Networked Intimacy. Intimacy and Friendship among Italian Facebook users

Manolo Farci, Luca Rossi, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Fabio Giglietto

    Research output: Journal Article or Conference Article in JournalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    In this paper, we describe the results of a qualitative study conducted with 120 Italian Facebook users to investigate how Facebook enables people to achieve a mutually constitutive intimacy with their own friendship network: a negotiation of intimacy in public through self-disclosure, where the affordances of the platform are useful to elicit significant reactions, validations and demonstrations of affection from others. We observed that, in order to achieve various levels of intimacy on Facebook, people engage in various strategies: Showing rather than telling, Sharing implicit content, Tagging, Expectation of mutual understanding and Liking. These strategies produce a collaborative disclosure that relies on others’ cooperation to maintain the boundaries between private and public space. Based on these premises, we developed a framework of collaborative strategies for managing public intimacy that both systematizes and extends the findings identified in previous studies of intimacy on Facebook. We describe this framework as networked intimacy and we discuss the consequences of it in the light of already existing research on online self-disclosure.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalInformation, Communication & Society
    Number of pages18
    ISSN1369-118X
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2016

    Keywords

    • Facebook
    • Intimacy
    • Self-Disclosure
    • Social Network

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