The Influence of Facebook: A Study on The Influence and Implications of Facebook’s Design on Feminism, Race Studies, and Cultural Studies.

The social media website Facebook, was created by Mark Zuckerberg when he was a college student. Little did he know when he created it, that it would become one of the most prevalent social media websites today, influencing countless lives of its users. What does it mean to be a social media website? A social media site (or application) is an online platform in which people can share their thoughts, photos, and life events with others. Once a user posts on their page, friends or followers can react to the post by giving likes, hearts, and other emojis representative of different reactions or emotions the reader of the post wants to share with the original poster. The friends and followers can also type comments on posts that the original poster can also respond to. There are different levels of privacy settings on social media as well that are there to protect the user’s identity or protect them from harassment. Although, the default on most social media sites is a more public approach in which posting is meant for the world to see regardless of who the user is. This public approach can be detrimental to the safety of women, as well as queer people and people of color or other ethnicities than white.

The various affordances and design implementations of Facebook create a place in which its users can participate in ways that can be helpful or hurtful to others. These affordances and design choices influence the ways in which users interact with each other and participate in the areas of feminism, racism, as well as reflect how users are influenced culturally on the Facebook platform.

A Brief Overview of Feminism

Barry (2019) explains that feminism as a critical theory and as a movement has undergone several changes since it first began. The version of feminism known today began its shift in the 1980s (p. 117). Barry (2019) describes:

Firstly, feminist criticism became much more eclectic, meaning that it began to draw upon the findings and approaches of other kinds of criticism- Marxism, structuralism, linguistics, and so on. Secondly, it switched its focus from attacking male versions of the world to exploring the nature of the female world and outlook, and reconstructing the lost or suppressed records of female experience. Thirdly, attention was switched to the need to construct a new canon of women’s writing by rewriting the history of the novel and of poetry in such a way that neglected women writers were given new prominence (p. 117).

In other words, feminist criticism began to use other types of criticism within its own. Feminist criticism also switched to a more female-centric focus. Instead of critiquing the male perspective, it switched to exploration of the female perspective. Lastly, women writers, poets, artists, etc. were now being highlighted and the previous canon of works were being rewritten to include them.

Feminist critiques of literature apply several approaches when analyzing texts. Barry (2019), in his section on feminist criticism from the book Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory describes a few of these approaches. Barry (2019) explains that feminist critics “Revalue women’s experience… Examine representations of women in literature by men and women…Examine power relations…Question the popular notion of the death of the author, asking whether there are only ‘subject positions…constructed in discourse’, or whether, on the contrary, the experience (e.g. of a black or lesbian writer) is central… Make clear the ideological base of a supposedly ‘neutral’ or ‘mainstream’ literary interpretations” (p. 124). These approaches feminist critics take when applying feminist criticism to literature can also be applied when critiquing the design of websites including social media platforms such as Facebook. For example; one can examine how a woman is represented on social media by a user’s photo, advertisement, or comment. One could also take a look at the supposedly ‘neutral’ comment of a user interpreting a woman’s status update on Facebook and in turn expose the commenter’s ideological base.

In addition, in feminism, there is also the theory of the ‘woman’s sentence.’ Barry (2019) describes Virginia Woolf’s suggestion that the use of language is in fact gendered (p. 119). Virginia Woolf suggests that a ‘man’s sentence’ is characterized by being “carefully balanced and patterned rhetorical sequences,” while the ‘woman’s sentence’ is “linked in looser sequences, rather than carefully balanced and patterned as in male prose” (Barry, 2019, p. 119). While this topic of the difference between a ‘woman’s sentence’ and a ‘man’s sentence’ is still highly debated, it is possible to see and apply this theory to online communication. For example; it is common to see a man and a woman not understanding each other in the comments of a Facebook post simply because they are interpreting each other’s sentences differently. Now, whether or not the misunderstanding is due to the difference in sentences between the two genders or if it is due to false interpretation on either party’s side remains to be seen.

Past Feminist Critiques of Facebook and Other Platforms

Feminism can be applied to the UX design field in several ways. In Light’s (2018) Performing Interaction Design with Judith Butler, she describes some of Judith Butler’s ideas, such as the exploration of gender and sexuality and the questioning of identity and its construction, as well as Butler’s concept of gender performativity (p. 429). A major concept in Butler’s brand of feminism is “queering, or challenging unquestioned norms” (Light, 2018, p. 433). The intent of queering is subversive, but it does not have a specific way of being used (Light, 2018, p. 433). The importance of queering for UX design is that designers are questioning their design choices, not simply based on aesthetics or common practices, but specifically by opposing the mainstream and dominant choices in design (Light, 2018, p. 433). Queering in design can lead designers to “avoid designs that are overtly rigid in how they let us ‘perform’ ourselves and each other” (Light, 2018, p. 434). This means that if one wants to queer a design, especially one that has to do with gender, one would want to avoid using only binaries such as male and female and would want to give the user more options to express or ‘perform’ their gender. Light (2018) describes why one would want to apply queer design to an application such as Facebook. Facebook has constraints to the entering of personal details on a user’s account (Light, 2018, p. 435). Hypothetically, if a transsexual woman wishes to express her gender differently than just by the binary male/female, she would have to use her “bio” to express her identity (Light, 2018,p. 435). Because Facebook’s design actively prohibits the users gender construct other than male/female, she is forced to negotiate the power relationship between herself and Facebook with her interactions (Light, 2018, p. 435).

A study that involves a feminist perspective on user experience is Pruchniewska’s (2020) “I Like That It’s My Choice a Couple Different Times”: Gender, Affordances, and User Experience on Bumble Dating. The premise of the dating app Bumble, is that women make the first move (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2422). Instead of letting men who typically take the lead on dating apps message women first, women have to be the first to message the “matches” they’ve made in the app (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2422). Bumble has been described as a feminist app because it subverts the expectation that men should make the first move (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2422). Harassment and abuse by men is also less likely because instead of feeling rejected, he feels flattered when a woman reaches out to him (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2422). However, Bumble’s claim to being a feminist app is only in the sense of “popular feminism.” Popular feminism does not concern itself with things like a feminist critique of structure or the “labor involved in producing oneself” (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2424). While many women are drawn to Bumble’s platform because of its “female-friendly reputation,” the app does still have some problems that concern feminists (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2435). There are large amounts of invisible labor involved with participating on Bumble (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2435). Women have to constantly balance opportunities for dates with risk and they constantly have to use strategies to stay safe (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2435). One user in particular described searching sites such as Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn to find out more about the men that showed up as potential matches before going on a date with them or even swiping right (an action that tells the man the woman is interested) (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2430). Unfortunately these larger problems to do with invisible labor limit the feminist potential of Bumble by not addressing the unequal structural design issues on the app (Pruchniewska, 2020, p. 2436).

Feminist Critique of Facebook: My Findings

With the popularity of Facebook, there are not only design choices to critique, but also pages, users, posts, and comments. Firstly, something that caught my eye in the user’s about section was the gender selection.

Figure 1

Gender selection set to “public” in about section of Facebook profile

Almost everything in the about section of the user’s profile encourages publicness as the default. On Facebook, the user is meant to share their life with others as if there were no safety implications or as if they were not subjecting themselves to harassment from others. At the time of writing this essay, the gender selection does have the option to choose a custom gender. On the one hand, this can be great for nonbinary people, genderfluid people, and other gender non-conforming people. Being able to express oneself whether on the internet or in public can be freeing. However, this function does carry with itself some implications. For one, public is the default setting. This can be troubling because many of Facebook’s users are not publicly ‘out’ yet and being outed by Facebook can subject the user to harassment from others, loss of job, or estrangement from family. Another implication of the custom gender setting is that the user can type whatever they want to be their custom gender. This leaves room for bigotry such as a person setting their gender to “attack helicopter” or “man because there are only two genders.”

In addition, Facebook allows groups of people to discuss women and feminism in either a constructive way or a derogatory way. In my search of the word “feminism” on Facebook, the first two results were groups that supported the discussion of feminism, feminist critique, and literature, while the third result was a group solely for the purpose of making fun of feminists, and women who identify as feminist.

Figure 2

The top three results for groups when searching “feminism” on Facebook

While freedom of speech is important to Facebook, it comes at a price, as this “Women Against Feminism” group displays, not all of Facebook’s users are willing to participate in a healthy and respectful discussion with others.

A Brief Overview of Race Studies

Race and ethnicity studies concern the study of various races and ethnic cultures. An important point to note about the difference between race and ethnicity is that while a person can only have one race, they can have multiple ethnicities. The most common overarching theme in race studies is the comparison of how non-white races and ethnicities are treated in comparison to whites. In Liu & Pechenkina’s (2016) Staying quiet or rocking the boat? An autoethnography of organisational visual white supremacy they discuss their experiences of whiteness in the academic workplace (p. 186). Liu & Pechenkina (2016) describe the ways in which they experienced racism whether subtle or not so subtle, and how racism was visible in “everyday visual and aesthetic dimensions of the workplace” (p. 186). In Liu & Pechenkina’s (2016) description of critical race theory, they state that the core belief of critical race theory is that race is both constructed socially and also politically contested (p. 189). Some of the ongoing practices of whiteness that Liu and Pechenkina (2016) mention are white racist language, the exhibition of nervousness of white people around black people, as well as visually practices such as the use of yellowface, depiction of Latinas/os in Hollywood films, and microaggressions such as the “Mexican bandit” image (p. 189). Liu & Pechenkina (2016) also describe their own personal experiences with visual organisational white supremacy. In one of these instances a meeting with the recently appointed white male Dean occurred (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 194). In this meeting the newly appointed Dean presented a PowerPoint with photographs he had taken of “exotic” people (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 194). The images of “exotic” people the Dean presented had nothing to do with the subject matter of his presentation. They were simply included to display his photography skills, and his “worldliness” (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 194). However, this depiction of “exotic” people in his PowerPoint made Liu and Pechenkina very uncomfortable, because the Dean was essentially exploiting people of other cultures to make himself look better, although the implication itself may have not even crossed the Dean’s mind yet (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 194). Another uncomfortable situation of visual whiteness comes about when a staff meeting with a senior administrator occurs (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 195). In the meeting, the white senior administrator exclaims “I look Chinese!” when an unflattering photo of herself appears on a slide during the presentation (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 194). This is greatly troubling and even though the senior administrator sent out an email after the meeting with an apology, the damage is still done and Liu experiences her colleagues’ reactions being more amused than offended by the comment from the senior administrator (Liu & Pechenkina, 2016, 195).

Past Race Studies Critiques of Facebook and Other Platforms

Race studies have also already been applied to the digital space. In Alexander Cho’s (2018) Default publicness: Queer youth of color, social media, and being outed by the machine, Cho discusses the “default publicness” design bias that affects the user experience on platforms such as Facebook, as well as his finding that queer youth of color from the United States prefer Tumblr over Facebook when it comes to choosing a social media platform to express intimate feelings and personal political beliefs on (p. 3183). Social media sites such as Facebook have the design belief of default publicness baked into them (Cho, 2018, p. 3184). By default publicness, Cho essentially means the “public by default settings” sites such as Facebook utilize (Cho, 2018, p. 3184). However, this design of default publicness is dangerous, because it puts forth the orientation and belief that its users need state-validated identity, making sure the past comments and communication is as easy to read and navigate as possible, as well as broadcasting its users actions to their networks without them even knowing (Cho, 2018, p. 3184). Lastly, the major implication of this type of design is that it assumes that it is safe for everyone to broadcast everything and every aspect of their life to the public, when in fact many marginalized people face risks from such a thing (Cho, 2018, p. 3184).

In Siapera & Viejo-Otero’s (2021) essay Governing Hate: Facebook and Digital Racism they discuss the post-racial, race-blind approach that Facebook takes when it considers hate speech or racist content, showing that Facebook is also only concerned with data, enforcement, and efficiency over consideration of historical and material differences and marginalized groups (Siapera & Viejo-Otero, 2021, p. 112). Because Facebook refuses to define or give a focus on race or racism, it actually ends up enabling new forms of racist content to give way on its platform (Siapera & Viejo-Otero, 2021, p. 114). While users do have the option of reporting hate speech posts, comments, photos, and groups, the option to report is given as the last option on the list, showing that the Facebook UX designers do not want reporting to be the user’s first reaction (Siapera & Viejo-Otero, 2021, p. 122). Siapera & Viejo-Otero (2021) state that this demonstrates two things: “firstly, that users are tasked with applying their own judgment to make the decision to report a piece of content and determine the basis on which this report is justified; secondly, the relative reluctance of Facebook to prioritize content removal” (p. 122). In other words, Facebook wants the burden of judgment to be placed on its users for the reporting of content and Facebook does not want to prioritize content removal.

A specific instance and example of racism on Facebook is explored in Breazu & Machin’s (2019) Racism toward the Roma through the affordances of Facebook: bonding, laughter and spite. In this essay, they show “that the affordances of Facebook open-up the mixing of humor, venting of frustration, extreme racism, and sexual violence as those posting entertain each other, create bonds, and overtly call out the Roma and others who are believed to be part of a conspiracy against ordinary Romanians” (Breazu & Machin, 2019, p. 376). In other words, it is due to the affordances in Facebook’s design choices, that Facebook’s users are able to exhibit racism in ways that create bonds between racists, as well as create racist commentary for laughs meant at the expense of marginalized people. By looking at the comments on Rasul’s Facebook page, one can tell that the page exists for comedy and that the people posting on this page take up the invitation that the video of the Roma wedding posted on the page invites for a laugh at the Roma while also presenting themselves in a superior manner (Breazu & Machin, 2019, p. 377). The commenters on the video post horrible examples of extreme racism, sexual violence, among other responses using rhetorical devices such as euphemisms that represent death camps, torture, and genocide (Breazu & Machin, 2019, p. 390). Unfortunately, the commenters are also “rewarded” for their behavior from fellow commenters with feedback in the form of ‘likes’ laughing emojis and GIFs (Breazu & Machin, 2019, p. 390).

Race Studies on Facebook: My Findings

On my Facebook account when I typed “racism” in the search bar, the first thing to pop up were a couple of news articles concerning racism.

Figure 3

Articles about race on Facebook

These articles didn’t really stand out to me as being representative of much, but it was nice to see that there are articles on racism that take things like racism and race studies seriously.

However, on the post from CNN below the top three articles I did find several people engaging in racist commentary on the post which was referring to a CNN article about racism in sports.

Figure 4

Comments on a CNN post about racism and athletes

While some people express sympathy for the athletes in the article that had been subject to racism, many of the commenters reacted to the article with laughing reactions as a way to mock CNN and the idea that racism even exists. Unfortunately as mentioned earlier, reactions to comments such as likes and laugh reacts tend to fuel the commenters with positive feedback depending on what is being expressed in the comment.

Lastly, I also found the community guidelines page that has the slightest mention of equality.

Figure 5

Facebook’s Community Standards in regards to Dignity

In Facebook’s case, as mentioned earlier, they take a color-blind approach to racism and harassment when it comes to their platform.

Overview of Cultural Studies

Cultural studies looks at the effects art, literature, websites, video games, films, etc. have on culture as a whole. It also looks at how cultures are formed from different pieces of media as well. In Elizabeth F. Churchill’s (2018) essay Stuart Hall: Cultural Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, and Encoding/Decoding, she describes how cultural studies can be applied to various fields within HCI (Human Computer Interaction) including UX design. However, regardless of the specific field within HCI that is being used, the important thing is to take an ethical stance. Churchill (2018) says that cultural studies scholars have become committed advocates for progressive change, with a focus on social movements and actionable policy (p. 201). Arguably the most important takeaway from Churchill (2018) is “in our actions we are designing culture, and we are responsible therefore for the culture we participate in producing” (p. 223). UX designers and HCI practitioners must understand that they have an ethical responsibility since they are participating in the creation and influence of cultures with their works.

Past Cultural Studies Critiques of Facebook and Other Platforms

In Ping Yu’s (2021) article The Emergence of Surveillance Culture: The Relationships between Facebook Privacy Management, Online Government Surveillance, and Online Political Expression, Ping Yu discusses how Facebook privacy management openness is both directly and positively associated with online political expression while also being indirectly and negatively associated with online political expression (p. 66). Ping Yu (2021) analyzes survey data from Taiwan in her study to address how users react to how privacy is addressed on Facebook and other social media networks, and how this is addressed through the lens of surveillance culture (p. 83). In conclusion, Ping Yu (2021) finds that

Despite a direct and positive association between Facebook privacy-management openness and online political expression, results suggest that Facebook users who have more open privacy-management rules are likely to accept government surveillance, which in turn may suppress their online political expression. Moreover, such an indirect relationship is more salient for those who perceive their Facebook network to be denser (p. 83).

In other words, if a Facebook user is more relaxed about their privacy settings, then they are more likely to be okay with government surveillance. However, this stance also may indirectly make them more careful about how they express their politics online. This relationship between those that are more accepting of government surveillance and those that more careful about how they express their politics online is stronger for users that perceive their Facebook friends to be denser in the sense that they are mostly close friends and family.

In Bailovskaia & Bierhoff’s (2018) The Narcissistic Millennial Generation: A Study of Personality Traits and Online Behavior on Facebook they study the differences between late and early Millennial generations as it concerns personality traits such as narcissism, sensation seeking, self-esteem, and how that relates to their Facebook use (p. 23). On average, the study found that late Millennials scored higher on traits such as narcissism, sensation seeking, self-preservation, and social interaction on the Facebook site in comparison to early Millennials (Bailovskaia & Bierhoff, 2018, p. 23). The results of the study were also interpreted with the perspective that the development of early and late Millennials was different due to technological innovation and cultural change (Bailovskaia & Bierhoff, 2018, p. 23). In conclusion, it was assumed that the technological innovations and cultural changes affected late Millennials much more than early Millennials (Bailovskaia & Bierhoff, 2018, p. 32). A consequence of this finding is that “late Millennials more often receive acknowledgement of their social and personal identity online, which they frequently lack in their lives offline” (Bailovskaia & Bierhoff, 2018, p. 32). In other words, late Millennials lack fulfillment of their attention needs offline, so they go online to have them fulfilled.

Cultural Studies on Facebook: My Findings

Speaking from anecdotal personal experiences, Facebook contains a culture for everyone. From groups about knitting to LARPing, you can find a group or subculture to engage with and belong to. I myself am a member of the Frag Society of St. Charles group listed below. We are a group of St. Charles locals that enjoy playing games such as capture the flag and humans vs zombies with Nerf blasters in local parks on the weekends. To me it just feels like a fun activity I’m doing with my friends, but in all reality, we really are in a sense our own cultural group.

Figure 6

Groups/subcultures to belong to on Facebook

Further down on Facebook after searching “culture” in the search bar, I came across several articles in regards to culture. These are mostly about the differing political cultures as well as an amusing article about St. Louis culture and how we are known to roll through stop signs.

Figure 7

Articles about culture

Conclusion

As human beings become even more so attached to social media, we can see the influence it has on people’s lives and how it may affect their lives in the future. After looking at the aspects of feminism on Facebook and other social media sites, we can see how women are treated and affected by privacy and safety concerns online. With our look at race studies, we can see how racism is an ongoing problem with social media and that we need to urge our platforms to create policies that protect marginalized peoples. By looking at cultural studies in the context of social media we can create cultures that are meaningful and be mindful of how our design choices shape the lives of others.

By giving an overview, looking at past studies, and taking into account a personal look at Facebook we see how the design of Facebook and its affordances impact the ways its users participate on the site. These choices that the designers made in the creation of Facebook have an impact on how users interact with one another. It is the responsibility of all designers to consider the implications and influence their designs have on the lives of others.

References

Barry, P. (2019). Feminist criticism. In Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory (pp. 116–131). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Brailovskaia, J., & Bierhoff, H.-W. (2020). The Narcissistic Millennial Generation: A Study of Personality Traits and Online Behavior on Facebook. Journal of Adult Development, 27(1), 23–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-018-9321-1

Breazu, P., & Machin, D. (2019). Racism toward the Roma through the affordances of Facebook: bonding, laughter and spite. Discourse & Society, 30(4), 376–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519837396

Cho, A. (2018). Default publicness: Queer youth of color, social media, and being outed by the machine. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3183–3200. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817744784

Churchill, E. F. (2018). Stuart Hall: Cultural Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, and Encoding/Decoding. In J. Bardzell, S. Bardzell, & M. A. Blythe (Authors), Critical theory and interaction design (pp. 199–223). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Light, A. (2018). Performing Interaction Design with Judith Butler. In J. Bardzell, S. Bardzell, & M. A. Blythe (Authors), Critical theory and interaction design (pp. 429–442). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Liu, H., Pechenkina, E. (2016). Staying quiet or rocking the boat? An autoethnography of organisational visual white supremacy. In Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal (pp. 186–204).

Ping Yu, R. (2021). The Emergence of Surveillance Culture: The Relationships between Facebook Privacy Management, Online Government Surveillance, and Online Political Expression. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 65(1), 66–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2021.1897816

Pruchniewska, U. (2020). “I Like That It’s My Choice a Couple Different Times”: Gender, Affordances, and User Experience on Bumble Dating. International Journal of Communication (19328036), 14, 2422–2439.

Siapera, E., & Viejo-Otero, P. (2021). Governing Hate: Facebook and Digital Racism. Television & New Media, 22(2), 112–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476420982232