| dc.description.abstract | In the present article, we discuss norms of friendship and privacy on social network sites
by examining strategies of privacy among users, arguing that tacit norms of friendship are
now more easily observed. The article is based on a quantitative survey among 1710 Internet
users in Denmark, among them 970 Facebook users, subsequent focus group meetings with
20 respondents and finally access to their profiles for a period of twelve months. In line
with the research literature on social network sites, our study shows that users’ “friends”
consist of a variety of strong, weak and even latent ties and thus supports notions such as
social divergence and networked publics, suggested by danah boyd. Regarding privacy is
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sues, we distinguish between level of access to information on participants’ profiles and the
way participants perform on their profiles, the level of intimacy. As to the first level most
respondents seem to emphasize whom they friend, while they do not distinguish among
friends once they are in; everybody is treated equally. As to the second level, our research
deviates from findings suggesting that in particular young people are rather unaware of
risks, as we can identify what we call a “cautious sensible” strategy in all age groups that
allows users to be cautious without being too self-restrictive. Regarding the status updates,
we identify a schism between saying and doing, as our respondents tend to downgrade small
talk in the focus groups, whereas their profiles reveal that they in fact do engage in small
talk. We understand this seeming paradox in a generic and linguistic perspective, using the
notions of phatic and indexical communication, respectively, in an analysis of the status
updates on the profiles. | sv |
