online/offline dichotomy’, this conceptualisation dominated much early generation Internet literature (Miller and Slater, 2000).
However, a new generation of Internet literature has eschewed dichotomous tendencies, conceptually locating the Internet in an everyday context (Bakardjieva, 2005; Campbell, 2004; Jurgenson, 2012; Livingstone, 2009: vii; Miller and Slater, 2000; Petersen, 2007; Sterne, 1999: 258; Takahashi, 2010: 6; Wajcman et al., 2010; Wellman et al., 2002). Indeed, many have critiqued early generations of Internet literature for assuming a dichotomous division between online and offline, and for failing to accurately align Internet use with how it is ‘actually’ used (Wajcman, 2004). Instead there has been a focus on sites and activities sharing a closer relationship to offline life. In particular, research focused on SNSs characterise Internet use as embedded in daily life (boyd, 2008; Dobson, 2012; Dwyer et al., 2007; Farquhar, 2009; Joinson, 2008; Lampe et al., 2007, 2008; Lewis and West, 2009; Tufekci, 2008; Young and Quan-Haase, 2009).
Among this body of literature, some acknowledge the close relationship between online and offline and interrogate underlying assumptions (for example Barraket and Henry-Waring, 2008; Campbell, 2004; Farquhar, 2007; Hardey, 2002). However, while social analyses acknowledge that SNS sites are predominantly used to maintain pre-existing offline social networks (Dwyer et al., 2007; Lampe et al., 2007; Hargittai, 2007; Matei and Ball-Rokeach, 2001), they tend not to systematically examine the relationship, nor contextualise it theoretically. Therefore, in order to examine the relationship between online and offline, Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory (1991) is used to account for complexities in the relationship between virtual and material by highlighting various disputed dualisms.
The cyborg
Haraway (1991: 149) uses the concept of the cyborg as a metaphor, referring to a ‘cybernetic organism’ incorporating organic and mechanised components. Cyborgs are defined by technological adjuncts designed to augment regular human activity, like using a computer, receiving inoculations or wearing eye-glasses (Haraway, 1991: 149). On a more abstract level, the cyborg figure represents blurred boundaries, frayed identities and contradictory elements incorporated into one fluid, permeable figure. Haraway theorises a world essentially ‘about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true’ (1991: 149). Seemingly incompatible elements, traditionally conceived of as opposed and not fitting together, are nonetheless located together and represented by the figure of the cyborg. In this sense, cyborgs cannot be represented as a ‘whole’ body, but rather as a fluid, boundless entity which defines itself by its own network of connections (Haraway, 1991: 151). As such, the cyborg moves with ease between an imprecise and frayed boundary from the physical and non-physical. They are ubiquitous and invisible in one sense, made up of ‘ether, quintessence’ (Haraway, 1991: 153). The fluid, chimerical nature of the cyborg facilitates its movement between and within soluble spaces and this is its value as a conceptual tool for theorising Facebook and the incorporation of Facebook into young lives.
As a critique of absolutist segregations, Haraway uses the metaphor to challenge what she terms as deepened and essential dualisms pervasive in western social thought. These persistent dichotomies, for example self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female or total/partial to name a few, have constituted systemic ‘logics and practices’ which serve to naturalise certain dualisms (Haraway, 1991: 177). As a clear, conceptual binary, online/offline or virtual/material squarely fits into the category of dualisms disputed by the cyborg. The notion of the cyborg serves to challenge the veracity of opposed categories to suggest a more frayed, permeable and corrupted relationship. In collapsing dualisms, the cyborg represents resistance against ‘our romanticism for the “Whole”’ (Hogle, 1995: 214) and warns against a ‘longing’ to account for inconsistency and discrete categories (Haraway, 1991: 173).
The cyborg and Facebook
Taking advantage of the metaphor’s flexibility (Wajcman, 2004: 93), the cyborg is used here to theorise the relative positioning of the SNS Facebook in young people’s lives. In one instance, Facebook is a website clearly identifiable as virtual online space, but simultaneously, it is thoroughly embedded in, and informed by the material lives of the individuals without whom it would not exist in its current, recognisable form. This article draws attention to the overlap where young users log on to the site and begin interacting and inscribing material realities within intangible, virtual environs. In this sense, Facebook occupies the peripheral space between the mutually contradictory virtual/material, incorporating both opposing elements into one fluid, permeable whole. This meeting effects a blurring and melding of two incompatible dynamics, bringing about an emergent cyborgian form. As such, various conceptual dualisms are in various ways questioned, altered and re-negotiated within this blurred cyborgian buffer.
While the cyborg is often applied to collapsed dualisms exemplified in the body (Gruber, 2000; Hogle, 1995; Masters, 2005; Petersen, 2007; Senft, 2008), use of the metaphor here necessitates a shift of focus to a more intangible locus. In this sense, the cyborg is applied to Facebook itself, where it becomes ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’. While the site is less recognisable as a body, it is nonetheless cyborgian in nature. Indeed, Facebook could not exist in its current form without the dual components of its human drivers and its virtual homeland. More than a ‘space’ or a ‘destination’, Facebook can be conceived of as a virtual network of interacting ‘digital bodies’, transcending traditional understandings of physical space yet thoroughly embedded in and informed by materiality.
Using the cyborg metaphor allows an accounting of the simultaneous yet mutually contradictory drivers present in the site by explaining the apparently conflicting nature of the ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’ environment. Indeed, by using the cyborg as an explanatory metaphor, collapsed dualisms are implied. One visible dualism discussed here, and noted by other Internet observers and scholars, is the online/offline dichotomy. However, the metaphor calls into question a host of dualisms, including past/present, intimate/acquaintance, actual/ideal, public/private, disputed and re-negotiated in the cyborgian ‘ether’ of Facebook/everyday life. This article seeks to extend research into young people and their uses of SNSs, such as Facebook, by privileging young people’s own perspectives in a series of case studies and discussing the various dualisms highlighted by the cyborg. By applying the metaphor to interpret the incorporation of Facebook into the young participants’ everyday lives, this article aims to further understanding of the complex relationship between Facebook and young users.
Methods
Ethics approval was granted by the University of Melbourne Health Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee in June 2010. Data were collected principally in the form of interviews with young people aged 16–22 years in two rural towns in north and central Victoria. The local Football and Netball Club (FNC) was chosen as the principal site for recruitment, as a site attracting significant numbers of young people on a regular basis (28 of the 40 were approached in this context). Other recruitment methods used included ‘snowballing’ (four were identified via this method) and approaching young people in public areas in these towns (eight were approached in this way). Towns and individual respondents are referred to using pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants.
Researchers approached the local FNC president by telephone, outlining the nature and scope of the research and invited the club to participate. The organisation was offered $250 as a reimbursement for their time and effort providing access to potential participants. Individual participants were offered $30. FNC presidents in both Northtown and Southville agreed to participate, although the Southville FNC declined the $250 reimbursement. Researchers approached individuals and groups of potential respondents at the FNC and invited them to participate in an interview. The nature and scope of the study was explained as well as the expectations of being a participant and the confidential nature of the research. Participants were provided with a plain language information statement. Once the researcher ascertained that the respondent was aware of the implications of their participation and had agreed to take part, they were asked to sign a consent form.
Semi-structured interviews ranging between 30 minutes to an hour covered a variety of broad topics, including young people’s interests, activities and social lives, their relationships, including with family members, friends, boy/girlfriends, pets and anyone else, and their use of technology, including mobile phones, the Internet and SNSs in particular. The authors observed that conversations tended to naturally flow from discussion of social relationships to use of social technologies, and most participants mentioned Facebook unprompted. Data on participants’ wider social relationships were used to contextualise their uses of social media within their social lives.
Once the data collection phase was completed, interview recordings were transcribed and entered into NVivo. To be consistent with a Harawayian mode of analysis, each transcript was analysed fully and individually as a case study to maintain the individuality and complexity of participant experiences (Stake, 2000). Analysis of the whole transcript in this way provides young people’s perceptions of their everyday lives from which relationships, contradictions and collapsed dualisms have been highlighted. Furthermore, young people’s talk has enabled insight into material lives and virtual experiences both separately and as they interrelate. In an attempt to render the complex, individual nature of the cyborg in respondents’ discussions and perspectives regarding Facebook and virtually mediated sociality, numerous elements of the metaphor are discussed as they emerge in a series of participant ‘stories’. All 40 participants’ stories cannot be presented; rather, five have been included here to clearly demonstrate key cyborgian aspects present among many of the young participants.
Findings
The respondents
In all, 40 individuals took part over four months between July and October 2010. The two research sites, Northtown and Southville, were unique places from which a number of young people were recruited sharing similar characteristics. In both towns, participants were relatively young, with 22 aged 18 or 19, and 12 aged 16 or 17. While 24 males and 16 females participated, the gender distribution was more even in Southville where 10 males and 9 females took part. In Northtown, more young men took part with 14 males and 7 females participating. Across both towns, 21 respondents indicated they were secondary school students and 9 reported being in post-school education, including trade apprenticeships (5), university (3) and TAFE (1) students. Additionally, six reported being in full-time work, two reported part-time employment and a further two respondents were no longer in school nor working.
Social media technologies, including mobile telephony and Internet-based SNSs, emerged as significant mediums for social interaction according to the young people of this study. With the exception of a few, most respondents indicated some type of SNS use, most commonly Facebook. Participants described their interactions with the site in diverse ways, explaining the carry-over of daily social life to the virtual environment of Facebook. For some, use was characterised by frequent log-ons and a significant time commitment, some visiting the site 5–10 times each day spending between 10–30 minutes ‘just checking up’. Some indicated spending several hours on the site, while others reported visiting every two or three days or once per fortnight. However, frequency of use tended to fluctuate and some participants seemed to have trouble recounting their use in absolute terms. Number of ‘friends’ varied, ranging from 100 to 900 with an average of 400–500 mutually confirmed contacts. On the whole, the tone employed by participants was overwhelmingly casual in nature and Facebook was talked about in mundane terms, as an everyday application used for practical purposes. In this way, the site seemed to be uncritically incorporated and utilised within a broader suite of mediated social channels.
Each of the case studies presented was chosen to represent various facets of the cyborg. Max’s story explicates the collapse of virtual/material, public/private and the fluctuating, blurred boundaries present in his life. Ruby’s story focuses on the blurring between actual/ideal and past/present through the production of controlled, idealised images in the form of shared photos inscribing everyday lives in online environs. Genevieve’s story highlights the frayed, confused relationship between intimate/acquaintance in her negotiation of an extensive, diverse ‘friend list’, also demonstrating the effortless movement from everyday material realities to mediated and virtual interactions. The final case study, Sienna, demonstrates anxious intimacies stemming from her struggle to maintain a division separating virtual and material. While commonalities emerged among the participants, each spoke about themselves and their Facebook use in individualised, idiosyncratic terms demonstrating sometimes contradictory and inconsistent understandings. Contextual dynamics inherent in everyday lives, such as information regarding family, community and close social ties, are included in the case studies. An account of these broader influences is important in gaining a fuller understanding of these young people’s daily, material lives. The inclusion of contextual information also emphasises that Facebook use and other mediated interaction does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, Facebook is intricately related to these broader dynamics.
Max’s story
Max, a 17-year-old from Southville, was about to begin his final year of secondary school. Surrounded by a supportive family, he talked about being close to his mother and appeared to look up to his father. Experiencing health issues as a young child appeared to have significantly impacted his current outlook and coloured his future career ambitions. Max was highly complimentary about important social relationships, particularly his closest friend with whom he indicated sharing ‘everything’. Max described the intimate role of technology in his broader social life, represented by the omnipresent mobile phone. Not only was it a means to contact others via text message or voice calls, the phone was also a means to log on to Facebook.
Max reported using Facebook in a regular, routine fashion, unthinkingly incorporating it into his daily pattern. He described logging on to the site as an everyday activity: ‘I’ve got it (Facebook) on my phone, I’ll just check it every day before I go to bed to see what – if I’ve got any updates or anything, but yeah its probably about once every day (that I check Facebook).’ Max went online to maintain material relationships with those he encountered on a regular basis: ‘just staying in touch with what everyone’s doing I guess, yeah … [it’s] mainly local people that I talk to – I don’t really talk to many of the other people on there (Facebook) just mainly my mates …’ It was a seamless melding between face-to-face, physical meetings and the virtual interactions of Facebook where the conversations initiated earlier in the day would continue: ‘[We talk about] just what happened during the day, just footy on the weekend, what’s goin’ on, on the weekend, all that kind of stuff.’
The ways in which Max talked about using Facebook highlighted his unthinking, frequent engagement in the cyborgian ‘ether’ where virtual and material overlap. Within this ‘ether’ distinctions are blurred between public/private. Max and others discussed what they talked about on Facebook, indicating sometimes sharing personal information, but most commonly broadcasting humorous or novel messages aimed at friends and peers. Issues related to maintaining privacy were perceived in various ways, but participants did not seem to closely interrogate them. User-end controls were utilised by some, while others felt protected by anonymity. Respondents such as Max could not often definitively state whether they used Facebook as a private forum for communication or a means to publicly broadcast open messages. In this way, public/private was blurred through the Facebook interface, incorporating both intimate message board and openly available interface. In one instance, messages posted by individuals are received by those for whom they were intended, and in other ways, these same posts are accessible to vast numbers of individuals. Respondents such as Max negotiated this blurring of distinctions and no participant indicated any problems navigating the frayed overlap where public and private seemingly melded into each other.
‘Facebook-as-cyborg’ also existed for Max via the mechanical gateway that mediated Max’s absorption of virtual social environs that was perpetually present in the form of his mobile phone. In turn, the cyborg was indelibly anchored and embedded in Max’s local context providing a forum to continue offline conversations about ‘just what happened during the day’. It was an uncritical incorporation characterised by immediacy and constant availability. Social relationships that were prominent in his daily, material life, ‘my mates’, were reflected in his virtual experiences: ‘talk about footy’. This was the case for many other respondents who reported frequent log-ons during spare moments of the day to continue conversations initiated earlier with close friends, boy/girlfriends or siblings in material settings.
Ruby’s story
Ruby, a young woman in her final year of secondary school from Southville, commuted to a nearby regional centre to attend school but played team sports locally. Ruby described a diverse social circle with friends sourced from a relatively broad regional area. Speaking at length about the break-up of her parents’ marriage, Ruby described her thoughts and the impacts their separation had had on her and her siblings’ daily lives. While she hedged around particular aspects, it was clear that Ruby had taken a supportive role to her mother with whom she lived. Not unhappy at home, Ruby seemed to privilege social interaction afforded at school and among her peer group above that of her family.
Ruby reported frequently logging on to Facebook, spending short amounts of time there unless there was an opportunity to chat, in which case she indicated she would spend more time on the site. A relatively passive user, Ruby described viewing content compiled and posted by others on her network. This included frequently viewing, tagging and commenting on photos. There were always ‘a fair few’ photos to look at in this regard. In viewing these photographic recordings of weekend social gatherings, Ruby talked about being able to re-live the event and rekindle her memory of the time she had spent. Photos depicted a female-dominated clique, including Ruby, her close friends as well as a wider school-based peer group. While not overtly sexualised images, posted photos showed them in subtle poses clearly intended to emphasise feminine aspects.
The collapsing of inherently cyborgian actual/ideal and past/present dualisms was particularly evident during Ruby’s discussions about viewing and traversing photo albums on Facebook. Indeed, many respondents reported interacting with others via the site in the context of viewing, posting and commenting on photos. Overwhelmingly, photos in these virtual platforms tended to depict material others during tangible social events and gatherings. In re-living cherished social events, often on multiple occasions, time separating the original event from subsequent viewings was disrupted. Occupying the ubiquitous, soluble ‘ether’, the young users were able to drive continuously shifting movements by fluidly melding the virtuality of Facebook with the materiality of everyday lives. In this way, virtual/material was not the only dualism in dispute, but past/present was also blurred. Representations of self in the form of shared photographs and photos selected as profile pictures also highlighted material selves and exemplified the heightened control in terms of presentation. This level of management enabled by the virtual forum was embraced by many of the respondents. Ruby chose to emphasise particular feminine, coquettish features in her profile photo by subtly manipulating pose, angle and lighting. At the same time, however, she presented an idealised but recognisable, materially anchored version of her everyday self. Negotiating presentation of often manipulated, idealised but recognisable images involved a blurred melding of conceptually opposed ‘actual appearance’ versus ‘idealised appearance’. As such, ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’ highlighted the additional collapse of the actual/ideal dualism for Ruby and others.
Genevieve’s story
Genevieve, an 18-year-old in her final year of secondary school in Southville, was a seemingly dedicated, ambitious student. However, Genevieve described a variety of interests outside of school. Relatively comfortable talking about intimate, personal topics during the interview, Genevieve presented a mature, confident self. Intimate, emotional issues, such as the break-up of her parents’ marriage, her living arrangements as well as her relationship with various family members were discussed in matter-of-fact ways. Describing a problematic relationship with her mother, Genevieve lived with her father with whom she indicated having more in common. Delineating herself as not being a member of the ‘cool group’ at school, Genevieve talked at length about a close group of peers, including a ‘best mate’ and boyfriend with whom she was particularly close.
Exchanging text messages on her mobile phone was a primary means of keeping in contact with that peer group, particularly her best friend and boyfriend. Sending short messages in this way, sometimes ‘up to 200’ text messages a day, formed a type of perpetual conversation which could be maintained while undertaking other activities; ‘I can do things at home and text people at the same time, it’s just – it’s a good way to keep in touch and it’s a good way to talk to people I suppose.’ Privileging her mobile phone, Genevieve nonetheless reported using Facebook in a similar way. The ‘chat’ function was described as the most often used application on Facebook: ‘[I] talk to a lot of my friends from school [who are] on there [Facebook] and my boyfriend on there, um that’s probably about it … it’s only the close friends that I will speak to on there.’ Nonetheless, Genevive reported having over 400 mutually confirmed friend contacts. She talked about Facebook as a means to augment already established relationships, most commonly with close peers.
For respondents such as Genevieve, Facebook-as-cyborg highlighted a blurring of social relationships exemplified in her negotiation of an extensive, diverse list of ‘friend’ contacts. Rarely were Facebook connections not originally established on a face-to-face basis, however briefly. The wider diversity of acquaintances and otherwise weak connections which Genevieve and other respondents described as making up their mutually confirmed network of Facebook ‘friends’ tended to reflect various material social settings. These settings included school, sporting clubs as well as those living in nearby regional centres, the state capital or interstate. Despite the large proportion of weak connections dominating respondents’ contacts lists, these individuals did not seem to occupy interactive time nor emotional commitment in the way other more central relationships did. Yet, for the most part, each ‘friend’, irrespective of the strength or status of the relationship, occupied an equal position within their Facebook network. Best friends, distant family, boy/girlfriends and acquaintances from other schools, for example, tended to share the same access and level of intimacy with a given individual profile. While Genevieve passively interacted with her 400 contacts, she actively focuses on more intimate friends on the site. In this way, distinctions separating intimate/acquaintance, which may have been clearer in an everyday context, became blurred and confused. However, negotiating the competing expectations of these diverse audiences for respondents such as Genevieve was less apparent.
Sienna’s story
Having recently completed secondary school in Northtown, Sienna was a 19-year-old agricultural apprentice. Talking at length about the importance of social relationships, particularly with her family, parents and siblings, Sienna presented as a confident, outgoing individual. Taking responsibility and effort to maintain face-to-face relationships with the people in her life, Sienna indicated frustration when others did not reciprocate. She talked about relying on the convenience of her mobile phone in a variety of ways to help maintain important social relationships. Living with her boyfriend not far from her parents’ house, Sienna reported being happy having those important to her close by.
Sienna was one of only two respondents who reported not using Facebook. She insistently stated she was not a member and did not intend to join despite pressure from friends to do so. It seemed that Sienna had adopted a position against the site and was responding to its ubiquity among her own friendship group by resolutely defining herself in opposition to it and the Internet at large: ‘No, hate the Internet – not an Internet person, wouldn’t know what the hell I’m doin’.’ However, she did report using the Internet for research purposes as part of her TAFE course. Sienna talked about Facebook as being more than a forum for virtually mediated social interaction, but a representation of a dystopian Internet and destroyer of ‘good’, apparently wholesome, face-to-face relationships. In spite of this, she talked about having used earlier SNS incarnations, such as MSN, although she indicated finding it as an unsatisfying form of communication: Yeah, but I didn’t use it [MSN] that often, it wasn’t something that really I wanted to do constantly. We had the Internet but I’d probably go on it once a month, wasn’t interested. I just got one [a profile] ’cause everyone else did and then I thought no, waste of time. I can just [text] message someone [laughing] or call someone so …
In her story, Sienna reflected anxieties regarding the intimate melding of technologies and people and expressed longing for face-to-face interactions. In the case of Facebook, Sienna responded by excluding it from her life, in an attempt to maintain a semblance of Harawayian wholeness. However, Sienna’s attempt to reject the Internet was inconsistent, fluctuating and contradictory, as she used it for study, previously used MSN and used other technologies, including a mobile phone, without the same anxiety. While other theorists have discussed such fears, locating them within a different social and political context (for example Beck, 1986), Haraway (1991) traces the fear to a more individualised, fundamental yearning for unity and purity. Several respondents, to varying degrees, expressed anxiety stemming from apparently intimate, fluid virtual/material pairings. They indicated they did not use the site ‘too’ much nor privilege it centrally in their broader, everyday life. A desire to maintain more ‘wholesome’ face-to-face relationships in preference to the apparently poor simulacra of Facebook connections was expressed by others in various ways, but this did not necessarily relate to actual use.
Discussion
The value of applying Haraway’s (1991) cyborg theory lies in its ability to signal the unpacking and re-ordering of the relationships between young people, Facebook and their everyday lives. Relationships between users and online environs are often understood in absolute, dichotomous terms (see Miller and Slater, 2000). Dominant and popular discourses hold that the online ‘sphere’ is necessarily disconnected and separated from its opposing counterpart in the ‘real world’. Once users ‘log on’, they are immediately exposed to a gamut of cyber-bullies, privacy attacks and ‘Internet perverts’ (Brenner, 2009; Buttler, 2011; Keepyourchildsafe.org, 2013; Lee, 2011; Mennie, 2011; Whitlock and Martinez, 2013). It is implied that these dangers do not exist for young people, at least in the same form, in ‘real-world’ contexts. However, these young people’s explanations and descriptions of their uses and incorporation of Facebook into their everyday lives indicate that these understandings are assumptions which do not faithfully represent them. The young people talked about ‘just going online’ to talk to their mates, girl/boyfriends, share photos and generally extend everyday sociality across multiple mediums. They did not talk about going online to engage in risky activities. That is not to say that risk was not present in their lives, however. Clearly the connections between online and offline were more complicated than dualistic conjecture assumes. Using the cyborg metaphor allows a more faithful rendering of this relationship by accounting for the inherent complexity. It depicts a re-ordering of the disputed relationship between everyday lives and Facebook by illustrating a collapsed, blurred, interconnected, frayed nestling together of seemingly incompatible forms.
The cyborgian nature of Facebook was demonstrated by the young respondents in their descriptions of use and their positioning of the site in broader social lives. Various dualisms were negotiated by the young participants, including virtual/material, intimate/acquaintance, public/private, past/present and actual/ideal. These stories highlighted the blurring, and sometimes collapse, of these conceptual divisions within ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’. Material realities were thoroughly embedded in participants’ use of the site to mediate everyday lives and/or important offline social relationships, such as those with close peers or family members. Materiality was also inscribed in the ways interviewees chose to represent themselves within the network. At the same time, the virtuality of Facebook was intimately nestled with the seemingly contradictory material reality. Indeed, the virtual environment simultaneously informed and influenced representations and interactions mediated through the site.
Within the blurred, collapsed ‘ether’ of ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’, various other conceptual dualisms were questioned, re-negotiated and frayed. The negotiation of different types of social relationships becomes obscured and confused in a forum which does little to differentiate intimate, close friends from weaker acquaintances. The melding of a manipulated, idealised image posted as a profile photo with the actual, material appearance of an individual was also repeatedly reported by the respondents. The oft-cited activity of viewing photos and re-living social events served to collapse past events with the present. Divisions between public domains and private spaces were also confused owing to the complexity of the Facebook forum and the ways in which it was perceived and utilised by the young people. Further, distinctions according to distance and time were also challenged, with the young participants embracing the opportunity to interact early in the morning or late at night across neighbourhoods and regions. While gender was a major conceptual dualism highlighted by Haraway (1991), it emerged in various respects for many respondents as an enduring source of social identity. However, each negotiated and constructed individualised, sometimes inconsistent, gendered identities, incorporating and discarding elements as they saw fit at a given juncture.
Haraway’s (1991) theory not only embraces postmodernist themes of complexity, individualism and contradiction, it also privileges these concepts. Haraway (1991) resists pressure to impose categories and discover absolute truths. As such, the intricate, complex, subtle nature of social relations often characterised by contradictions and defined by unique, idiosyncratic individualism is preserved as much as possible. On the whole, young respondents chose to use the site to interact and present themselves in individualised ways, using the virtual platform to embrace complexity and contradiction. Privileging contradiction, complexity and individualism facilitates a more consistent portrayal of these respondents’ perspectives on their own Facebook use and everyday lives than identifying common themes or categories. From these respondents’ talk, Facebook can faithfully be understood as cyborgian in nature, explicating various dualisms and elements of the metaphor (Haraway, 1991).
Conclusion
In place of simplistic, dichotomous understandings that diametrically oppose virtual and material ‘worlds’, interconnections between the two can be more realistically understood in terms of an embedded extension where virtual/material are fluidly melded into one permeable, blurred ‘Facebook-as-cyborg’. The young people themselves were primarily responsible for this collapse, integrating material selves within virtual confines, fluidly moving between online and offline and confusing various other conceptual dualisms in the process with little thought of differentiating between incompatible forms. For these young people at least, Facebook did not represent a disconnected ‘other world’, dominating users and taking advantage of vulnerable minds to steal confidential information and expose members to unprecedented levels of danger and risk. Rather, this study found that Facebook can be best understood as an individualised extension of young people’s broader social lives, part of a larger suite of information technologies, social media and other mediated sociality, but ultimately anchored in materially based, face-to-face interactions.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the young participants for sharing their stories and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Funding
This research has been supported by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing through the University Department of Health (UDRH) program.