A presentation on my final paper for LIBR 559B: New Media for Children and Young Adults. The paper is a semiotic analysis of a popular Facebook meme and concerns the establishment of theoretical principles of human communication to online social networking behaviour.

1. “Too many issues to count”:
Signifying friendship on Facebook
Daniel Hooker
LIBR 559B: New Media for Children and Young Adults
Spring 2010
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2. Some stats
Text
Social Media and Young Adults 2
[Pew Internet and American Life Project]

3. Some stats
Teens who go online daily are also more likely to use
social network websites... with 80% of daily
internet [teen] users visiting these sites.
Social Media and Young Adults 3
[Pew Internet and American Life Project]

4. Some stats
Teens who go online daily are also more likely to use
social network websites... with 80% of daily
internet [teen] users visiting these sites.
Posting comments, either to a picture,
page or wall remains popular with
teens who use social networks. Fully
86% of teen social network users post
comments to a friend’s page or wall,
and 83% have added comments to a
friend’s picture.
Social Media and Young Adults 4
[Pew Internet and American Life Project]

5. More stats
Generation M2: media in the lives of 8 to 18-year olds 5
[Kaiser Family Foundation]

6. More stats
In a typical day, seven in ten 8- to 18-year-olds go
online (70%).
Generation M2: media in the lives of 8 to 18-year olds 6
[Kaiser Family Foundation]

7. More stats
In a typical day, seven in ten 8- to 18-year-olds go
online (70%).
The three most popular computer
activities among 8- to 18-year-olds are
going to social networking sites such
as MySpace and Facebook (:22),
playing computer games (:17), and
watching videos on sites such as
YouTube (:15).
Generation M2: media in the lives of 8 to 18-year olds 7
[Kaiser Family Foundation]

8. More stats
Generation M2: media in the lives of 8 to 18-year olds 8
[Kaiser Family Foundation]

9. What is social networking?
• Social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that
are not typically present in face-to-face public life:
• Persistence
• Searchability
• Exact copyability
• Invisible audiences
boyd, d. (2007). “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics
in Teenage Social Life.” 9

10. Memes
“At its most basic, an
Internet meme is simply
the propagation of a
digital file or hyperlink
from one person to others.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme 10

11. Memes you may know
lolcats
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12. Memes you may know
lolrus
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13. Memes you may know
All your base are belong to us
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14. Memes you may know
The “friendship-grid”
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16. 16

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19

20. 20

21. The semiotics of Facebook
• The purpose of applying a semiotic framework to the friendship-
grid meme taking place on Facebook is to apply a theoretical
foundation to the types of sub-textual communication that are
occurring via SNS comments, walls and tags.
• Without a systemic understanding of the ways in which tagging
can affect forms of personal communication and
signification, it will be very difficult to understand the impact that
social media and SNS are having on our youth.
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22. What is semiotics?
• “Is there a hidden story behind such ludicrous behaviours that
makes the human species unique in some way?”
• Semiotics attempts to answer that question by “unraveling the
meanings of the symbols, known more exactly as signs, that
make up the system of everyday life that we call a culture of a
society.”
• “The semiotician is, above all else, a people-watcher, an
observer of how people gesticulate, of how they communicate, of
how they behave typically in certain situations.”
Danesi, M. (1999). Of cigarettes, high heels and other interesting things. St. Martin’s Press. 22

23. Van Leeuwen (2009).
• “Yet, for all this multimodality and contingency, children will also
become aware of the specific potentials and constraints of
Playmobil, and indeed, of any other semiotic system.”
• “As they are playing, they will gradually learn what can and
cannot easily be done and ‘said’ with Playmobil, of the way it
bends itself easily to some meanings and resists others, of the
difference between what you want to say and what Playmobil (or
the adults that may regulate its use) want you to say.”
van Leeuwen, T. (2009). The world according to Playmobil. Semitotica, 173(1/4). 299-315. 23

24. What is a “sign”?
Huang, A. W. & Chiang T. (2009). Social tagging, online communication, and Peircean 24
semiotics: a conceptual framework. Journal of Information Science, 35(3), 340-357.

25. What is a “sign”?
Huang, A. W. & Chiang T. (2009). Social tagging, online communication, and Peircean 25
semiotics: a conceptual framework. Journal of Information Science, 35(3), 340-357.

26. Semiotic analysis of “the grid”
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27. Semiotic analysis of “the grid”
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28. Donath & boyd (2004).
• “The early and once enthusiastic users of these sites are
frequently quoted as saying that they are ‘over’, that once one
has amassed a big collection of ‘friends’ there is really
nothing to do on the sites.”
• “[W]ill at some point the fashion that is over be the sites
themselves? Or will they play an increasingly important role in
defining one’s personal on-line neighbourhoods?”
Donath, J., & boyd, d. (2004). Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal, 22(4), 71-82. 28

29. Liu (2007).
• “In the pseudonymous and text-heavy online world, there is even
greater room for identity experimentation, as one does not fully
exist online until one writes oneself into being through
'textual performances’” (Sunden, 2003).
• “By utilizing the medium of social network sites for taste
performance, users can display their status and distinction to
an audience comprised of friends, co-workers, potential love
interests, and the Web public.”
Liu, H. (2007). Social network profiles as taste performances. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 13(1), 252-275. 29

30. So what?
• Using a friendship-grid, Facebook users are allowed to visualize,
customize, and dictate roles to a tailored list of friends.
• This goes beyond:
• the automatically-generated friends list; the “public displays of
connection” (Donath & boyd)
• the text-based listing of “favourite” books, movies and quotes;
the “taste performances” (Liu) described in existing literature.
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31. Too many issues to count
• This is just the beginning of the research process into SNS and
communication. But it is always difficult to study this behaviour
because what is fashionable and interesting online one instant is
gone the next.
Memes establish a snapshot of online behaviour.
• Semiotics represents a theoretical structure within which we can
begin to interpret both textual and sub-textual
communication on SNS and the Web.
• Future research? There are always different memes, different
networks, and different kids.
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32. Daniel Hooker
LIBR 559B: New Media for Children and Young Adults
School for Library, Archival and Information Studies
University of British Columbia
Spring 2010
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