As Facebook grows beyond a billion users (Zuckerberg, 2012), a decreasing percentage of those users are English-only speakers. Facebook provides a platform for multilingual conversation to occur, which requires that Facebook display non-Latin scripts. Because of the hegemony of English and the Latin alphabet on the Web, non-Latin scripts are often “ASCII-ized.” Displaying non-Latin scripts well facilitates communication for multilingual users and creates a place where they can explore their identity linguistically as they post on Facebook. This study examines what factors contribute to multilingual Facebook users making linguistic posting choices. Many have named Facebook as a successful multilingual Web site, thus it is reasonable to expect that Facebook is an exemplar of multilingual social networking sites. This study is an examination and critique of Facebook’s multilingual translations. To address questions of how Facebook’s interface facilitates or impedes multilingual conversation, the researcher recruited twelve active, multilingual Facebook users to participate in individual interviews and a small focus group. Besides English, these users spoke and posted in the world’s four other most widely spoken languages: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi. The researcher found that multilingual Facebook users did not always have a choice in what language they would post. Users faced obstacles ranging from the Facebook app distorting script display to hardware bias limiting users’ text entry. Furthermore, participants’ linguistic presentation was not dichotomous between two languages; multilingual users and their friends are accustomed to operating in a multilingual space. The larger implication of these findings is that Facebook, despite pioneering massive translation projects, has not solved the problem of linguistic representation for social networking sites. Facebook’s solution is not scalable to less widely spoken languages because even languages with many millions of speakers, such as Spanish, have flawed implementations on Facebook. / text

There are currently over 900 million Facebook users worldwide (and counting). With increased use of social networking comes new concerns for personal privacy and control of social networking information. More and more, Facebook activity trickles its way into offline contexts, perhaps none more so than the employment context. A new trend in the hiring process is social networking background checks, where some employers go so far as to request a candidate’s Facebook password. Not only this, but the frequency of Facebook activity resulting in employment law disputes is increasing, and has even been found to constitute sufficient grounds for discipline and termination. This thesis examines the current privacy protection given to social networking information in the context of the employment relationship, highlights problems with the current legal landscape in this regard, and offers an emerging theory, New Virtualism, as a conceptual basis for the regulation of this issue going forward.

The ambition of this essay is to examine if groups on Facebook are examples of “slacktivism” and discuss which qualifications these groups have in order to provide a democratic conversation. The results will be discussed relative to democratic participant, information overload, interactivity and previous research. By nethnographically observing three groups and analyzing selected posts and comments with the critical discourse analysis one can see that slacktivism spreads easily by people liking and sharing posts from the groups to their friends. The particular groups that has been analyzed in this essay are committed to save Swedish traditions that they believe is threatened. The outcome showed no proof that the groups contribute to social change and they did not give rise to a democratic conversation. Instead the groups spread and encouraged nationalism and racism by blaming immigrants and Muslims for threatening Swedish traditions.

Background: Advertisements create metaphors in the consumers’ mind, which are interpretedby using their advertising knowledge, including expectations of positive messages and theawareness of different advertising formats. Advertising affects how and what consumers thinkabout a company. For online advertising, Facebook is a widely used tool by marketers toestablish and enhance the brand image, use the network for market research, target theiradvertising and create Facebook groups or pages for the company. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore what happens when the sender’s intendedmessage of online advertisements is interpreted by the consumers. Research Question: How do senders and receivers interpret a particular message in an onlineadvertisement context? Conclusion: The researchers have in this research found that not having a visible trademarkthroughout the whole communication process may result in losing part of the message when itis received by consumers. On Facebook, the initial sender can no longer control who receivetheir message and whom it will reach and hence, the brand can be lost. Consumers interpret amessage differently because of where it is sent from on Facebook, if the message is coming from the company or friends it will affect their perceptions of the advertisement’s message.

The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons why young people in Mexico useabbreviations, how abbreviations are used and what kind of abbreviations they use amongtheir group of friends. The study is conducted among a small sample of persons between 18 to30 years old and from one sociocultural group.We studied a group of 20 informants. In this group we included young people working as acashiers, warehouse workers, employees in stores, etc. These informants answered a writtenquestionnaire and we also analyzed 40 of their Facebook messages.In summary, it was noticed that the abbreviations were used because it is a fast way to writebecause they save time. According to the informants “It is fun and is easy to use them whenwriting their messages”. We could see that a few informants use them because it is a new wayof writing as well as considering it to be entertaining to write their messages. When analyzingtheir messages, we saw that these informants do not seem to have rules when writing theirabbrevations, they shorten the words in all forms and place them in any part of theirmessages. They often adapt their way of writing to the pronunciation of the words, similar tothe spoken language. Some words had influences from the caliche jargot (a variety ofcolloquial language used among young people in Mexico). The informants in this study areusing all kinds of abbreviations such as abbreviated words, acronyms and shortenings

Syfte och frågeställningar: Syftet är att undersöka och jämföra tre kommuners kommunikation på Facebook, men också fenomenet Facebook och dess komponenter i form av exempelvis gilla-markeringar. Studien bygger på två huvudfrågor. 1. Vilken typ av kommunikation bedrivs via kommunernas Facebooksidor? 2. Hur skiljer sig kommunikationen åt mellan de tre kommunerna? Metod och material: Intervjuer och netnografiska observationer. Huvudresultat: Facebook är en viktig kommunikationskanal för kommunerna. Intervjuerna visar att mycket av det som kommunernas kommunikatörer säger sig kommunicera stämmer in på det som de netnografiska observationerna visat och att de huvudsakligen lever upp till sina uttalade syften. Något som kan konstateras är att oberoende av hur många följare eller hur mycket feedback en kommuns Facebooksida får så gör det ingen större skillnad i hur de bedriver kommunikationen. Alla tre kommunerna har som mål att föra dialog med sina följare via Facebooksidan. Av observationerna att utläsa är det dock endast Karlstad kommun som aktivt bjuder in följarna till att bidra med innehåll. Alla tre undersökta kommuner har varsin policy som är utfärdad för hur de ska arbeta med sociala medier, vilket alla kommuniktörer förhåller sig till i arbetet med Facebooksidan. Med resultat från både intervjuer och observationer kan tre stycken ledord urskiljas som beskriver den kommunikation kommunerna bedriver; informera, interagera och engagera.

Syftet med denna undersökning har legat i att undersöka hur ungdomar använder sig av musikrelaterade funktioner på Facebook, och vilka motiv som ligger bakom detta användande. Vi har vidare specifikt valt att avgränsa oss till elever i sena mellanstadiet och sena gymnasiet. Detta lägger grunden för vår frågeställning, som lyder; “Hur och varför använder sig elever i mellanstadiet respektive gymnasiet sig av Facebook samt musikrelaterade funktioner på Facebook?” och ”Vad har användningssättet för relation till det konstanta flödet av information på Facebook?”Undersökningen cirkulerar främst kring tre utvalda teorier som alla behandlar aspekter av de frågor vi valt att besvara. Dessa kan kort sammanfattas i en teori som behandlar motiv till användandet av sociala medier, en teori kring motiven till musiklyssnande samt en teori som rör det eventuella brus som kan uppstå i Facebookflödet. Som en empirisk pelare att luta oss tillbaka mot har vi använt oss av fokusgruppsintervjuer. Dessa grupper har bestått av 4-6 elever ur varje åldersgrupp, alltså två intervjuer med elever i ring tre på gymnasiet, och två med elever i årskurs sex på mellanstadiet. Utifrån intervjuerna har vi fått en fördjupad inblick i hur ungdomar i dessa åldersgrupper ser på användandet av musiktjänster på Facebook.Den främsta slutsats som framkommit genom denna studie visade på att eleverna faktiskt inte vill dela musik på Facebook, utan att detta är någonting som hellre ska ses som privat. Det finns en balansgång i dagens samhälle som tydligt reflekteras i detta, det har aldrig funnits fler möjligheter för människor att vara sammankopplade, samtidigt som det i en allt högre grad krävs en aktiv handling för att bibehålla en privat sfär.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur förstaårsstudenter på Högskolan i Halmstad använder Facebook för att komma in i den nya studietillvaron. Studien bygger på kvalitativa individuella intervjuer med fem förstaårsstudenter. Studiens huvudresultat är att det verkar vara viktigt för förstaårsstudenter att använda Facebook för att bättre komma in i den nya studietillvaron. De använder Facebook som ett kommunikationsmedium för att komma i kontakt med studiekamrater och veta vad som händer runt omkring dem i utbildningssammanhang.

I denna studie har elevers åsikter om det sociala mediet Facebook i svenskundervisningen studerats. Detta har skett genom en enkätundersökning med 88 elever och kompletterades med två intervjuer av elever med erfarenhet av mediet i undervisningen. Informanterna hade en delad inställning till Facebook som lärplattform och de problem som lyftes fram rörde sortering och intrång i privatlivet. En övervägande majoritet var dock positiva till arbetssättet om det bedrevs i mindre skala som enstaka kurser eller moment. Det gick även att se skillnader i åsikter om och användandet av sociala medier ur ett åldersperspektiv. De äldre eleverna var framförallt mer aktivt på Facebook och positivt inställda till en integrering av mediet i svenskundervisningen.

AN ABSTRACT ON THE THESIS OF TOMMIE LEE WILLIAMS, for the Master of Arts Degree in APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES, presented on NOVEMBER, 5, 2013 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION ON FACEBOOK MAJOR PROFESSORS: Dr. Laura Halliday and Dr. Janet Fuller In contrast to early utopian theories about life on the internet, research revealed that the internet does not exist in a gender, class and racial vacuum (Kendall, 1998, Zhao et al, 2005). Identity issues that exist in the real world are mirrored in online presentations (Turkle, 1995). A previous study on Ethno Racial displays on Facebook examined whether different ethnic and racial groups used different identity strategies to construct their online identities on the Facebook social media network. The findings from that study and others were instrumental in the development of this research. The study conducted Face book profile page analyses for over 150 students from five distinct ethnic groups, African American, Vietnamese, White American, Hispanics and Indian. Their methodology included a coding system and instrument that revealed that the five ethnic racial groups did employ different strategies in the construction of their profile page identities. The object of this study is to exclusively study African American identity construction on Facebook. The goal of the study is to add to scholarship and body of research in this area. The research involves analyzing the Facebook profile of twenty former employees of a southwestern call center that closed the same year Facebook was founded. The employees vowed to keep in touch with each other through the new social network. A decision to employ a multiple methodology approach to the study was primarily driven by the small sample size and complicated nature of the information. A quantitative study was conducted first followed by a qualitative case study of the individual profile pages of four of the subject. The choice of the case studies selected was driven by results of the quantitative analysis which revealed outlier categories and cases. The findings from the two studies were then calculated, analyzed and reported. The early report of the quantitative study revealed that in comparative analysis that there were no significant differences between the two independent variables labeled Ethnicgroup White and Ethnic group African American. The secondary report from another statistical analysis discovered differences as a result of outliers in the data. The identified outliers were used to choose the subjects for the qualitative study. The results from the qualitative case study revealed that the African Americans in the study used different identity construction strategies. The strategies, however, did not show congruence on racial or ethnic lines. The data suggested the subjects chose identities that adhered to established socio-cultural archetypes rather than exclusively afro centric models. Triangulation of the data also suggested support for the original quantitative report of no significance.