I surveyed a total of 112 University of
California Los Angeles students in this study.
I found that of these 112 respondents, all 112, or 100%, were in student
organizations. 19 students (or 16.96%)
were in one student group, 32 students (or 28.57%) were in two student groups,
and 61 students, the majority (or 54.46%) were in 3 or more student
groups. The chart below represents these
proportions:
Figure
1: Proportion of Students in Student Organizations
Of these 112 students in student organizations,
I found that 4 of their groups (or 3.57%) did not have Facebook pages, but the
other 108 groups (or 96.43%) did. The
chart representing this finding is below:
Figure
2: Percentage of Student Organizations with Facebook Pages
This
finding shows us that an overwhelming majority of student organizations, or
professional organizations, have developed Facebook Pages. This is significant because it shows already that
the “personal” space Facebook is supposed to be, is being occupied by
professional organizations.
From these 108 groups that have
Facebook Pages, I found that 14 of these groups (or 12.96%) use their Facebook Pages
for personal uses - to strengthen personal ties between members (or for
activities unrelated to the business of the student organization) whereas 94 (or
87.04%) of these organizations use their Facebook Pages for administrative
business (or marketing, distributing general information, and creating a fan
base or following). The chart that
represents these statistics is below:
Figure
3: Counts of Facebook Pages used for Personal Uses versus Administrative
Business
From
these findings we see that a majority of student organizations use their
Facebook pages for administrative business such as marketing, distributing
general information or creating a fan base, and only a small number of
organizations use their Facebook Pages for personal means, or to develop
relationships between and with their members.
With this information we now see that not only are a majority of
student, or professional, organizations on Facebook, but they are using this
“personal” space for professional means a majority of the time. This then confirms the first portions of my
hypothesis, which was that “Student organizations will use Facebook Pages for
more professional and administrative business such as marketing and gather a
following or fan-base, rather than using these sites to strengthen the relationships
between members.”
The second part of my hypothesis addresses claims
that: “Students will feel hostility toward their
organization for having them use their own individual sites as a platform for
the marketing or professional business of their organization, and that students
will feel the need to sensor their personal information because it is linked to
the larger, professional organization.”
In order to address the first part of this conjecture, I asked students
whether or not their on-campus organizations require or strongly urge them to
modify their personal Facebook Pages for the benefit of the organization. (By
this I mean that the organization either requires as part of membership, or
strongly urges, that the individuals change their profile pictures, post
statuses and links, etc. on their personal Facebook Pages). Of the 112 respondents, only 29 students (or
25.89%) said that they were not required or urged to modify their pages, but 83
students (or 74.11%) said they were. The
chart that represents this data is below:
Figure 4: Counts of students strongly urged
or required to modify Facebook pages, or not.
From this we see that a majority of student
organizations strongly urge, or require, that their members use their personal
space on the social networking site Facebook for the benefit of their organization. In order to assess the effect that this has
on the student organizations members, I asked those students who were strongly
urged or required to modify their pages whether or not they liked to modify
their page. Of the 83 students who were
urged or required to make modifications 42.86% said that they did not like to
modify their pages, whereas 57.14% said they did like to modify their pages.
The chart that represents this statistic is given below:
Figure 5: Percent of students who like, and
do not like, to modify their Pages for their organization
From this we see that a little over half, or
57.14%, of the students who are strongly urged or required to make modifications
to their Facebook Pages like to make these modifications and only about 42.86%
of students do not like to make these modifications. This is one of the questions that I asked
individuals to explain in the 25 follow up interviews. A majority of these students (16 out of the
25 students, or about 64%) responded with answers that dealt with the pride
they felt in being a UCLA Bruin, and that representing their organization
online was a way to display this pride.
The other 9 students, or 36%, responded with answers that explained that
they viewed their student organization like a job, and they wanted to keep
their “work life” separate from their personal life.
In order to examine the effect of these
modifications further, I asked all students whose on-campus organizations had
Facebook Pages (108 students) if they felt that they could post anything they
wanted on their Facebook Page.
Participants could say that either they could post anything they wanted because
their student organization would not care if they did, or that they could not
post anything they wanted because they are linked to and therefore represent their
student organization. In regards to this
question, 73 students, or 67.59% said that they could not post anything that
they wanted because they were linked to their student organization, and 35, or
32.41%, said that they could. The chart
representing this data is below:
Figure 6: Percent of students who can and
cannot post anything they wish on Facebook
From this we see that a majority, or 67.59%,
of students in student organizations with Facebook Pages do not feel that they
are free to post whatever they wish to on their personal Facebook Page because
they are linked to their student organization.
The other 32.41% of students feels that they can post whatever they wish
because the student organization they are linked to will not care if they do. In my 25 follow-up interviews, I asked
students to explain why they answered this question the way that they did. Of these students, 19 of these 25 (or 76%)
responded with answers that related to their need to uphold a certain image in
the eyes of their organization, or that there would be punishments or
consequences for acting unruly on their personal site. The other 6 respondents, or 24%, explained
that there would be consequences but they did not care about them, or that
their organizations were not strict about upholding any particular image.
When we take these three questions together,
we can assess the second claim in my hypothesis. Although I believed that students would feel
hostility toward this organization for having them use their own Facebook Pages
as a space for professional business (or the business of the organization),
this was actually not the case. Although
83, or 74.11%, of the students surveyed said that their on-campus organization
strongly urged or required that they make modifications to their personal
Facebook Pages, 57.14% of these students liked to make these
modifications. This means that a little
over half of these students were actually not hostile about making these
modifications, and my hypothesis in regards to this effect of Facebook use for
professional means was not supported.
The other part of this section of my hypothesis, however, was that students
will feel the need to censor this personal information of posts because they
are linked to their organization. In
regards to this claim, I found that 67.59% of the 108 students whose on-campus
organizations had a Facebook Page felt that they were restricted in their
postings because they were linked to their student organization online. In this sense, I was only partially supported
in the second part of my hypothesis.
From the data we see that although students are strongly urged or
required to make modifications to their personal Facebook Pages, over half of
these students actually like to make these modification, but a majority of
students also feel restricted in their personal postings due to their link to
their student organization online.
The third and final part of my hypothesis was
that: “Students will like their organizations less because their personal
websites are used for the professional advancement of their organization.” In
order to evaluate this speculation, I asked students whether they liked their
student organization, and to what extent, after completing all of the other
questions in the survey. Of the 112
students surveyed, 0 students did not like their organization, 27 out of 112
(or 24.22%) liked their student organization, and 85 out of 112 students (or
75.89%) loved their organization. The
results to this final question are found below:
Taking this information as a whole, and
relating it to my original hypothesis, we can draw several conclusions from
this data. First, that an overwhelming
majority of student organizations on the UCLA campus have Facebook Pages, and
these pages are primarily used for administrative business such as marketing. This shows that the first portion of my
hypothesis was supported. The second, is
that students are often strongly urged or required to make modifications to
their personal Facebook pages, but a majority of these students actually like
to make these modifications, yet a majority also feels restricted in what they
can post on their personal pages because they are linked to their organization
online. This demonstrated that the
second portion of my hypothesis was largely not supported because although
students feel restricted from posting certain material, the main claim was that
students would feel hostile toward their organizations for requiring or urging
personal Facebook Page modifications and I found that these students actually
like to make modifications to their pages for their organizations. The final conclusion we can draw, is that
regardless of the happenings on Facebook, the requirements, or restrictions
imposed, students still like, and for the most part love, their on-campus
organizations. This refutes the final
piece of my hypothesis which claimed that students would actually like their
organizations less because of these requirements and restrictions.
It is important to note that
although the data examined above is sufficient to draw the conclusions, and
assesses my hypothesis, as was done above, there may be other areas of interest
worth investigating in future research to gain further insight into this
particular phenomenon. One of these
areas is the way in which school spirit plays a role in student responses. Because this study examines students in
particular, the individuals surveyed may be inclined to both enjoy making
modifications to their Facebook pages and like or love their student
organizations because there are proud of their school and their involvement in
it (an issue that was raised in the follow-up interviews conducted). It also cannot be ignored that although all
of the students surveyed are involved in on-campus organizations, there may be
students who are not involved in these organization because a majority of these
organizations require you to use your personal space for professional means. Further investigation would be required to
determine if and to what extent these factors play a role in the current study
and the issue at hand. It is important
to keep these issues in mind when we generalize to a larger public, and attempt
to draw grand conclusions from these data, because this lurking variable of
school spirit may not be applicable to society at large, and what is more, the
non-participants may play an even greater role than we anticipate. Another area of interest is the development
of Facebook Groups, which is different than a Facebook Page. Although these lie outside the scope of this
study, it seems that Facebook may be picking up on this professional use of
personal space and trying to repair it with the development of Facebook Groups. These are more private groups the organizations
can make which only the members of the Group, and subsequently the organization,
can see. In my study I found that 30.36%
of students in on-campus organizations who have Facebook Pages also had
Facebook Groups, and that these Groups were predominantly used for personal
means, or the strengthening of personal ties and relationships between and with
group members. Although this is a
developing area of Facebook, it may be an area of interest to examine in future
research to determine the full extent and effect of using the personal space of
Facebook for professional means. These
areas of interest lie outside the scope of this study, however, they do raise questions
for further investigation and will be helpful in the continued examination of
this phenomenon.
Overall, the data I collected
directly related to the concepts in my hypothesis and I was able to determine
that although I was correct, that Facebook Pages of student organizations are
being used primarily for administrative, or professional, means, I could only
determine that this effected the users in two ways: that they felt restricted
from posting things that they wanted, but they actually liked making the
modifications required of them, and overall I found that for this sample of
students, these requirements and restrictions did not lessen the love they had
for their organizations.
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