Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:38:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Boris Brancaglion Keiserman.pdf: 560389 bytes, checksum: 140ad861b2701396254e66d5ebc24c9c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-10-18 / The use of social networking sites on the internet is a phenomenon of growing importance in our everyday life. With over 37 million users in Brazil and 1 billion worldwide, Facebook is today the most popular social networking site in the West. A great number of books and magazine articles have dedicated their pages to Facebook, how it has changed our lives and how some lives have become it´s hostage. This dissertation is an attempt to understand the significance of Facebook to its users, aiming to comprehend what is written, how it´s written and why information is published on Facebook. It is an exploratory study, which has as an objective to analyze information posted on the Facebook Wall by participants of a social network trying to understand the different types of interactions which occur between the network´s users. A qualitative analysis was conducted referring to 72 hours of wall activity on a Facebook user´s all and then the category which was targeted as the one generating the greater number of responses was qualitatively analyzed. We have concluded that publications with personal reports are of extreme importance in maintaining Facebook activity, disclosing emotional content which aid in maintaining the user´s offline social network active. It is a way of maintaining a support network in an easy and efficient fashion / O uso de redes sociais virtuais na internet é um fenômeno de crescente importância na vida cotidiana . Com mais de 37 milhões de usuários no Brasil e 1 bilhão no mundo, o Facebook é hoje a rede social virtual mais popular no Ocidente. Muitos livros e artigos de revistas dedicam suas páginas para discorrer sobre o Facebook, como ele mudou nossas vidas e como tornou algumas vidas reféns. Esse trabalho buscou compreender o significado do Facebook para seus usuários, por meio do que se escreve, como se escreve e porque se escreve. Trata-se de um estudo exploratório, que tem por objetivo analisar informações postadas no mural do Facebook por participantes de uma rede social, buscando compreender o tipo de interações que ocorrem na rede entre seus participantes. Para tanto, foi realizada uma análise quantitativa sobre dados recortados por um período de 72 horas de atividade de um mural do Facebook e posteriormente foram analisadas qualitativamente as publicações dentro das que mais geraram respostas por parte dos próprios usuários da rede. Concluímos que os relatos pessoais dos usuários são de extrema importância na manutenção da atividade do Facebook, pois fazem referência a conteúdos afetivos, que ajudam na manutenção das redes sociais off-line dos usuários. Portanto as mensagens postadas permitem aos usuários construir e manter uma rede de apoio ativa, de forma fácil e eficiente

This thesis is an exploration of tabooed literary creations that it terms carnival literature. To achieve the objective of establishing the effectiveness of posting material on Facebook walls of the selected group and individual accounts to escape censorship, the thesis compared traditional graffiti, particularly latrinalia, to ‗cyber‘ graffiti (social media) with Facebook as a case study. Lev Vygotsky‘s Activity Theory helped the study link graffiti, vulgarities, humour and Facebook to the Ndebele society‘s response to tabooing of carnival literature. The thesis argued that participating in traditional graffiti production and coming up with posts on a Facebook wall is a deliberate effort with a target audience just as other genres of literature have. However, society tends to condemn carnival literature as a rebellious genre that deserves exclusion from ‗normal‘ interaction. Carnival literature is therefore censored through tabooing its themes and language. The term carnival literature is derived from medieval performances that were named the ‗carnivalesque‘ by Bakhtin and have equivalents in Africa as a continent and in Zimbabwe as a nation. The characteristics of carnivality are found in both traditional graffiti and ‗cyber‘ graffiti. These, among others, include sex and sexuality as themes, obscenities, vulgarities, and all language that is considered offensive. Interestingly, these elements of carnivality evoke laughter of one kind or another. Latrinalia from selected public toilets from the city of Bulawayo was photographed and subjected to Critical Discourse Analysis with attention being paid to carnivality, Bakhtinian dialogism and humour and its impact on the interaction process. Posts on walls of the selected Facebook group and individual accounts were subjected to the same treatment that was given traditional graffiti. The thesis argues that social media can perform a similar function to that of traditional graffiti with added advantages. Social media has created world communities that are brought together by common interests and platforms where they meet and share ideas. The study also established that messages have layers of meaning, making it unreasonable to ban certain messages since they serve a particular purpose. Social media, particularly Facebook, provides pockets of privacy for candid and unfettered interaction that service specific audiences among the Ndebele; hence can function as the escape route for carnival literature from cultural censorship in Zimbabwe. / African Languages / D. Phil. (African Languages)