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Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 General background
In recent years, the prevalence of internet, along with popularity of cyber culture contributed to fast development of social network sites (SNSs), both in the number of service providers and user population. It is considered one of major developments in the age of Web 2.0.
According to 2009 online entertainment behavior survey of Taiwanese internet users conducted by Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), 65% of the respondents had visited social network sites; 48.7% of them use the social networking service at least once a day. The motivations behind include “keeping in touch with friends or stay updated on their status (72.9%)”; and “sharing thoughts with friends (61.9%)”. Sixty percent of the respondents indicated that they had been introduced to the sites by relatives or friends (Online entertainment behavior survey, 2009).
The driving force underlying the popularity of social network sites can be attributed to the need to stay connected with people. Internet has provided the convenience and cost efficiency to fulfil the need. In short, SNS refers to websites or services that enable individuals to establish social network online. Haythornthwaite (2005) defined social network as below:
A type of exchange or interaction is known as a social network relation, and pairs who maintain one or more types of relations are said to maintain a tie.
Across a set of individuals, person-to-person connectivity builds into social networks (p.127).
The preliminary form of online community may dated back to Usenet in 1979. However, contemporary SNSs contain several features that mark the departure from the previous mode of online community. Boyd and Ellison (2007) define SNSs as online services that enabled individuals to “(1)construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse his or her list of connections and those made by others within the system” (p.211).
SNSs usually require users to provide basic identity information for registration. However, it is the decision of users as to what extent they will disclose their personal information in their personal profile. It can range from the basic information such as name, school information, photos to extensive personal information including email address, relationship status, phone
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number, and home address. Facebook users can also join different networks and groups base on shared interest.
The information in the profile is self-reported by the users. The site management company lacks motivation and resources to verify the accuracy of the information. This is on the assumption that because of the intertwine nature of online and offline social connection, most users reveal their true personal details, thus raising the question of online privacy protection.
The second major characteristic of SNSs is visible social connections. These online connections are called Friends. The articulated list of Friends on SNSs is capitalized to differentiate from the friends in daily life (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
Donath and Boyd (2004) indicated that most SNSs share a similar model of Friends link. The four common features for links are mutual, public, unnuanced and decontextualised. For example, when someone sent a Friend Request, an individual has to confirm it in order for the link to be established. Thus this contact is included in one‟s Friends network. This articulate connections are visible to others even users out of the network. But only Friends can view the full profile. Once the link is established, there is no distinction between close Friends or acquaintances. They are all treated equivalently as Friends. The links are decontextualised, one cannot choose to show part of the network to certain contacts only (Donald & Boyd, 2004).
The visible social connection is the significant feature that distinguishes SNSs from other modes of CMC. It serves several purposes that lend credibility for self presentation in users‟
profile. The visible social connection is assumed to be an implicit verification of identity thus contributes to ensure honest self-representation in profile. This is based on the assumption that it requires too much effort or difficulties to fake his or her Friends connection (Donald &
Boyd, 2004).
1.2 Development of Social Network Sites
SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997, was the first recognizable social network site. Its users were allowed to create personal profile, list their Friends, and later also surf the Friends list.
While these functions were available in other online communities, SixDegrees.com was the first to integrate them into a new social networking platform (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
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The early stage of SNSs development was slow. SNSs users were limited to computer geek and a small portion of internet users. It was not until the launch of Friendster in 2002, SNSs hit the mainstream. Friendster was launched as a social complement for a business networks site. It was designed to facilitate friends-of-friends to meet (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
The popularity of Friendster has inspired other online service providers to follow suit.
MySpace, launched in 2003, allows users to personalize their profile, in addition to regularly adding features to the site. It became very popular among teenagers, musicians and post-college urbanites (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).
Facebook was launched in February 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and his friends from the dormitory room of Harvard University and soon expanded to other universities in United States. At that stage Facebook usage was limited to college networks only, as individual must have an .edu email address to sign up as member. This made Facebook a relatively closed network, but user population already reached one million by December 2004 (Facebook.com).
Facebook has surpassed MySpace in its visitor base for the first time with the rapid growth of 153% as compare to 3% for MySpace, from June 07-June 08 (comScore, August 2008).
1.3 The usage of social network sites
Boyd and Ellison (2007) indicated that online personal social network may reflect the offline social structures to a certain extent. Donath and Boyd (2004) propose the number of weak ties an individual can form and maintain will increase substantially with the help of new communication technology. But the technology will not result in the similar positive effect on an individual‟s strong ties. This is because of the new communication technology makes touching base with wide variety of people sporadically in a relatively cheaper, easier way.
In the case of Facebook, users regularly receive notification on updates on their Friends‟
profile via Newsfeed function. If some updates catch his attention, he can click into Friends‟
profile and find out more about it, or response by leaving a message, comment for him or her.
This helps the users in maintaining a large and diverse social network online or offline, with minimum efforts.
Although making new connection is not the primary goal of using SNSs, as indicated by Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield (2006), the use of SNSs is not limited to the maintenance of
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existing offline social network only. It also provides the opportunity for establishing connection between individuals that otherwise may not be. This potential connection is called latent ties (Haythornthwaite, 2005). Haythornthwaite (2005) further referred latent ties as ties that are possible but not yet activated. The latent ties are inactive until something happens to tip them into weak ties, or less likely, strong ties. However this usually happens by chance rather than individual‟s initiative. In the case of Facebook usage, users may browse through Friend list on Friends‟ profiles, and send Friend request to add someone to his/her contact list.
Thus activated the latent ties.
Computer networks connect computer as well as users, thus formulate social network (Wellman, 1997). Information exchange and interpersonal interaction are the two major components of social networks. Information behavior is a social act (Burnett, 2000), whether face-to-face or computer-mediated (Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 1998). Information exchange and interpersonal interactions often occur simultaneously, and social networks are important sources of information in addition to media sources. Thus it is impossible to study information behavior in isolation. In fact, contacts in the social networks often function as information intermediaries for each other. This leads to the discussion of information behavior in the next section.
1.4 Information behavior
What is information? Christopher Fox (1983) captured the vagueness of information:
Information seems to be everywhere…..disseminated by media of communication ….. exchanged in conversation…..contained in all sort of things…..libraries are overflowing with it, institutions are bogged down by it, and people are overloaded with it…..no one seems to know exactly what information is (p.3).
This description is even more salient in the age of information, particularly the prevalence of internet.
Information behavior is the totality of human behaviour in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking, and information use. Thus, it includes face to-face communication with others, as well as the passive reception of information as in, for example, watching TV advertisements, without any intention to act on the information given (T. D. Wilson, 2000).
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Research in information behavior had captured attention from information scientists. The Royal Society Scientific Information Conference in 1948 marked the beginning of modern study of information behavior, when a number of papers on the topic of information behavior were presented. However, the term information behavior was not used in the papers. Seven years later the term “information science” was coined by Christ Hanson (T. D. Wilson, 1999).
There is a long history of research on information seeking, especially on the use of the sources like books and newspaper or information systems such as libraries and the mass media. The information needs and uses of scientists and engineers were the target of investigation in the information seeking research in the 1960s. In the 1970s the research on information shifted its focus from formal channels and task-oriented needs toward the individuals as finder, creator and user of information (Case, 2002).
Dervin‟s sense-making methodology also contributed to the literature of information behavior by placing the emphasis on information users rather than sources. It “is integral to understanding how human beings derive meaning from information” (Tidline, 2005).
The principle of least effort, which predicts that individuals make choices to minimize their work in performing task is also applied in information behavior research. This principle points out that individuals tend to return to the sources they have used in the past rather than exploring new sources of information (Case, 2005).
According to Granovetter‟s strength of weak ties theory (Granovetter, 1973), weak ties are the major sources of the new information as they are the links that connect different sections of social networks. The theory had been widely used for the studies of information resources exchange in social networks.
However, little is known about how strength of ties conditioned the information exchange behaviour of social network users. This first objective of this study is to explore to what extent the weak ties concept explains information exchange behaviour of Taiwanese Facebook users.
1.5 Research Motive and Aim
Guanxi, literal translation of relation in Chinese, is the cornerstone of the Chinese societies which plays significant role in social and economic interactions (Chen & Chen, 2004).
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According to past research, Chinese also rely on those with close guanxi, such as family members and close friends to satisfy individual‟s needs on economy, religion, education and recreation (Hsu, 1953; Hwang, 1987). This leads us to ask if guanxi would also play an important role in satisfying individual‟s needs for information. If yes, how would guanxi help us understand the relation of Chinese Facebook users with the strong ties and weak ties in their networks. Thus the second motive of this study is to explore the significance of guanxi for Chinese Facebook users in selecting the counterpart for information exchange. It is hoped that the results of this investigation will contribute to social networks, guanxi, information behaviour research and social network sites users‟ study, especially in Taiwan.
This paper particularly focuses on the Facebook users in Taiwan because it is high popularity among internet users. According to comScore, Facebook is the world largest social networking site and the fourth largest site in the world. It captured 5.1% of the total time spent online worldwide in September 2009, scored an increase of 2.9 % compared to September, 2008 ("Microsoft Sites Captures Largest Share of Time Spent Online Worldwide," 2009).
Facebook users in Taiwan have grown over five millions in November 2009. Gender distribution is nearly equal. The major age groups of the audience includes 39.1% (age 25-34) and 33.4% (age 18-24) ("Facebook marketing statistics, demographics, reports and news,"
November 3, 2009). The large population of Facebook users provides a fertile ground for further academic research.
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