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Abstract
Within the range of websites and apps that are part of first-year undergraduates' digital environments, the social network site Facebook is perhaps the most popular and prominent. As such, the ubiquitous nature of Facebook in the higher education landscape has drawn much attention from scholars. Drawing on data from a longitudinal connective ethnography, this paper uses two ethnographic stories to explore further the realities of social media usage by newly enrolled undergraduate students in a UK university. These ethnographic stories tell two differing tales – one of connection, intent, use and organisation – the other, of disconnection, disengagement and unrealised expectations. Facebook structures students' time at university both through connection and disconnection practices and examples of these are presented under two headings ‘I'm always on it’ and ‘Being academic’. First-year student experiences of Higher Education and social media use are not uniform, but nuanced and responsive to their specific ecosocial systems.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Eve Stirling is a Senior Lecturer in Design at Sheffield Institute of Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research interests include the use of social media within society and more specifically within higher education and the pedagogical impacts of this. She uses practice-based and visual research methods to explore the everyday lives of her participants. She gained her Ph.D. from the School of Education at the University of Sheffield and in this took a longitudinal ethnographic approach studying Facebook use by students in transition. She is interested in the proliferation of digital spaces within our everyday lives and the relationship between time and space within these.