An increasing number of young girls produce contents in social media on a everyday basis for the opportunities to express, explore and connect. Public misunderstanding and concern are about whether girls are being narcissistic and vain. Academic works address how girls exercise agency while negotiating structure in the construction of their gendered adolescent identities. This thesis is situated in relation to our hopes and fears about girls’ self-representation through digital media production, and examines the role that photographic self-portraiture plays in girls’ social relations, personal and gender identity work. The theoretical framework combines the perspectives of gender performativity and symbolic interactionism, supplemented by analyses of personal photography. This thesis chose as its case study the popular Taiwanese social networking site Wretch, and employed a mixed method of quantitative content analysis of 2000 self-portraits of teenagers to understand how they represent themselves, and qualitative online interviews with 42 girls aged 13-20 to learn about their relationships with self-portraiture. The content analysis shows that most teenagers represent themselves in a gender stereotypical manner, while some adopt non gender-specific styles to represent themselves as friendly, suggesting that teenagers may use ideals about femininity, masculinity and sociality as shortcuts to present themselves in a positive light. Interview findings reveal how girls use camera technologies and the affordance of SNS for visual self-disclosure, which isimportant for the development of theirinterpersonal relationships. The findings also suggest that self-portraiture is not simply an act of photographing a ‘reality’ of the self, but of formulating self-image(s) and identity in the process of making self-portraits. In self-portraiture, girls are constantly confronted with the ‘who am I’ question, and construct and revise their biographies as they manage an array of audiences from different contexts all collapsing in one space. Furthermore, selfportraiture creates a distance between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’, allowing one to ‘play’ with self-image(s) and identity. It creates a space for the negotiation of ideals and anxieties, for experiments with different subject positions that may be socially or individually rewarding, and it is through these seemingly casual endeavoursthat one gradually works out their position in the social world. The thesis contributes to the scholarship on girls’ media culture, and suggests current theoretical perspective be expanded in order to better understand different ways of ‘doing girlhood’.

In this thesis I examine the impact of interaction and participation on Facebook between private individuals and certain hierarchical groups in society, particularly with regard to individual privacy; consider the structure of Facebook’s privacy programming; and seek to establish where the balance of power lies between private individuals and commercial, political and media organisations. I make reference to Foucault’s theory of power, Bourdieu’s theories of power in social space and habitus and Althusser’s theory of interpellation as I record my research. This thesis is a qualitative research project, and I employ Critical Discourse Analysis as the principal research methodology. I focus on four cases studies: Facebook both as the internet platform which facilitates such interaction and the company which operates it; the developers of applications, such as online games, which are mounted on the platform; the network’s use by political parties and their leaders during the UK 2010 General Election campaign; and traditional media platforms as represented by two television annual ‘events’. My findings relate the manner in which individual users are constantly prompted to upload content, principally personal information, thoughts, preferences and relationships to the network, and simultaneously are pressurised into granting access to this information as they seek to fully participate on the social platform. This pressure is applied through applications that are mounted on the platform by commercial, media and political organisations, and I find that Facebook’s affordances to applications developers are instrumental in this process. My research associates these processes with the aforementioned theories of Foucault, Althusser and Bourdieu. My conclusion is that while Facebook continually revises its privacy policy to grant private individuals control over the content, that is the personal information, they upload to the social network, access to this information is a prerequisite for their full participation in the network. Facebook’s continuous introduction of new programmes ensures that private individuals have to choose between interaction and participation on the social network, or exclusion as access to many of the activities it offers is conditional on third party access to their personal information. Further pressure to grant access to the required information is applied through the ability of organisations to feature photographs of users’ Friends who are already using the relevant application. The processes indicate that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is slowly progressing his aim to place the social network at the centre of a newly structured Web based on private individuals.

In contemporary society, online Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook provide increasingly popular contexts within which late adolescent peer interactions and accompanying identity experiments can occur. Consequently, of increasing interest is exploring the impact of SNS use on psychological functioning in this age group. There is some evidence suggestive of a relationship between greater SNS use and increased depressive symptoms. However, findings are inconsistent, with a large body of literature also indicative of possible beneficial effects of SNS use on adolescent social and emotional adjustment. Therefore, as a means to address this divergence, the present study aims to investigate whether it is the quantity of use, including use of the site to connect with existing or new contacts, or the quality of Facebook interactions that might relate to depressive symptoms. Moreover, the present research attempts to identify for which late adolescents these associations are more likely to be a risk, drawing on constructs implicated in offline self-definition and identity development. One hundred and sixty-nine late adolescents (mean age 18.6 years) participated in this quantitative, cross-sectional study. Participants completed an online survey comprising self-report questionnaires validated by previous research assessing depressive symptoms, the intensity of Facebook use, strategy used to connect with peers on Facebook, self-reported quality of interactions on Facebook, and self-definition and identity variables; self-concept clarity (SCC), separation-individuation, and ego-identity commitment. Consistent with previous research, no relationship was found between the intensity of Facebook use, including number of Facebook friends, time spent on the site each day, perceived integration of the platform into daily life, and connection strategy and depressive symptoms. There was, however, evidence suggestive of a relationship between reports of feeling down following interactions on Facebook and increased depressive symptoms. Self-definition and identity variables were not found to moderate this relationship.

Since households and businesses alike obtained the high-speed Internet service of broadband, the Internet has become integral to daily life in the 21st century. Advancements in information and Internet technology has led to the conception of novel internet- enabled applications such as, Online Social Networks (OSNs). Since the turn of the twenty first century fast-developing OSNs such as, Twitter and Facebook have become essential communication channels that people are using to develop their online personal and professional networks online. A recent phenomenon that is worrying countries around the globe is an ageing population. Due to recent improvements in the quality of life and advances in medicine, individuals are achieving longer life spans. Given the fact that older adults are also experiencing loneliness and depression, a recent solution to reduce this problem is the use of OSNs. Using these reasons as motivation, the aim of this research is to identify and understand the factors driving or inhibiting the adoption, use and diffusion of OSNs within the older population (50+) in UK households. In order to achieve this aim the Model of Online Social Networking (MOSN) was conceptually developed. Drawing upon the attitudinal, normative and control constructs from the leading Information Systems (IS) theories of the Diffusion of Innovations theory (DOI), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Model of Adoption of Technology in Households (MATH) and the E-Services Adoption Model selected constructs were identified and formed. To achieve the aim, the conceptual framework (MOSN – Model of Online Social Networking) was initially empirically validated using primary data. A quantitative approach involving a small-scale online pilot survey (n-252) and a wide-scale online survey (n-1080) were used for this purpose. Findings revealed that that older individuals will adopt Internet technologies if technology-facilitating conditions such as ‘anytime access’ to Internet capable devices and a fast reliable Internet connection had significant positive effects on OSN intention. In terms of influences of peers, it was revealed that older individuals do consider and act upon the views of members in one’s social circle. Most significantly, the consequences of older adults efforts to preserve their own privacy enforces a vast majority of non-adopters from not taking part in the OSN uptake. In terms of diffusion it was found that messages about OSNs conveyed through media channels: TV, newspapers and magazines are having a negative impact on older adults intention to adopt OSNs. As little is known of the underlying factors effecting older individuals adoption or non-adoption and diffusion of OSNs this research contributes to an emerging body of knowledge through the identification of empirically supported factors found to be significantly influencing UK older adults decision making regarding OSN technology adoption. For those participants currently using OSNs an in-depth understanding of usage behavior is presented. Importantly this research addresses a gap in research relating to the household adoption of OSNs in older adults in the UK. Due to the limitations of time, finance and manpower research findings could not be nationally representative of the UK are only representative of a single group of society residing in an affluent area of the UK.

This research seeks to examine the experience of social privacy around online social networking services. In particular, it examines how individuals experience social privacy through the perception of veillance, relationships and space. It highlights that individuals need varying types of veillance and relationships in order to experience the social privacy they desire. It also highlights that individuals used the perception of space to indicate acceptable convention within that space; seeking spaces, both real and metaphorical, that they perceived to afford them the experience of social privacy. Through the application of phenomenological methods drawn from ethnography this study explores how the experience of social privacy is perceived. It does this through examining the perception of veillance, relationships and space in separation, though notes that the individual perceives all three simultaneously. It argues that the varying conditions of these perceptions afford the individuals the experience of social privacy. Social privacy is, therefore, perceived as a socially afforded emotional experience.

A few scholars have argued that the Internet is a valuable channel for social marketing, and that practitioners need to rethink how they engage with target audiences online. However, there is little evidence that online social marketing interventions can significantly influence behaviours, while there are few evidence-based guidelines to aid online intervention design. This thesis assesses the efficacy of online interventions suitable for social marketing applications, presents a model to integrate behavioural change research, and examines psychological principles that may aid the design of online behavioural change interventions.The primary research project used meta-analytical techniques to assess the impact of interventions targeting voluntary behaviours, and examined psychological design and adherence correlations. The study found that many online interventions demonstrated the capacity to help people achieve voluntary lifestyle changes. Compared to waitlist control conditions, the interventions demonstrated advantages, while compared to print materials they offered similar impacts, but with the advantages of lower costs and broader reach. A secondary research project surveyed users across an international public mobilization campaign and used structural equation modelling to assess the relationships between website credibility, active trust, and behavioural impacts. This study found that website credibility and active trust were factors in behavioural influence, while active trust mediated the effects of website credibility on behaviour. The two research projects demonstrated that online interventions can influence an individual’s offline behaviours. Effective interventions were primarily goal-orientated: they informed people about the consequences of their behaviour, encouraged them to set goals, offered skills-building support, and tracked their progress. People who received more exposure to interventions generally achieved greater behavioural outcomes. Many of these interventions could be incorporated into social marketing campaigns, and offer individually tailored support capable of scaling to massive public audiences. Communication theory was used to harmonize influence taxonomies and techniques; this proved to be an effective way to organize a diversity of persuasion, therapy, and behavioural change research. Additionally, website credibility and users’ active trust could offer a way to mitigate the negative impacts of online risks and competition.

This thesis aims to explore three pre-teenage children’s text production in online social networking sites. Social networking is a mainstream youth activity in the UK, conducted by (at the time of writing) almost 50% of 10-12 year old internet users (Ofcom, 2011, p.44). While social networking has been the subject of much interest amongst scholars and policy-makers, little has been published that documents the use of social networking amongst pre-teenage children. The literature that does exist is largely concerned with documenting usage (Ofcom, 2011; Livingstone and Haddon, 2010), and children’s safety in these contexts (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)/Byron 2010; DCSF/Byron, 2008; Livingstone et al., 2011a). This study aims to explore children’s text production in social networking sites with rightful regard for this concern, but with a focus on how children behave as text producers in these contexts. Working from an interpretive qualitative research paradigm, a purposive sample of three children who used (at the time) the popular social networking site Bebo was selected. The children were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule three times between June 2008 and May 2009. Interviews were transcribed using a line by line coding method. To support these data and contextualise analysis, screenshots of the children’s profile pages were also collected at each interview. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006), these data were analysed within data sets around each interview incident, and then synthesised to build a case study for each participant. This recursive process involved initial and focused coding, where following the construction of key codes for each data set, the codes were organised under thematic headings and finally used to construct tentative categories that described how the children behaved as text producers. Four tentative categories were constructed to describe the participants’ behaviour: text production to achieve social positioning; text production to achieve social control; text production to enact a text producing role; and text production for pleasure. Based upon the elaboration of these categories, a model of text production as mastery is proposed. In this model, children’s text production is regarded in relation two spectrums of mastery: a spectrum of social control and a spectrum of textual crafting. This study concludes by recommending that the social networking context must be recognised by educators as a meaningful context in which children’s mastery of these critical skills can be developed in order that they can they learn to be critical and masterful text producers in the new digital age (Gee, 2011 and Hayes, 2011).

Social network sites (SNSs) have become very popular, with more than 1.39 billion people using Facebook alone. The ability to share large amounts of personal information with these services, such as location traces, photos, and messages, has raised a number of privacy concerns. The popularity of these services has enabled new research directions, allowing researchers to collect large amounts of data from SNSs to gain insight into how people share information, and to identify and resolve issues with such services. There are challenges to conducting such research responsibly, ensuring studies are ethical and protect the privacy of participants, while ensuring research outputs are sustainable and can be reproduced in the future. These challenges motivate the application of a theoretical framework that can be used to understand, identify, and mitigate the privacy impacts of emerging SNSs, and the conduct of ethical SNS studies. In this thesis, we apply Nissenbaum's model of contextual integrity to the study of SNSs. We develop an architecture for conducting privacy-preserving and reproducible SNS studies that upholds the contextual integrity of participants. We apply the architecture to the study of informed consent to show that contextual integrity can be leveraged to improve the acquisition of consent in such studies. We then use contextual integrity to diagnose potential privacy violations in an emerging form of SNS.

This thesis explores the pedagogical potential of images shared during intra-professional conversations held on the social media platform, Twitter. Twitter chats are loosely synchronous exchanges of tweets sharing a unique, identifying keyword or hashtag. They are increasingly being used among professionals to create professional networks in which practice-knowledge and opinion might be shared and where communal connections may be created. As such, they may serve as sites in which professional learning unfolds, both in relation to workplace practices and in relation to the development of new forms of professional practice around social media use. Because the exchanges and broadcasts on Twitter are, for the most part, public, and the conversations are ongoing, they also provide open, freely-accessible, and constantly renewing resources for use in pre-service learning contexts. The research focused on two example chats, one held among midwives and the other among teachers. Inspired by the increasing use of images in new forms of digital communication, the research used images tweeted during the chats as starting points from which to explore flows of knowledge and affect. Data were generated from observations of the two Twitter chats over extended periods, together with interviews with practising professionals, student professionals and their educators in which images were used as elicitation devices. The research combined an approach to reading and “being with” data inspired by ideas drawn from the work of Deleuze (1994; Williams 2013) and Deleuze and Guattari (1988; Massumi 1992), with approaches to reading images drawn from visual social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). The findings suggest that Twitter chats such as those studied here can provide rich opportunities for professional learning. Practice knowledge can flow from one participant to many others, and flows of affect can be used to remoralize individuals and communities. Both chats seemed to serve as sites in which professionals could experience a positivity and affirmation that was not always available in the workplace. However, the forces and intensities at play in these spaces influence both what is said and what is not said, creating new norms of online interaction that generally seemed to avoid negative comments or open disagreement. Educators saw potential to use images such as those shared in the chats in a variety of ways. For example, images could be used as prompts for examination and critique of practices. The educators I interviewed also suggested that the images could be used to help student professionals develop their sensitivity to the forces and intensities that produce particular practices. Group interviews with student professionals suggested that the former happened spontaneously when students encountered and discussed such images, but that the latter might need deliberate facilitation or prompting. The thesis concludes with some recommendations for: (i) educators considering using such images in pre-service professional learning; (ii) professional developers considering using Twitter chats; and (iii) policy-makers involved in drafting guidelines for professionals’ use of social media.

Fear of missing out (FoMO) is a type of internet slang used to describe the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent” (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan & Gladwell, 2013, p. 1841). This pervasive fear encompasses an individual’s life and it is exacerbated by the social media updates of online counterparts. A study conducted by a South African pharmaceutical company revealed that 62% of the respondents have a constant fear of missing out on something that might be happening elsewhere. This study underscores the relevance of studying FoMO as a construct in the South African context. The current study aims to investigate the relationship between FoMO and satisfaction with life, as these two constructs have previously shown to be negatively correlated. The self-proclaimed FoMO sufferers who will be partaking in this study will be requested to complete an online questionnaire to establish the nature of the relationship between FoMO and satisfaction with life. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)