Amber Buck Dissertation

LIFE, LEARNING, AND LITERACY ON THE SOCIAL NETWORK: DIGITAL PARTICIPATORY CULTURE BY AMBER M. BUCK Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English with a concentration in Writing Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Gail Hawisher, Chair Professor Paul Prior Associate Professor Spencer Schaffner Professor Lisa Nakamura ABSTRACT This dissertation uses qualitative case studies of seven graduate and undergraduate students in which I examine their situated literacy and identity practices within social network sites. I argue that activity on social network sites is ubiquitous, purposeful, and integral to students’ literate lives. My research examines identity and literacy practices on social network sites by considering individuals’ site use in context. Chapter One situates my research within past studies of digital literacy practices, self-sponsored writing, and identity, and I consider how individuals’ networked literate practices are embedded in and influenced by social context, institutional and technological structures, and the history of these structures. While much work on social network sites in writing studies focuses on rhetorical analyses of profile pages or a consideration of these sites for use in the writing classroom, my research views activity on these sites within specific writers’ larger online and offline literacy practices. Chapter Two introduces my ethnographic case study methodology that combined methods of data collection from different sources, including face-to-face interviews, online written texts, time use diaries and video screen capture. This project does not draw strict boundaries between online and offline activities or between activity on different social network sites, but instead investigates the relationship between them. Instead of studying online interactions based on their textual record, I include data from other sources to gain a better understanding of this online activity as distributed across sites and integrated within daily literacy practices. Chapter Three focuses on the ways that my research participants represent themselves for different groups of people and theorizes different ways to view identity on social network sites. ii Here my research is grounded in Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte, Debra Skinner and Carole Cain’s (1998) conceptions of situated and transactional identities and figured worlds. The structure of many social network sites flattens one’s multiple contact groups into one group of “friends” or “followers,” where an individual sends the same update to multiple friend groups. This chapter considers the ways that case study participants conceive of audience on these sites and negotiate between different “figured worlds” in online spaces. One research participant, for example, manages two different Twitter accounts, one as a music reviewer for a popular music blog, another for his academic persona as a graduate student, teacher, and rhetorician. Another undergraduate research participant uses the same Twitter and Facebook accounts to send updates in both English and Korean to the same list of contacts. These participants’ experiences demonstrate the purposeful ways in which writers consider audience and representation on social network sites. Chapter Four moves from users’ interactions with others on social network sites to interactions with the sites themselves. This chapter considers social network sites themselves as technological actors in these writers’ identity representations, and it illustrates the ways in which individuals work purposefully with and against the structures of these sites to manage their identities and online data. An important component of this negotiation with social network sites is how participants construct boundaries in regard to privacy, and how they negotiate the frequently changing settings and policies of each social network site. One research participant, for example, keeps most personal information off Facebook and monitors her privacy settings closely, another constructs fake profiles and posts false information to make a statement about the veracity of information on the service. Another closed off her Facebook wall during her job search process. Along with managing their identities through privacy settings, many participants iii also used social network sites to manage data, archiving songs they have listened to in last.fm, organizing images through Flickr, and building an inventory of yarn owned through a social network site for knitters called Ravelry. The experiences that the participants discussed in this chapter demonstrate the ways in which navigating interfaces, settings, and site structures become important literacy skills in the twenty-first century. Users of social network sites engage in purposeful and thoughtful interactions in these online spaces, negotiating different friend groups, different site designs, and different layers of settings as they manage professional and social identities across online and offline spaces. My dissertation argues that these practices represent important literate activity in the twenty-first century, as individuals learn to negotiate interfaces, user agreements, and personal data, as well as rhetorical situations, in their online writing. In considering the roles that social network sites play in individuals’ literacy and identity practices, writing researchers and educators can better understand the literacy practices that students engage in outside of the classroom and the experiences they bring to their academic writing. My research also suggests methodologies for observing and studying the distributed literate activity that takes place on social network sites. Examining the social, technological and structural factors that influence digital literacy practices in online environments is crucial in understanding the impact of these sites on writing practices. iv To Theo and “the kids,” with love and devotion. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would never have been completed without the assistance and support of so many others. I would first like to thank my advisor and chair, Gail E. Hawisher, for her expert mentoring of this project through its many stages; her scholarship on technology and literate lives has been an inspiration for this project, and I have benefited not only from her feedback on my writing, but also from her exemplary guidance on how to be a scholar in this field. Paul Prior, for his insightful comments and support of this project from beginning to end. This project began to take shape in his flat CHAT course, and his theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as his own sharp attention to situation literate activity, have been an inspiration for my own work. I would also like to thank Spencer Schaffner, who guided my initial work at the University of Illinois and my interest in this topic; he was always ready with an insightful question that helped strengthen this project. Thanks also go to Lisa Nakamura, for our productive conversations, her insights on Internet identities and the interdisciplinary aspects of this project. My time in graduate school has also been shaped by the academic and emotional support of an outstanding group of colleagues, from Hannah Bellwoar, Christa Olson, Samantha Looker, and Patrick Berry, who mentored my early progress in the program and taught by example how devote my energy to teaching, research and other academic duties with courage and grace. Thanks also to the members of the various writing groups who read and commented on portions of this work, including Lauren Marshall Bowen, Heather Blain, Martha Webber, Cory Holding, Melissa Larabee, Kaitlin Marks-Dubbs, and John O’Connor. Thanks go especially to Andrea Olinger, who helped polish several of the public presentations that have come from this work, and to Cory Holding for her friendship and insights into my own writing processes, as well as for vi the coffee. Thanks also to Teresa Bertram for her conversation and support throughout my time in graduate school, as well as the numerous supplies (food and otherwise) always available in room 288. This work has also been generously supported by the University of Illinois: the Department of English, the Center for Writing Studies, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Thanks also to my parents, Ken and Tammy Buck, for their emotional and financial support and guidance. Their never-ending commitment to my education has supported me throughout my academic career. Thanks and gratitude go most of all to Theo, my best friend, partner, and husband; his never ending support of my work, his ability to bring humor and levity to my ever-serious approach, and his own boundless creativity have supported me throughout my academic career and have shaped this project. I have benefited from his own insights into social media, his patience as I finished my degree in Urbana, and most importantly, his devoted love and friendship. I would not be where I am without his love and support. And finally, I am especially grateful to the research participants who devoted their time and whose writing and online activity shaped this research project. Their generosity and their willingness to share their online lives with me made this work possible. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: DIGITAL LITERACY, IDENTITY, AND SOCIAL NETWORK SITES…...1 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS……………………….………….24

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