This research paper was written in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Postgraduate Applied Linguistics Diploma, University of Lancaster, 2015-2018.

A Life Journey on Facebook: My Literacy Practices of Facebooking

By Najat Alshafie

Introduction

Reading Paulo Freire’s famous book, “Pedagogy of the oppressed” (in Arabic), at a young age made a big change in my understanding of literacy. I believe that literacy is empowering to all individuals, especially women. To seek women’s empowerment and make my voice heard, I joined social media, specifically Facebook. In this paper I will first describe my life journey on Facebook and then reflect on my digital literacy practices using Facebook. The paper consists of six sections: research questions, conceptual framework, Facebook affordances, methodology, my technobiography and reflections on my Facebook practices.

1. Research questions

The study investigates my Facebook literacy practices through writing a technobiography then reflecting on it. The research questions are as following:

1. What were my purposes of using Facebook?

2. How did Facebook document my life?

3. How did I perform my identity on Facebook?

2. Conceptual framework

I draw on the theoretical underpinnings of the literacy as social practice approach. This section presents an overview of this approach and establishes an understanding of digital literacies. Contrary to viewing literacy as decontextualized skills of reading and writing, Barton and Hamilton argue that “like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people” (2012, p.3). The notion of practices and events are central in this view of literacy. Barton and Hamilton (2000, p. 7) define literacy practice as the “general cultural ways of utilizing written language which people draw upon in their lives” “that can be abstracted from particular events” (Page, Barton, Unger, & Zappavigna, 2014). The term practices can be used in two ways: to refer to “observable, collectable and/or documentable specific ethnographic detail of situated literacy events, involving real people, relationships, purposes, actions, places, times, circumstances, feelings, tools and resources” and can also refer to “culturally recognizable patterns of behavior, which can be generalized from the observation of specifics” (Tusting, Ivanic, & Wilson, 2000, p. 210). It is important to note that “literacy practices are purposeful” (Barton & Hamilton, 2012, p.7) and are “constantly re-invented in different material forms” like in digital spaces (2012, p. xxix). As for literacy events, they are the activities where literacies have a role (Barton & Hamilton, 2012). “The notion of event seems to suggest that it is temporally and spatially bounded” but that is not the case on digital spaces because “the text is never complete and readers can add to the text at any point and from any location” (Davies & Merchant, 2007, p. 171). Street (1995, 2001) indicates that literacy is conceptualized in “the community social processes as an ideological practice that is implicated in power relations and embedded in specific cultural meanings and practices” (1995, p.1).

As for the term digital literacies, Barton and Lee use it to describe the everyday activities of writing and reading online (2013, p.8) while Jones and Hafner (2012) define ‘digital literacies’ as “practices of communicating, relating, thinking and ‘being’ associated with digital media” (p.13). Lankshear and Knobel (2008) consider literacies practiced on social network sites (SNS) as “socially recognized ways of generating, communication and negotiating meaningful content as members of discourse through the medium of encoded texts” (p. 249). The “plurality of digital literacies” is emphasized (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 10) because “people employ various kinds of digital literacies for many purposes” (Barton & Lee, 2013, p. 8). Gillen and Barton (2010, p. 9) provide a similar view of digital literacies as “the constantly changing practices through which people make traceable meanings using digital technologies”. Addressing the particular digital literacies of users of Facebook, “Facebooking” is a term used by Davies (2012) and Lankshear and Knobel (2011).

In addition, I draw on the literature and empirical studies of Facebook. Based on their studies of digital technologies, Barton and Lee (2013) argued that language online was situated literacy practice, in which texts and practices were inseparable. In a study of youths’ use of facework on Facebook, Davies (2012, p. 23) mentioned that Facebook was “a context for literacy practices that are social and that are vernacular… embedded in people’s everyday lives”. She indicated the blending of old and new literacy practices of self-presentation and doing friendship of young Facebookers to connect and make meaning. Davies’ (2013) other study revealed four female hairdressers presentation of identities on Facebook using gendered literacy practices. Bouvier’s (2012) researched Welsh undergraduate students display of identity on their Facebook profiles and reported a “high use of nationalist identity categories and biological ethnic classification alongside other lifestyle identities” (Bouvier, 2012). Grasmuck, Martin and Zhao (2008) also investigated adults identity construction on Facebook and found that users mostly claimed their identities implicitly rather than explicitly and stressed group and consumer identities over personally narrated ones. In alignment with the literature presented here, my Facebooking is embedded in my sociocultural context of the Saudi Arabian Muslim society.

3. Facebook affordances

Affordances, in general, “are the possibilities for action which people identify in relation to specific resources” (Barton & Potts, 2013, p. 816) and affordances of digital technologies are the enabling features that people perceive but there are also particular constrains for all digital tools (Page et al., 2014). Nevertheless, only the “perceived affordances become the context for action (Barton & Lee, 2013, p. 27). People might adjust their use of a certain technology to match their own purpose; hence, creating new affordances like Facebook that was initially designed for university students then became a digital space for everyone (Barton & Lee, 2013). Similar to other SNS, Facebook users can: “(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). A summary of basic Facebook practices and terminology are presented in Table 1.

Learning about Facebook and its affordances and limitations and how to adapt them to suit my needs took some time and effort until I became a competent Facebook user.

Methodology

I will investigate my digital literacy practices using a growing qualitative methodology of researching the self that is the autoethnographic approach (Anderson, 2006; Page et al., 2014). An “autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness connecting the personal to the cultural” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 739). The study of my Facebooking is similar to Davies’ (2007) study of her own Flickr literacy practices. Gee (2003) also reported his practices of playing online video games. Also, Davies and Merchant (2007) employed an autoethnographic method for their blogging practices and then compared them with each other. The inquiry in an autoethnography is a firsthand experience repositioning “the researcher, as both subject and object” (Davies and Merchant, 2007, p.167) which provides access to “insider meanings” (Anderson, 2006, p. 17). As for me, I have been a Facebook member “embedded in the culture” of the space (Davies, 2007). However, in this autoethnographic study my role of a ‘member’ will change to an insider researcher reflecting retrospectively on my practices by way of writing a technobiography. A “technobiography” is writing a narrative about one’s life related to the use of technologies (Barton & Lee, 2013; Page et al., 2014). Kennedy (2003, p. 120) argues for the use of technobiographies as “a useful method for studying digital experiences”. I chose to write a technobiography about my rich Facebook experience because Facebook was one of the earliest social media I had extensively used for multiple purposes: personal, teaching, learning, social action, business and publishing my work.

4. My Facebook technobiography

I come from a middle class family who lives in a town located on the Arabian Gulf in Saudi Arabia. My father worked for Aramco, the Saudi American oil company, until he retired. My mother is illiterate and is a housewife. My native language is Arabic and I started learning English at school when I was 12 but before that I watched English children programs on Aramco TV. My passion for reading started when I was in the primary school. I loved reading Arabic literature and translated world literature. I also read nonfiction like biographies of famous women and Muslim leaders. I am now in my fifties but since I was young I have been writing different genres: diaries, poems (mostly in Arabic and few in English) and short stories. I also draw and paint and take photographs. Both my Bachelor and Master’s degrees are in English linguistics and I work as an English language lecturer in a Saudi university.

I currently use several digital spaces such as, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Skype, Whatsapp and my website; nonetheless, when I joined Facebook in 2008, I had only some experience using Hotmail and Yahoo online messengers and Blackberry smartphone instant messenger. I have basically used Facebook to communicate with family, friends and colleagues then used it for other purposes, such as to create groups for the purpose of teaching, which made me create another Facebook account so that my students would not be able to know about my private life. I had also used Facebook for my small business, learning, social action and to share my writings and artwork using a separate account for each purpose. Next I will describe each one of my Facebook accounts: personal, business, teacher, social activist, learner and writer account, consecutively.

4.1. Personal account

I am a mother of two daughters. I decided cautiously to join Facebook in 2008 under the pressure of my daughters because I was always concerned with privacy issues, but they comforted me that I could apply strict privacy settings. My daughters used Facebook before me and walked me through the process. I did not include any details about myself on the profile. I used my first name in English and the initials of my family name “Najat Sh” for my identity and applied strict privacy settings, so no strangers could find my profile. I had a number of profile pictures: my father, my little niece and then the last one before I became inactive was of me when I was two years old (figure 1). I could not put a personal photo because in my community, at that time, it is not favorable for a woman, at that time, to do that and I did not want to break this rule. I had 59 friends on that account, mostly family, friends and few teacher colleagues.

Communicating with family, friends and colleagues was the most invaluable asset of joining Facebook. That was not obvious in the start, but later I came to realize that a great deal of our lives was centered in that small space. At that time, my eldest daughter was studying abroad, and through Facebook I was able to contact her via messages and stayed updated on her latest news that she would diligently post on Facebook, even before hearing them from her. I used also to chat with her using text chatting using Facebook messenger. Most of her posts were in English because she was studying abroad, and I would comment in English. When I travelled to visit her in the summer, I met her friends and their families and added some to my Friend’s list and got in touch with them on Facebook. Moreover, I added few past teacher colleagues from the previous school where I taught until 2005. My past colleagues came from different countries and Facebook was our meeting place. I was thrilled to know that one colleague got married and another had two grandsons whom she posted their pictures on Facebook. Sometimes I commented on others but if I did not have time, I just clicked “Like”. I also joined groups and liked pages when I felt interested in their activities.

I used to publish my writings in a popular website for Arab writers called “Doroob” (closed now); hence, I posted the written texts or the links on my Facebook. For instance, I wrote in a status update on 4/1/2008 “is writing new poems & getting ready to publish them soon.” Facebook at that period had an obligatory “is” as prompt in the statues update (Lee, 2011); thus, I had to write about myself in the third person, which sounded strange! Most of my status updates were in English and I used less Arabic. I became less active using the personal account when I started my small business until I completely stopped using it in 2011 when I got engaged with the business, teacher and social activists accounts that I started using at almost the same time.

4.2. Business account

My eldest daughter came up with the idea of starting a private business of teaching English during the summer vacation of 2010. She was halfway through her bachelor study abroad and she was fluent in English. I had the idea in mind, too, but with her determination and assistance, we started it by having a Facebook account and page dedicated to advertise for our program (figure 2). After she became busy, I continued with the business by myself and ran the Facebook account and page. The account lasted for almost three years, for on and off tutoring classes when I had free time during holidays and vacations. Since it was of a business type, the profile picture reflected that by posting a picture that had the brand name we invented “English is fun”. I added many potential customers from the local community and if I tried to send many friends’ requests per day, Facebook would block me from sending requests for 48 hours. I cannot remember how many friends I had because I forgot the password and cannot access the account anymore but I can still view it from my writer account. Most of the status updates on this account were advertisements in Arabic and English for the tutoring program. For instance, a poster advertisement was posted on the account (figure 3). I stopped using the account when I stopped tutoring in 2014.

4.3. Teacher account

I used the teacher account under the name of Najat Nawras for almost one year, 2011 to 2012 (figure 4). I established it for teaching purposes in order to separate my personal and professional lives. I created ‘secret groups’ for my students to interact and communicate with each other because Facebook was popular among students at that period. The accessibility of a secret group is only by invitation from the administrator, which guaranteed the privacy of my students. This profile was related to my professional identity as a teacher who wanted to employ technology with students. Another important reason was that the university where I teach did not have any digital space for teachers to communicate with students or to share resources with them except email. The affordance of creating groups on Facebook made me think of making ones for my students to learn English and to communicate using social media. I had training and attended conferences and workshops on Computer Assisted Language Learning; consequently, I wanted to apply that in my classes to make the students motivated about learning English.

I made two secret Facebook groups: one for students to post their writing and provide feedback to each other and one for learning vocabulary. The writing group (figure 5) was big of almost 65 students compared to the vocabulary group that was smaller of almost 40 (figure 6). In the groups I posted language activities and practice. Facebook groups were an opportunity for learners to share, communicate and learn from peers. However, I stopped using the teacher account because establishing the learners’ groups, monitoring them and giving the students feedback consumed a lot of time.

4.4. Social activist account

I opened the account in 2011. Unfortunately, I cannot access it now because I made a different email and Facebook profile associated with it under an alias identity and forgot the password. As a social activist, I advocated for women’s empowerment and rights and as such I did not reveal my real name because I did not want to provoke the conservatives in the society or to cause friction with them or to sound liberal and this might put me at social risk. I posted articles that dealt with women’s issues or reposted what other activists posted and news about the recent changes in the society. I friended other social activists and joined some groups that calls for increasing women’s participation in the society. I closed it because I was afraid that my true identity might be disclosed besides becoming busy with work. It also took time to manage my social activist account and other accounts at the same time. I stopped using it after a year or so but continued posting about women’s issues in the learner and writer accounts.

4.5. Learner account

When I joined the postgraduate program at the University of Lancaster, I opened a new learner account in January 2015 to communicate with my new colleagues and other students who shared the same research interests with me. For this account, I used my first and father’s name “Najat Naji” and the two photos on the profile (figure 7) are related to the physical environment of my study journey. The forefront profile picture was of a bridge on the road from Lancaster to Manchester that I saw at the end of my first residential. The background picture was of Lake District that I visited in a trip that was arranged by the university of Lancaster and it represented the nice time I spent there with my tutor and colleagues, the landscape beauty and the terrible cold English weather in winter. In ordered to be recognized by my colleagues, I included on my profile studied at “Lancaster University”.

My first post was “Busy Monday! Busy week to come. Wish u all a fruitful week.” I had 29 colleagues on that account. I also joined other specialized groups in my field of study, applied linguistics. I also used the Facebook messenger linked to the account to work with colleagues who lived in distant countries on the group assignments we had or to discuss the arrangements for the 2015 Postgraduate Conference, as I was a member of the organizing committee. What made me less active using the account is that my colleagues and I formed a Whatsapp group on our smartphones and we interacted on that with instant messaging that was more convenient and faster. I stopped using my account after I initiated my writer account in July 2015. It lasted for six months. My last post was “I am switching my Facebook to Najat Alshafei please accept the friend request from my other account! Trying to tidy up my cyber life. :D”. I notified my few colleagues there that they could follow me on my writer account and freinded some of them again on the new writer account.

4.6. Writer account “Najat Alshafie”

The summer of 2015 was a landmark in my literary and artistic life when I launched my own website https://www.najatalshafie.com/ with the persuasion of my eldest daughter. Thus, I transformed my old Facebook teacher account to a writer account by changing the profile and all the content to suit the new aim and changed the settings to be publically accessed. Then I deactivated the learner account because I would not have time to run two accounts besides my website and other social media. I am still using this account and I constantly update it with my work. When I publish on the website, there is a Facebook plugin sharing button that I use to publish on Facebook or it can be used by other readers (figure 9). Furthermore, I sometimes post content related to women’s issues and community news but rarely about my personal life. This account is linked to Twitter and Instagram so that I save time instead of posting on three different spaces.

5. Reflections on my digital literacy practices on Facebook

In this section I reflect on my Facebook literacy focusing on three major aspects: the purposes of using Facebook, documenting my life and performing my identity on Facebook. According to Lankshear and Knobel (2011), Facebooking is not a single practice but there are various ways of Facebooking. In this section I will reflect on my particular way of Facebooking.

5.1. Facebooking purposes

“Literacy practices are purposeful” (Barton & Hamilton, 2012, p.7) and in this section I explain the purposes of my Facebooking practices. I used my perceived affordances of Facebook to make six distinctive accounts for different purposes (table 2) as discussed earlier in my technobiography. Although it is not possible to have simultaneous Facebook accounts, I made different emails for five different accounts except the writer account that was originally the teacher account then I changed its profile and content to match the purpose. In the domain of home and everyday life, I used my personal Facebook to contact family, friends and acquaintances, express myself and document my life. Since Saudi women cannot drive, meeting friends face-to-face might be hard; hence, social media like Facebook enabled me stay in touch with my Saudi friends as well as non-Saudi friends living abroad. I used Facebook messenger sometimes to chat with them or send them private messages. In the domain of work, I used Facebook for creating students’ groups and communicating with students and teachers. In the domain of business, I used Facebook to run my small business of English language tutoring. Then when I joined the postgraduate program, I used Facebook to contact other students and joined specialized groups in Linguistics and teaching English. Furthermore, I joined the committee organizing the postgraduate conference and we did most of our arrangements for that on Facebook messenger by sharing files and group text chatting. On the social activists account, I followed activists and advocated for Saudi women’s empowerment and rights like driving and participating in elections for municipality and chamber of commerce while on my writer account I published my literary and artwork. In fact, it was hard to specify certain separate purposes for different accounts. For example, on my personal account, I shared advertisements for the business account and on the teacher and learner accounts, I published some of my work.

5.2. Documenting life

Documenting life is one of the areas of everyday literacy practices (vernacular practices) (Barton & Hamilton,1998). Documenting one’s life can take place offline as well as online and “writing online is writing oneself into being” (Barton & Lee, 2013,p.84). Facebook provided me with a digital space to write myself online that was inseparable from my offline life. Every time I made a profile, updated my status, posted or commented, uploaded a picture, I was ‘constructing an auto-biography’, a networked narrative shared with other users and co-constructed when they commented, liked, linked, tagged and shared photos (Page, 2010; Page, Harper, & Frobenius, 2013). Even the simple act when I clicked on ‘like’ on a posted status or picture was a form of writing (Lankshear & Knobel, 2011). The Facebook affordances of organizing all the content chronologically on a Timeline made it possible to keep a historic record of almost one decade of my life (Georgalou, 2015).

My Facebook journey documented important landmarks in my life. Digging into my Timeline reminded me of many events that I had forgotten and a trial of sweet and bitter memories deeply triggered my emotions while I was writing my technobiography. The personal Facebook account I opened in 2008 marked the beginning of my Facebook experience. The business one was when I had the tutoring interest to make extra income to support my daughters’ education in 2010 whereas the teacher one documented the period of my professional life when I was interested in applying computer learning in my classes in 2011; thus, I made a teacher profile. As for the social activist account, it signposted the Arab Spring in 2011 that encouraged social participation to induce positive change and reform. The learner profile came to life when I joined the postgraduate program in 2015. The final Facebook account I use now is the writer account that I started when I launched my website in 2015 mainly to publish my literary and artwork besides sharing informative articles or updates of latest news of the community and women’s issues.

The multimodal texts I used recorded some events in my life and community. The personal account specifically included pictures of family and colleagues, of places I visited and of updates of important events in the local community. For instance, I posted condemning Qatif and Dammam mosques terrorist bombings that occurred in 2015 on Facebook. My Facebooking is a true example of how “contemporary life is documented by the footprints left online through social participation on Facebook and elsewhere” (Barton & Hamilton, 2012, p. xxv). Finally, I feel Facebook is not just a digital tool but also a part of me and a record of my history.

5.3. Facebook identities

Barton and Hamilton argue that literacy is an identity resource in “the making of meanings and persons” that is “constantly re-invented in different material forms” like in digital spaces (2012, p. xxix). Based on this argument, I have been performing my identity or identities on Facebook. Self-representation on Facebook, and the disclosure of certain demographic and personal information about my self influenced the sort and extent of interaction I received from other members on the same space. Other users might friend you if they know you, share interest or opinions with you or unfriend you for one or other reasons. (Page et al., 2014, p. 14). In each profile I composed, I projected my identity in a certain way that was related to the purpose of the Facebook account and the Facebookers I targeted (Table 3). In the personal, learner, teacher and writer profiles, I used my real name since it was necessary that Facebook users would recognize me as I aimed to friend relatives, real friends, colleagues and students. However, in the social activist account I used an alias because it was safer for me and mostly activists who were interested in social issues interacted with me because of the way I composed my profile and the content I shared. For the business account I used a catchy commercial name English Is Fun to attract potential customers and to identify the type of service I was providing. Not only the profile name I chose and pictures reflected my identities but also all of the content of the Facebook account was oriented to match that.

In addition, language choice played a significant role in the identity I enacted on Facebook. Facebook affordances enabled me “to constantly display, construct, perform, shape and reshape different senses of the self online through linguistic means” (Barton & Lee, 2013, p. 84). Barton and Lee (2013, p. 18) argue that “language choice is one of the most salient practices for identity performance” which enables “constructing glocal identities in public online spaces” (p.67) by employing multilingual and multimodal resources. Similarly, I utilized my multilingual resources in my Facebooking practices to perform a glocal identity and that is the reason that English predominated my posts on Facebook since I wanted to address my multinational Facebook friends. Thus, English was a lingua franca for me to communicate with an international audience. I just used Arabic when necessary like for my literary work, advertisements in the business account and replying to people who could not use English. When I wrote in Arabic, I used the standard Arabic written variety because I believe it is more cultural and beautiful than the colloquial variety. I also used English because of other factors. First, my father was fluent in American English because he worked for Aramco and that influenced me. I used to go with him to Aramco events and hospital and heard him communicating fluently in English. In my free time I watched Aramco Television channel with its attractive English programs. Finally, as an English language teacher, I wanted to reflect my language proficiency and to sound professional when writing and communicating in English with my students and colleagues.

6. Conclusion

In the paper I discussed my digital literacy practices on Facebook as situated in the sociocultural context according to the social practice view of literacy. I have investigated my purposes of using Facebook and how it documented my life and how I performed my identity on Facebook. Since I started using Facebook, I have been writing myself online. Facebook captured my life in the multimodal and multilingual content I shared with others. Writing a technobiographical account was an introspective learning journey. I came to realize that we are deeply immersed in digital technologies of all sorts. We live life not only in the physical world but also in digital spaces like Facebook and we develop and change our literacies accordingly. We are enacting what Davies (2007) refers to as people are like autoethnographers “documenting and re-considering their lives” on digital spaces (p.549).

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*I wrote this research paper as a course requirement of the Postgraduate Applied Linguistics Program I attended at the University of Lancaster 2015-2018.

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[1] I wrote this paper as a requirement for the postgraduate diploma program in applied linguistics at the University of Lancaster.