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

本研究将分析与不使用Facebook相关的因素，以便深入、丰富地了解社交技术如何更普遍地调解和嵌入复杂的社会技术环境。它将解决三个主要的研究问题：如何通过探索技术使用与不同类型、程度和种类的非使用之间的关系来提高我们对技术使用和“用户”的理解？隐私是如何通过不使用来概念化和制定的，这些实践如何帮助我们重新考虑隐私的定义和构成？离开网络团体和社区的过程和经历是什么？当特定的技术变得几乎无处不在时，故意和有针对性的缺席就会在分析上变得引人注目，并可能提供信息。群体持续存在或解散的问题广泛适用于社会组成中不可或缺的各种领域和背景。这项研究将有助于理解社会技术如何调解这些过程，从而有助于设计更好地满足人们需求的系统。四个研究方向将探讨这些主题。首先，在第一年和第三年各进行一次大规模调查，将确定不使用的不同做法和动机的普遍程度。其次，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实践相关。第三，一系列涉及不同使用和不使用经验的参与者的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，在干预中，研究参与者将被要求停用他们的Facebook账户，这将使他们能够观察到不使用的过程和经历。这个项目将有助于并扩展之前有限的技术非使用工作，深化我们对非使用和“用户”的概念。定量分析和定性分析相结合将有助于理解社交技术回避的影响和实践。为了促进这一领域的研究，匿名调查数据将提供给其他研究人员。最后，这项工作提供了非使用作为一个潜在的变革镜头，通过它来检查长期存在的隐私和群体问题在技术介导的系统。

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.