Dividing social networks: Facebook unfriending, unfollowing, and blocking in turbulent political times

ABSTRACT

It has been argued that by allowing users to unfriend, unfollow, and block political and cultural ‘others,’ Facebook facilitates the discouragement of dialog between those holding different views on political issues. Using a case study of a civil confrontation in Ukraine, the paper analyzes the reasons for unfriending political ‘others’ reported by 699 respondents of a qualitative survey. Its findings are in line with researchers who have also found that the likelihood of selective avoidance is higher among people who are more politically active, emotionally involved, and who have more online friends. The paper also discusses an interesting discovery that has not been previously considered. The respondents often shunned political ‘others’ out of suspicion that they were trolls. As this paper suggests, whether real or imagined, trolling has turned out to be a real force influencing people’s decisions to withdraw from communication on the most important issues of public life.

KEYWORDS:

• Facebook unfriending
• Facebook unfollowing
• Facebook blocking
• trolling
• social networks
• social media
• Ukraine
• Maidan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Olga Baysha is an Associate Professor at the National Research University ‘Higher School of Economics,’ Moscow, Russia. Her teaching and research center mainly on political and cultural aspects of globalization, the discourse of war and peace, and global social movements for justice and democratization. Olga Baysha earned her MS in Journalism from Colorado State University and PhD in Communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Previously, she worked as a news reporter and editor in Kharkiv, Ukraine, then as the editor-in-chief of a documentary production company in Kyiv, Ukraine.