'Facebooking' towards crisis recovery and beyond: Disruption as an opportunity

Bryan Semaan, Gloria Mark

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemConference contribution

50 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper reports on an ethnographic study of Facebook use amongst a population living through ongoing disruption. We interviewed 45 Iraqi citizens, as well as received survey responses from 218 individuals, who have been experiencing the current Gulf War since March 2003. We show how people in a society experiencing conflict use Facebook in ways that are different to uses in non-war societies. We find that Facebook supports people living in crisis environments at two levels. First, Facebook aids people directly to recover from disruption. People used Facebook to create "safe lists", to seek help and provide assistance, and to re-construct their social scaffolding. But at a deeper level, citizens also used Facebook to maintain and develop new social norms, and to re-direct their country. We discuss how disruption can serve as an opportunity by which people can re-invent their societies and how our understandings of Facebook should evolve.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCSCW'12 - Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Pages27-36
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 19 2012
Externally publishedYes
EventACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW'12 - Seattle, WA, United States
Duration: Feb 11 2012Feb 15 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW

Other

OtherACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW'12
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle, WA
Period2/11/122/15/12

Keywords

  • crisis
  • facebook
  • recovery
  • slippage
  • social-networking
  • war

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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