Digital Essay 2: Facebook

According to Janet Murray, there are four affordances that apply to any digital genre: procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial (“Four Affordances”). These four affordances apply to Facebook as well as any other form of social or digital media. Facebook is user friendly, accessible, and encourages a large network of communication via the site. Facebook separates itself from the other social networking sites, such as Instagram, Twitter, Shutterfly, and Tumblr etc., because it encompasses all of the functions of these mediums and more in just one site. Facebook has the ability to connect its users through its medium because it serves multiple purposes, contains a wealth of information, and most importantly, acts as a bridge to share information from the user to their chosen friends and vice versa, keeping people connected.

The first affordance is procedural, which states that a digital medium has to be composed of executable rules. There are both written and unwritten rules by which Facebook users abide. When creating a Facebook account, the website provides step-by-step instructions for creating a profile that is unique to that individual user. Each account is unique to the individual user, but is also similar to every other Facebook account because it is created with the same structure and layout. Each Facebook account asks for a profile picture, cover photo, and gives the user the option to add friends and photos to the account. The user can add information about himself under the About section on his profile. This information includes his birthday, hometown, current location, phone number, family members, education, work, skills, religious and political affiliations and much more. Upon setting up a Facebook account, the user has to set up their Privacy settings, which limits his profile’s exposure to others and protects his information.

Another procedural rule is that Facebook only allows a user to see another user’s full page when they are friends. If users are not friends on Facebook, all of their posts, photos, friends, and general information are hidden from each other, according to their respective privacy settings. Some users allow more information to be visible to the general public, while others choose to hide their entire profiles. It is only after users become friends when they are able to see each other’s pages. Similarly, in order for a user to see a page’s post appear on his newsfeed, he must follow and/or like the page. For example, to see Tasty’s videos on his newsfeed as soon as they are uploaded, the user must follow or like Tasty’s page. This, however, does not mean that, in order to see Tasty’s page, the user must follow it. Since Tasty is a public page, any Facebook user can visit Tasty’s page, watch their videos and see their posts. Similarly, navigating through popular pages, like Tasty, can show which of a user’s friends also like the page, which can help create connections based on similar interests. On a user’s newsfeed, he will only see the people who he follows and the pages he likes. Therefore, he is encouraged to like the pages with the content he wants to see on his newsfeed. Various unwritten rules exist on Facebook as well; these are social norms that users abide by in order to maintain their real-life friendships. If a user writes on another user’s wall, he or she is expected to respond on the post. Similarly, if someone ‘friends’ another person, he or she is expected to accept, if they are acquainted in real life.

The procedural rules of Facebook are designed to create individualized profiles to optimize a user's online experience. Users all have similar accounts, which makes it easy to understand the information provided on their feeds and connect with other accounts.

The second, and most important, affordance is participatory, which means that the digital medium must be inviting of human action and manipulation of the represented world. Facebook invites human interaction through the ability for the user to like and comment on posts, use hashtags and location tags, view one’s newsfeed, attend/make events and engage in or form groups. Due to the powers of the comment section and the like button, each user plays a role in their own social media world.

Users can comment on posts and tag their friends in links, photos, memes etc., and their friend will receive a notification to view the post. Similarly, the hashtag trend connects posts with others that have the same hashtag. For example, public posts with the hashtag #ThrowbackThursday are all in one feed. Users who tag locations can view the other images that users have tagged at that exact location. For example, Times Square is a commonly tagged location and all public posts that are tagged in Times Square show up on the same feed.

These functions serve to connect users who have similar interests and are in similar locations.

Facebook is also participatory in that it is accessible on many different technological devices and in many different locations in the world. Facebook can be used on any device and operating system, alike. Additionally, Facebook is incorporative among users and encourages networking. Users can join or create groups, make and see different events occurring in their areas, and see which groups their friends are in and which events they are also attending. Another feature on Facebook is ‘On This Day,’ which documents a user’s posts or tags on that day in previous years.

This feature engages users to share their memories with their friends and also be reminded of them. For example, if a user’s friend tags him in photos, on that day in future years, both users will be reminded of that post.

The newsfeed is Facebook’s most participatory feature. The newsfeed functions to engage users in their friends’ lives. On their newsfeeds, users can see posts and photos their friends have been tagged in or have commented on. For example, a user can see their friend’s photos even if they were posted by a user they are not connected with. The user can see these photos if the poster’s privacy setting is set to be viewed by ‘friends of friends.’ If the privacy setting is set to ‘friends of friends,’ mutual friends can see their posts. This privacy setting broadens the scope of visibility and allows many different users to see their posts even if they are not friends on Facebook. Users who are friends with the person who is tagged, but not the original poster, can also comment and like these posts.

The third affordance, encyclopedic, states that a digital medium must contain a high capacity of information in multiple media formats. There are many different media formats on Facebook, including photos, links to other websites and media, trending news on the home page, and videos.

For example, if a user shares a link on their page, that link will open up to an entirely different media format, such as a news network’s article, to Twitter, Instagram or any form of social media. The trending news on the home page shows the day’s top trending news in politics, science and technology and in sports.

The encyclopedic function of Facebook sets it apart from other networking sites. Facebook has a wealth of information that other sites do not contain. Users can use Facebook in any way they choose because it has many different functions. Users may choose to post photos to keep their friends updated, other users may use Facebook as their main source of news, and others may use Facebook solely to play Candy Crush or Farmville.

The fourth and final affordance, spatial, suggests that a digital medium has to be navigable as an information repository and/or visual place. On Facebook, it is easy to navigate through different spaces, including different users’ pages as well as through different public pages. It is also easy to navigate between digital mediums, specifically between Facebook and other social networking sites and mediums. Users can post YouTube videos to their timelines, or link their Instagram and Tweets to their Facebook pages, which connects many of the different forms of social media. Facebook holds a vast web of information that it easily accessible to each user—it encompasses a variety of different media in one main location. For example, the search bar functions similarly to the Google search bar. Typing ‘Las Vegas’ in the Facebook search bar, shows trending videos and articles that various news sites or users have posted on their Facebook pages. These videos and posts are linked to their respective websites, but can also been watched on Facebook.'

Facebook's user experience engages each of the four affordances, which accounts for Facebook's success as a digital medium. All of these elements function together to make Facebook an interactive social networking service. Facebook functions as the digital version of many different concrete mediums, such as the newspaper, the photo album, the diary/journal, the calendar, and the card game, etc. All of Facebook's capacities separate it from the other digital sites, which only replace one of these legacy mediums.

Works Cited

“Four Affordances.” Janet H. Murray, 19 Nov. 2011, inventingthemedium.com/four-affordances/.