My page 99 is found within the chapter ”Summary of findings and contribution of thesis”
of my thesis ”Using social media” in which I explore social media use (especially social
photography) in a permanently online, permanently connected world (Vorderer et al.,
2017). The aim of my thesis is to describe what constitutes social media use in a world of
smartphones with cameras, why and how social media use is meaningful as a category of
activity, and to contribute with new insights on how social media skills and perceptions
change as practices and platforms develop. Conveniently, the very first sentence leads us
right into one of my main findings:

”activities ranging from active involvement with producing content as well as managing relationships and time, to more passive ways of planning and monitoring social media activities.”

This sentence concerns different levels of engagement in social media use and the need to acknowledge a broader variety of activities when aiming to conceptualize social media use.   People engage in social media use with different levels of engagement. When using social media, people negotiate between multiple kinds of use and activities. Social media users both passively consume content in social media, but they engage in
production and management of their content as well. Apart from editing pictures, writing tweets and posting stories, they plan their activities, they monitor the activities of others and they orient towards social media, even when not actively involved with their phones.

This kind of negotiating and interplay between the many elements and socially regulated practices sheds light on the complexity of social media use. Page 99 in my thesis mainly refers to one of the papers included in my thesis, ”Same same but different. Changes in social media practices over time” (2019). In this paper, my colleague and I present examples of social media use on different levels of engagement and describe how
numerous aspects, such as lifestyle, disposable time and technical capabilities shape social media use. By comparing data from interviews conducted with the same informants in 2012 as in 2017, we were able to show how social media use has changed over time.

Users are involved in a number of practices when using social media. However, the levels of involvement vary and therefor, there is no consensus on what constitutes social media use. Because of this, I argue that it is problematic to measure social media use in terms of time spent online, simply because it is difficult, both for users as well as researchers, to describe what social media use is. However, as pointed out in the final sentence of the page, I am neither arguing for equating using social media with simply being online:

”Although arguing for a widening of the definition of social media use, we suggest that care be taken not to widen the definition too much, as in equating social media use with “being online.”  Social media use still relies upon specific practices, and we argue that both those practices that are more active and those that are more passive, need more attention within the social media studies field.”

Rather, based on my findings, I suggest that social media use is: ”to engage in social practices such as planning, monitoring, producing, consuming, sharing and interacting around content. It is to make use of affordances to produce, share and interact in social media, to engage in a community of practice, to be familiar with idioms of practice, and to act according to the social rules that regulate those practices. Social media consists of users, shaping the platform vernacular and the idioms of practice within their communities of practice. These evolve over time; they are not static. Social media use is shaped both by design and technical capabilities as well as by the social practices
that users engage in. Habits, aesthetic preferences and social concerns are as involved in shaping the use of a social technology as technical capabilities are.” (Jungselius, 2019)

References:
Jungselius, B. (2019). Using social media. Doctoral dissertation. Department of Applied IT.
University of Gothenburg. Thesis defended October 25th, 2019. Opponent: Professor
Richard Seyler Ling.

Jungselius, B., Weilenmann, A. (2019). Same Same But Different. Changes in Social Media
Practices Over Time. Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Social Media and
Society (SMSociety ’19) Toronto, Canada: ACM Press.

Vorderer, P., Krömer, N., & Schneider, F. M. (2016). Permanently online, permanently
connected: Explorations into university students’ use of social media and mobile smart
devices. Computers in Human Behavior, 63(October), 694–703. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.chb.2016.05.085