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other users with whom they share a connection,
and view and traverse their list of connections and
those made by others within the system.According
to Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti (2005),
such sites, through the emphasis on personal pro-
files, offer a representation of users for others to
peruse with the intention of contacting or being
contacted by others to meet new friends or dates,
find new jobs, receive or provide recommenda-
tions, and much more.
Dana Boyd (2006) postulates that while the
meanings of practices and features can differ
across sites and individuals the notion of sharing
is intrinsic to these sites. Personal information
and private comments on a public platform then
become a form of social capital which people trade
and exchange to build new ties and to invite dif-
ferent types of gaze and spectatorship. Chapman
and Lahav (2008) point out that while there is a
novelty surrounding social networking behavior
from the perspective of researchers, this behavior
will become increasingly integrated with other
forms of communication as social networking
becomes increasingly incorporated into one's ev-
eryday routines. This means that social networking
behavior will function in conjunction with other
communication options including email, instant
messaging, and mobile devices.
The need to attract public attention in some way
through daily interactions and to seek familiar and
unknown audiences characterizes social network-
ing sites. Stefanone et al. (2008) maintain that this
behavior is linked to the 'celebrity culture' that is
evident in mainstream media and particularly in
television genres such as reality TV (See Stefanone
et al 2008). With user-generated content and the
ability to host profiles on interactive sites, the
Web 2.0 environment enables users to participate
in celebrity culture by constructing themselves
as active personas online. Stefanone et al. (2008:
107) contend that new multimedia technologies
erode 'the behavioural and normative distinctions
between the celebrity world and the mundane
everyday lives of the users.' They argue that the
dissolution of this boundary is discernible in two
resonant strands: the popularization of the reality
television genre and the proliferation of social
networking sites which hinge on the revelation of
offline identities. They identify these two trends
as reconfiguring the media environment where
audiences are more than the recipients of media
messages. Audiences as users and consumers can
become 'protagonists of media narratives and
can integrate themselves into a complex media
ecosystem' (Stefanone et al. 2008: 107). They
argue that platforms, such as social networking
sites, emphasize aspects of human interaction that
have been traditionally associated with celebrities,
including the primacy of image and appearance in
social interaction. This may have social implica-
tions, such as 'promiscuous friending,' where the
network is both a collection of known relation-
ships as well as people with whom users may have
never met. Beyond enabling social connections,
this could lead to fame-seeking or the desire to
be 'popular' through the social imaginary of the
multimedia environment.
The popularity of such sites may also be ex-
plained by the need of some people to look into
other peoples' lives or to increase awareness of
others within their physical and virtual communi-
ties (Strater & Richter 2007: 157). Inherent to such
a landscape is the ability to track other members of
the community where the 'surveillance' functions
allow an individual to track the actions and beliefs
of the larger groups to which they belong (Lampe
et al. 2006: 167). Lampe et al. (2006) define this
as social searching or social browsing where it
enables users to investigate specific people with
whom they share an offline connection. Lampe
et al. (2006:167) take the relationship between
social networking and social browsing further by
asserting that 'users largely use social network-
ing to learn more about people they meet offline
and are less likely to use the site to initiate new
connections.'
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