Facebook: Automated structures and reflexive social practices

During the last few years, numerous journal articles aiming at discerning the impact and possible meanings of social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter have been published. It is often argued that SNS significantly diverge from earlier forms of web communities since they are centred around the individual actor rather than themes of interest. An important aspect of these changes is that SNS allow for the construction of a public or semi-public profile through which it is possible to put on display a list of shared social connections which, in turn, makes it viable to browse the social connections of other users. Although being important aspects of SNS, these observations do not account for the automated data processing of harvested personal information that constitute the very motor of these sites. Drawing on an analysis of an extensive empirical material consisting of approximately 470 self-reflexive diary entries authored by people between the ages of 22 and 68 together with an exploration of the ways in which Facebook gathers and processes personal and interactional data in order to provide what is assumed to be an enhanced user experience, this paper aims at establishing a sociological understanding of the interrelationship between social practices and automated social structures on Facebook. This paper provides an important contribution to contemporary sociological studies of new media by relating social practices to the automated social structures that (for commercial reasons) emerge within social network sites thus rendering creative identity performances problematic.