Angående Individualismen
Author: Jonathan Wanér HedbergTitle: Angående Individualismen ? Facebook: Individualistens KollektivYear: 2014/2015Abstract: This essay seeks to understand how the expression of individualism can be seen in different ways in people?s use of the social network Facebook. Ten interviews with Facebook users have been performed. The analysis of these has been able to illustrate how Facebook users through Erving Goffman´s impression management prepares and presents their individualism to a collective, i. e. the users Facebook friends. The Informants' had a common view of how social ideals are published on Facebook by the users. The informants' description of ideals was in terms of individualistic performances; such as their own physical workout, bread making, or similar self-performed activities. Analysis also demonstrates that the Facebook feature the ?like button? can be used as the collective confirmation of the Facebook users presented individualism. This essay is also an attempt to explain how Facebook users enters their own individualized time zones on Facebook; being able to control the lives of friends on Facebook via a time that suits the users themselves; i. e. their own individualized time. Finally this essay tries to argue how people use Facebook to identify specific material, published by friends, which they use as a reflexivity of the self, as Anthony Giddens calls it. The informants describe how they use material, published by others, on Facebook to reflect on their own lives and identities; sometimes this resulted in a related action by those who performed the reflection.