This research will analyze the factors associated with non-use of Facebook, in order to develop a deep, rich understanding of how social technologies more generally mediate and are embedded in complex sociotechnical milieux. It will address three primary research questions: How can our understanding of technology use and "the user" be advanced by exploring its relationship with different types, degrees, and varieties of non-use? How is privacy conceptualized and enacted through non-use, and how do those practices help us reconsider the definition and constitution of privacy? What are the processes and experiences of leaving online groups and communities? When particular technologies become nearly pervasive, intentional and pointed absence from them becomes both analytically conspicuous and potentially informative. Questions of group persistence or dissolution apply broadly to a wide variety of domains and contexts integral to the composition of society. This research will help understand how social technologies mediate these processes, thus contributing to the design of systems that better meet the needs of people.
Four lines of research will explore these themes. First, a pair of large-scale surveys, one each during the first and third years, will establish the prevalence of different practices of and motivations for non-use. Second, statistical modeling and network analysis, using both survey data and samples of usage data, will examine how both individual and group predictors relate to these motivations and practices. Third, a series of focus groups involving participants with diverse experiences of use and non-use will help understand conversations and conflicts that may occur around non-use. Fourth, an intervention wherein study participants will be asked to deactivate their Facebook account will enable observation of the processes and experiences of non-use as they happen.
This project will contribute to and expand on the previous limited work on technology non-use, deepening our conceptualizations both of non-use and of "the user." The combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses will build an understanding of the influences on and practices of social technology avoidance. To facilitate research in this area, the anonymized survey data will be made available to other researchers. Finally, this work offers non-use as a potentially transformative lens through which to examine long-standing issues of privacy and groups in technologically-mediated systems.
