CHS: Small: Non-use as a Transformative Lens for Understanding Social Technology

这项研究将分析不使用Facebook的相关因素，以便更深入、更丰富地理解社交技术是如何在复杂的社会技术环境中更普遍地发挥中介作用和嵌入其中的。它将解决三个主要的研究问题：如何通过探索技术使用和“用户”与不同类型、程度和种类的非使用的关系来促进我们对技术使用和“用户”的理解？隐私是如何通过不使用来概念化和制定的，这些做法如何帮助我们重新考虑隐私的定义和构成？离开在线群组和社区的过程和经历是什么？当特定技术变得近乎普及时，有意和有针对性的缺席在分析上变得引人注目，并可能提供信息。群体存续或解散的问题广泛适用于构成社会的各种领域和背景。这项研究将有助于理解社交技术如何调节这些过程，从而有助于设计更符合人们需求的系统。四条研究路线将探索这些主题。首先，两次大规模调查，第一年和第三年各一次，将确定不使用的不同做法和动机的流行率。第二，统计建模和网络分析，使用调查数据和使用数据样本，将检查个人和群体预测者如何与这些动机和做法相关。第三，由不同使用和不使用经历的参与者组成的一系列焦点小组将有助于理解围绕不使用可能发生的对话和冲突。第四，研究参与者将被要求停用他们的Facebook账户的干预措施，将使人们能够在不使用的过程和经历发生时进行观察。这个项目将有助于并扩展之前关于技术不使用的有限工作，深化我们对不使用和“用户”的概念化。定量和定性分析的结合将建立对社会技术规避的影响和实践的理解。为了促进这一领域的研究，将向其他研究人员提供匿名调查数据。最后，这项工作提供了一个潜在的变革性镜头，通过它来检查技术中介系统中长期存在的隐私和群体问题。

This research will analyze the factors associated with non-use of Facebook, in order to develop a deep, rich understanding of how social technologies more generally mediate and are embedded in complex sociotechnical milieux. It will address three primary research questions: How can our understanding of technology use and "the user" be advanced by exploring its relationship with different types, degrees, and varieties of non-use? How is privacy conceptualized and enacted through non-use, and how do those practices help us reconsider the definition and constitution of privacy? What are the processes and experiences of leaving online groups and communities? When particular technologies become nearly pervasive, intentional and pointed absence from them becomes both analytically conspicuous and potentially informative. Questions of group persistence or dissolution apply broadly to a wide variety of domains and contexts integral to the composition of society. This research will help understand how social technologies mediate these processes, thus contributing to the design of systems that better meet the needs of people.Four lines of research will explore these themes. First, a pair of large-scale surveys, one each during the first and third years, will establish the prevalence of different practices of and motivations for non-use. Second, statistical modeling and network analysis, using both survey data and samples of usage data, will examine how both individual and group predictors relate to these motivations and practices. Third, a series of focus groups involving participants with diverse experiences of use and non-use will help understand conversations and conflicts that may occur around non-use. Fourth, an intervention wherein study participants will be asked to deactivate their Facebook account will enable observation of the processes and experiences of non-use as they happen. This project will contribute to and expand on the previous limited work on technology non-use, deepening our conceptualizations both of non-use and of "the user." The combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses will build an understanding of the influences on and practices of social technology avoidance. To facilitate research in this area, the anonymized survey data will be made available to other researchers. Finally, this work offers non-use as a potentially transformative lens through which to examine long-standing issues of privacy and groups in technologically-mediated systems.