“Embracing Digital Literacies: A Study of First-Year Students’ Digital Compositions”

by Bay VanWagenen | Xchanges 10.2/11.1

Facebook Genre Content

Several participants felt that writings that are fun and light-hearted in tone made up the content that was most appropriate for social media genres. Since for many participants social media is a tool to stay connected with friends, posts that describe events in people’s lives and “positive things” are important to maintain a feeling of closeness despite geographical distance between friends and writers in the community. Ava commented:

I have family that posts oh I’m so depressed … today is a horrible day. I’m ready to shut down … I feel like that’s not appropriate for Facebook. I wouldn’t want like all my friends knowing I’m having a bad day. I … like positive things and like happy things that you want people to know about you.

For Ava, writing on Facebook allows her to share selected aspects of her life with friends and family members. Like a greeting card sent in the mail, the brief “positive” and “happy things” she writes and reads help her sustain relationships through the images and writings shared on Facebook.

Participants demonstrated how they were able to work within this genre convention through their posts about current activities, or about enjoyable events that took place. For instance, Ava described a softball victory on Facebook: “Just got 4th place in nationals. Finally on my way home!! I can’t believe summers already over.” Mike posted on Facebook: “Beautiful night at At&t Park! What a great game so far!” And Natalie captured her first day of college emotions: “First day of [school]! EXCITING! I know most people aren’t excited for school, but I was!”

Through the long hours students spend on Facebook, they learn the boundaries of what genre content is required by the community and what content is not. Ethan, for instance, discussed how he tries to make Facebook posts as nonpolitical as possible because he does not “want to get into any arguments.” Two participants also described religion as one personal topic that is inappropriate for the genre of Facebook. Mike explained: “Most people probably wouldn’t want to share it. In many ways it’s a religious book and I know a lot of people don’t want to talk about religion or share religion on Facebook. I kind of sensed that maybe it was uncomfortable.” Despite recognizing that his writings can be unconventional, Mike consciously chooses to occasionally share writings that speak to this aspect of his identity, demonstrating sensitivity to — rather than ignorance of — Facebook content conventions.