ABSTRACT
Online environments present a unique case for the examination of overlaps between private and public in matters of identity because they tend to blur those boundaries (James and Busher, 2009; Waskul and Douglass, 1996). This chapter will examine the emergence, architecture and behavioural norms common to the social networking site, Facebook, and discuss how specific Facebook Groups have been used by some young Muslims.1 It will analyse the extent to which such Groups have been used to mobilize around British Muslim identity and whether respondents have found these Groups to be useful or effective public platforms for identity debates, discussions or actions. First, the chapter will discuss the emergence of the social networking site Facebook within the context of the growth of social media and Muslim-interest websites more generally. It will count the growth of Groups on Facebook and the extent to which the emergence of Groups specifically suggests a movement away from the use of Facebook for simply searching for information on known associates and towards a more political or value-led utilization of the site. Several key events typifying new potentialities of Facebook and other social media are briefly examined alongside the small existing body of academic research into emerging political and social functions of social networking sites more broadly. From the existing literature, three studies are discussed which highlight the potential for the Internet to provide spaces in which dominant discourses may be challenged and, therefore, spaces which may resemble subaltern or counter publics in the virtual sphere (e.g. Cole et al., 2011; Michael, 2012; O’Toole and Gale, 2011). Discussion of that scholarship is intended as an introduction to the empirical examination that follows, itself aimed at the particularities of Facebook which may enable online publics concerned with Muslim identity-based interests and concerns. Second, the range of uses to which respondents put Facebook Groups and Facebook more broadly will be examined. Here, the divergence of use from understood patterns will be highlighted. That is to say that usage of social-networking sites tends to be understood in terms of ‘social searching’, or maintaining contact with previously formed (offline) social networks (boyd and Ellison, 2007). What became clear during interviews and
observations of Groups was that, while respondents did use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family, many of them used Groups to establish novel connections based around common interests or concerns. The extent to which this type of ‘social browsing’ usage is beginning to feature in academic analyses will be noted before exploring that usage both through respondents’ words and through observations of relevant Groups. Third, this chapter will analyse the extent to which those Facebook Groups can be considered useful or effective public platforms for debating the terms of Muslim identities, contesting or reframing representations of Muslims or engaging both Muslims and nonMuslims in collective action. It will do so by evaluating both responses and Group observations against the various framings of public used for this examination: public as collective; as representative; as participative; and as accessible.
