Facework on Facebook: The Online Publicness of

Facework on Facebook: The Online Publicness of Juvenile Delinquents and Youths-at-Risk

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Sun Sun Lim, Shobha Vadrevu, Yoke Hian Chan, & Iccha Basnyat This article explores the strategic ‘‘facework’’ practices of an under-researched youth population. Based on interviews with male juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk in Singapore, the article analyses their use of online social networking sites (SNS) using the Asian concept of ‘‘face.’’ These youths’ online facework, geared towards gaining face, giving face, and avoiding loss of face, reflects the power dynamics underlying gang interactions which, when conducted over Facebook, become highly observable to gang members. The youths strategically appropriate technological affordances of Facebook such as posting status updates, comments, photographs, tagging, and viewable friendship networks for posturing, power aggrandizement, and reputation management. However, online facework can be a risky enterprise for these youths because of the possibility of context collapse and vulnerability to surveillance by the authorities and rival gangs, both of which they attempt to creatively circumvent. Youths’ interaction with peers via social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook has been the subject of extensive study, with much of the research conducted Sun Sun Lim (Ph.D., London School of Economics) is Associate Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. She studies the social implications of technology domestication by young people and families in Asia, charting the ethnographies of their Internet and mobile phone use. Her work has been published in flagship international journals including the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Computers in Human Behaviour, New Media & Society, Communications of the ACM and Feminist Media Studies. Shobha Vadrevu (M.Res., Institute of Education) is a doctoral student of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests center on young people’s relationships with new media, and include media literacy, citizenship education, and political engagement. Yoke Hian Chan (M.A., National University of Singapore) is a doctoral student of the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include interactional linguistics, computer-mediated communication and exploring the relationship between language, cognition and social interaction. Iccha Basnyat (Ph.D., Purdue University) is a visiting fellow in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include culture and health, relationship between culture, technology and development, and use of technology among hard to reach populations. © 2012 Broadcast Education Association DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2012.705198

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56(3), 2012, pp. 346–361 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online

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on college and high school students (for reviews of SNS related literature see boyd & Ellison, 2007; Livingstone & Brake, 2010). However, studies focusing on marginalized youth populations are significantly fewer, with Gray (2009), Horst (2011), and Söderström (2009) being notable exceptions, and studies of SNS use by juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk are fewer still. Yet more sustained academic inquiry into SNS use by these youth segments is vital because the social pressures, dynamics, and risks that they encounter online and offline can differ considerably from those of mainstream youth. To address this imperative, we conducted a study of the use of Facebook by juvenile delinquents in Singapore and analyzed the findings using the Asian concept of ‘‘face’’ (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2002). Face has recognizable currency in Singapore (Hwang, Francesco, & Kessler, 2003) and is especially germane to the country’s delinquent youth culture whose youth gangs are given to bold proclamations of loyalty and clear demarcations between rival gangs (Goh, 2002; Yuan, 2008). In so doing, the article also considers how introducing the concept of face to our understanding of SNS interactions may be of value. As an urbanized city-state with high Internet adoption rates (IDA, 2010), Singapore is a pertinent setting for such a study. Mediated communication via the Internet and mobile phone is avidly adopted by Singaporean youths across all socio-economic sectors (Lim, 2009), including youth undergoing rehabilitation and/or counseling for delinquent behaviors. SNS have become well-established fixtures for socialization in the lives of Singaporean youths with 54% of Internet users aged 15–24 using them (IDA, 2011) and Singaporean Internet users as a whole spending the longest time on Facebook worldwide (Social Media Today, 2011). The study’s findings are of potential value to other urban settings with similar trends in technology adoption and youth delinquency. This article will begin with an overview of juvenile delinquency in Singapore, followed by an introduction to the concept of face and a review of extant literature on youths’ SNS use. Thereafter, the research questions and method for the present study are explicated and its key findings discussed.

Juvenile Delinquency in Singapore In 2010, Singapore saw 4176 youths arrested for criminal activity such as assault, theft, rioting, and loan-shark related offences (Singapore Police Force, 2010). Riots are gang-related fights which typically involve rival gangs or factions and youth rioters are predominantly male, aged 16 and below, while 78% of rioters are part of a secret society/gang (The Subordinate Courts of Singapore, 2006). This is unsurprising as prior studies have found that juvenile delinquents in Singapore are more socialized than characterological. To elaborate, asocial personality orientations and individual motivations drive characterological delinquents to offend, while socialized delinquents offend as a result of close attachment to their peer groups and legitimize their group membership by conforming to group norms (Choi & Lo, 2004). Peer influence is therefore more pronounced among socialized juvenile offenders as they are significantly more influenced by peers than by other people


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into doing things they do not want to do, and tend to favor peer group activities over individual or family-oriented ones (Chan & Choi, 1994). The social nature of juvenile delinquency in Singapore is especially pronounced in the activities of organized gangs. Tracing their origins to Chinese secret societies that were rampant in the 1950s–60s, gangs in Singapore today still bear the characteristics of hierarchical structure, patterns of domination and subordination and displays and expectations of loyalty to the gang (Anonymous, 2002; Goh, 2002; Mak, 1981; Mak & Wong, 1997). There is also a sense of territoriality vis-à-vis other gangs and territorial divisions drawn along the lines of residential neighborhoods (Lim, 2007), clubs (Othman, 2006), or public spaces such as shopping malls (Wong, 2001). Loyalty to one another is upheld in the gang and youths with a background in street gangs are acutely aware of the possibilities of inter- and even intra-gang conflicts which can manifest themselves in rioting (Yuan, 2008). Given the social character of juvenile delinquency in Singapore, a focus on delinquent youths’ online social interaction and face management will facilitate our understanding of how these interaction processes are complicated by communication via SNS.

Face and Youths’ Online Publicness The point of departure for much extant research on ‘‘Western’’ notions of face has been Goffman’s (1972) work on ritual elements in social interaction, where face is a positive social value framed in largely prosocial terms: ‘‘Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes—albeit an image that others may share, as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or region by making a good showing for himself’’ (p. 5). Although Goffman acknowledged that his treatise on face was inspired by that of the Chinese, observers have noted that the Asian conception of face bears a far stronger relational dimension. In the latter, face management is deemed critical for maintaining prevailing role relationships and sustaining interpersonal harmony (Gao, Ting-Toomey, & Gudykunst, 1996). In such a context, face is not the means but the purpose of social interaction (Qi, 2011). For example, facework in Chinese culture involves observing status differences between individuals in a group, managing conflicts in a non-confrontational manner (through the use of intermediaries if necessary), and opting for compliant and non-assertive communication. Another distinction between Goffman’s Western notion of face and the Asian conception is a broader definition of socially acceptable behavior. Whereas Goffman stressed that face management behavior had to be positively and socially approved, Qi (2011) argues that as long as actions are socially shared or approved for one instance in a particular social situation by a specific social group, face is gained, even if those actions violate wider social norms. The Asian concept of face encompasses three dimensions: self-face, or the concern for one’s own image; other-face, or the concern for another individual’s image; and mutual-face, or concern for the images of both parties and the image of their relationship (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2002). In self-face, a person gains face by



attaining status that is conferred by one’s social group or by earning the status through competition and individual effort (Ho, 1976). Individuals who lose face acquire a bad reputation, loss of respect or prestige, and suffer embarrassment or humiliation among the peer group (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2002). Loss of face also occurs when people expect group mates to respond to them or their requests in particular ways, but do not find these expectations realized (Ho, 1976). In concerns about other-face, the impetus to uphold other people’s image motivates individuals to give face to others by displaying affirmation and acquiescent behavior. Mutualface is attained in reciprocal relationships where interested parties collectively give face to one another, such that every member of the social group is subjected to mutual restrictions and possibly coercion. Facework amongst street youths and gangs has also been studied. Delinquent youths are known to engage in ‘‘reputation management,’’ where their delinquent behavior is an assertion of their choice of social identity, moral reputation, and respect amongst their peer network (Emler & Reicher, 1995, p. 112). Cintron (2005) noted that street youths derived respect by ‘‘appropriating mainstream symbols and recontextualising them into new meanings’’ (p. 26) through expressive platforms such as graffiti. Anderson (1999) chronicled the ‘‘code of the street,’’ wherein street gang members might fight to earn respect as one who fights is deemed to enjoy greater safety on the street than one who does not. In contrast, Garot’s (2007) study of facework by inner-city youths found that they developed ways to avoid fights without a concurrent loss of face through acting or speaking using various techniques, thus violating the code of the street without adverse impact. Street youths feel that with good reasons to avoid fighting, e.g., being heavily outnumbered in a fight, or risking dismissal from work or school, ‘‘one can walk away from a threatening situation without losing face’’ (Garot, 2007, p. 314). Our understanding of online publicness on SNS may be enhanced when superimposed with the concept of face. Although prior studies of Facebook have not explicitly employed or explored the concept of face, it can be broadly observed that they reference the perspective of gaining face in their focus on identity presentation and impression management on SNS. In examining the way in which Facebook users implicitly, rather than explicitly, claim their identity, Zhao, Grasmuck, and Martin (2008) deal with the presentation of the self, which is also implicitly a matter of facework related to the self-orientation. Similarly, Buffardi and Campbell (2008) find that narcissism is linked to higher levels of online social activity and posting more self-promoting content online. Lahlou (2008) views online privacy as ‘‘facekeeping,’’ where what is disclosed about one’s identity changes according to which ‘‘face’’ is being assumed by the individual. Maintaining face on a medium as public and visible as SNS becomes an issue that young people grapple with in their daily management of their ‘‘networked publics’’ (boyd, 2008). Given the strong and entrenched hierarchies present within gang structures, and the critical need for gang members to display the appropriate level of awareness of and respect for these structures, we propose that the concept of face as defined within the Asian context is an important perspective from which

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to study these delinquent youths’ network management strategies. Hence, building on the literature reviewed above, the present study seeks to extend existing research by exploring how face is gained, given, and lost online by discussing the facework strategies that juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk practice on SNS, how these online facework strategies relate to their offline behaviors, and the challenges they encounter in their management of face and public image on SNS.


Method In Singapore, criminal suspects aged 18 and below are tried as juveniles, and juvenile delinquents are predominantly male and below 16 years of age (The Subordinate Courts of Singapore, 2006). Hence, we recruited male respondents aged 13 through 18, with 13 being the age where youths enter secondary/high school, heralding a coming of age where parents typically impose less supervision on their children than when they are in primary/elementary school. We recruited respondents through four agencies: a counseling center for youths who have been identified by teachers and youth workers as being at risk of involvement in delinquent activities; a low security residential rehabilitation home for juvenile offenders committing less serious crimes; a high security residential rehabilitation home for juvenile offenders committing more serious crimes; and a counseling center which counsels youths who have completed rehabilitation and are attempting to re-integrate into society. The agencies recruited respondents from their pool of clients/residents. Parental consent and respondent assent were sought and obtained before the interviews commenced. We interviewed the youths using a series of semi-structured questions about how they used ICTs in their everyday lives for family interaction and peer socialization, their individual and shared ICT usage habits, and the gratifications which they derived from them. Given the predominance of digital media in the lives of Singaporean youths, our interviews centered on mobile phone and Internet use, probing how they used different communication platforms to interact with the significant individuals in their lives. The interviews were conducted by the four authors, either individually or in pairs, at the rehabilitation homes and youth counseling centers between December 2010 and July 2011. Each interview lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and was audio recorded and transcribed before being analyzed together with the background information on each respondent. The ‘‘meaning condensation’’ approach was used to analyze the interview transcripts (Kvale, 1996). Large amounts of interview text were compressed into brief statements representing the meta-themes and sub-themes which emerged from the coding process: social network enlargement/extension (discriminating/indiscriminate); social network maintenance (online/offline/proxy/ editing/auditing/restoration); social network dynamics (responsibility fulfillment/ obligation management/conflict management). As English is the working language and the language of instruction in Singapore, all interviews were conducted in


English. In informal conversational settings, Singaporeans tend to speak Singlish, a vernacular English-based creole infused with smatterings of other local languages. In cases where respondents used Singlish expressions, explanatory information is appended to the quotes that are reproduced in this article. (Where verbatim interview exchanges between interviewer and respondent are reproduced, ‘‘R’’ refers to the respondent while ‘‘I’’ refers to the interviewer.)


Profile of Respondents Taking into account Singapore’s juvenile justice system and its approach to preventing delinquency in youths-at-risk and rehabilitating youths with criminal records, we developed a ‘‘delinquency lifestage’’ framework to classify our sample into: (1) at-risk: youths identified as at-risk and receiving preventative counseling, (2) in rehab: juvenile offenders are incarcerated in low- or high-security residential rehabilitation homes; and (3) post-rehab: youths who have undergone rehabilitation and are seeking to reintegrate into society. With the exception of one post-rehab respondent who was already working, all other respondents were students in secondary schools, junior colleges, or vocational institutes. To avoid identification, all respondents are referred to by code numbers. Table 1 summarizes the subjects’ profiles and history of delinquency. While respondents in the ‘‘At-risk’’ and ‘‘Post-rehab’’ categories could enjoy unfettered access to both mobile phones and the Internet, respondents in the ‘‘In rehab’’ category could only access them during home leave. However, it should be noted that prior to going into rehabilitation, all our respondents’ mobile phone

Table 1 Respondents’ Profiles, History of Delinquency and Freedom of Movement and Nature of Media Access Respondent Category At-risk (n D 5)

In rehab (n D 28)

Post-rehab (n D 3)

Respondent Profile and History of Delinquency Age of respondents: 17–18 years Mean age: 17.8 years History of delinquency: involvement in theft, shoplifting Age of respondents: 13–18 years Mean age: 15.9 years History of delinquency: involvement in gang activity, substance abuse, assault, theft Age of respondents: 16–18 years Mean age: 17.3 years History of delinquency: involvement in gang activity, substance abuse, assault, theft

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and Internet use would have been similarly unconstrained. And even though all of our respondents were at different ‘‘stages’’ of delinquency—at-risk, in rehab and post-rehab—they shared the common desire of wanting to stay out of trouble, albeit for different reasons. Those who were deemed to be at risk and undergoing counseling did not wish to attract criminal records and incarceration; those who were in rehabilitation did not wish to be incarcerated for longer than they already were, while those in post-rehabilitation wanted to avoid returning to their delinquent past. For the last group, the consequences of failure would be severe because they faced potentially harsher sentences as repeat offenders. It is in this context and in light of such imperatives that our respondents’ manage their online publicness and engage in facework.

Discussion Without exception, all our respondents were Facebook users, with some having had prior experience with other SNSs such as Friendster and Tagged. Our respondents asserted and/or experienced self-face, other face, and mutual face in various ways online, appropriating the varied affordances and publicness of Facebook interactions to do so. In light of the ‘‘reputation management’’ (Emler & Reicher, 1995) underpinning gang dynamics, our respondents’ Facebook interactions suggest that face was not the means but the objective of social interaction, reflecting therefore the Chinese conception of face (Qi, 2011). To this end, we found that our respondents employed a range of strategies for gaining face, giving face, and avoiding the loss of face.

Gaining and Giving Face Facebook’s affordances and architecture lent itself well to efforts to gain face. This could be noted in the interactions surrounding the youths’ use of Facebook’s ‘‘publishing’’ functions, where face could be gained via posting photographs and status updates about one’s exploits: I: But have you ever seen anyone posting on Facebook for example about crimes they had committed? R: A lot ah. Say like : : : [they show how they have] the samurai sword. Sometimes the rotitoh. Rotitoh are Malay type of word for one type of parang (machete). Rotitoh : : : a lot [of them have]. I: Oh these are all illegal weapons. How do they get them? R: All gang members [have] a lot ah. Gang members [have] a lot: : : : So then they take pictures holding these [weapons]. I: So when you see your Facebook friends having pictures like this do you ever comment or say anything? R: No, I just see like they ‘‘step power’’ (demonstrate their power), like they like to show off, then I don’t ‘‘Like,’’ just ignore.

Lim et al./FACEWORK ON FACEBOOK 353 I: Oh you ignore. So you don’t put any post there. R: Never post. I: But do you see their [Facebook] friends posting any comments about them when they post pictures like that? R: Yeah like they ‘‘woogi’’ ah, how to say ah, they praise them. ‘‘Wah like you power [powerful] ah!’’ like that like that like that. Praise them ah!


Interview with IR1, 17 years, in high security rehab

In this situation, the individual posting the photographs of his illegal weapons has apparently gained face among his peers who are making affirming comments, with the latter demonstrating a consideration of other-face. In contrast, IR1 appears disdainful of this individual’s transparent attempt to earn respect among his peers, and resolutely refuses to engage in mutual face. This example also contravenes Goffman’s (1972) conception of face as a positive social value since, as Qi (2011) argues, the Asian concept of face does not preclude gaining face via socially unacceptable behavior. In this instance, it is the highly illicit nature of the post, and the audacity of posting illegal material on Facebook that signal to peers the exceptional nature of the youth in question, underlining the perception that he is worthy of the face that his peers are according him. Even so, our respondents were not recklessly seeking to gain face at every opportunity but were judicious about revealing too much information about themselves, and were vigilant about the possibility of surveillance and detection by the authorities— a situation which our respondents were assiduously trying to avoid: I: So do you feel like Facebook is in some ways safer for you than your phone [as a platform for interacting with peers]? R: No : : : because anything I put [on Facebook] everybody will know. I: So that’s why you’re careful about what you put on Facebook? R: Yeah. I: So what kinds of things do you make sure you don’t put on Facebook? R: Like if I like do [something] like can be considered like crime, then I never post on Facebook or something like that ah. I: Like what kind of crimes? R: Hmm? Like stealing or something. AR5, 15 years, undergoing counselling

Similarly, PR3 noted that even ‘‘the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) is on Facebook’’ and lamented that it was younger, less experienced gang members who were publicizing their exploits on Facebook: ‘‘nowadays the stupid youngsters that create trouble is (sic) the one who do it [post incriminating material on Facebook]. So we all the senior [gang members], we don’t do that because we already know everything.’’ As our respondents were clearly aware, the impact of online facework was not confined to the digital realm. Indeed, youth sociality practices online and offline are linked, and social network sites should be viewed as ‘‘embodiments, stabilizations and concretizations of existing social structure and cultural meanings’’ (Ito, 2008,


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p. 402). Our findings support this point, revealing that there was often a dynamic relationship between our respondents’ Facebook posts and offline linkages and activities with, for example, some gangs’ members asserting their group identity by adding the location of their usual hangouts to their Facebook profile names, and sharing photographs of events after the fact. These close connections between online and offline interactions also saw face being asserted through mobilizations for organized gang activities. For example, using status updates to mobilize gang members for fights can be an exercise in gaining face for the person initiating the fight because one’s ability to marshal support for such ventures is publicly witnessed and assessed. Such ventures could result in a loss of face if group mates do not acquiesce (Ho, 1976), especially in light of the ‘‘code’’ of gangs (Anderson, 1999). By the same token, those responding to the status update can leverage such opportunities to demonstrate their respect for the fight initiator, thereby giving face to that individual in a show of solidarity, while concurrently ensuring mutual face: I: Just now you were saying your friend was going to be in a fight and called you for help. Do you ever see on your Facebook people organizing fights? R: Have. I: How? R: They will call you come down. You will [have to] give face. I: So they will put it on the status updates? R: Ah (yes). I: Then they will say come and meet us at West Coast or wherever. R: Something like that. I: And usually what is the response? R: We’ll say okay. Most of the people will say okay. Interview with IR12, 17 years, in low security rehab

Our respondent explained that failure to give face in such circumstances could result in alienation from the group and in extreme circumstances, retaliatory action. Such interactions and facework processes reflect the relational dimension of face that is more pronounced in the Asian conception of face, implying a greater pressure to adhere to status differences within the group (Gao, Ting-Toomey & Gudykunst, 1996). Other respondents also explained that they would sometimes respond positively to mobilization requests on Facebook, but not show up at the fight and offer an excuse later. In this way, they could still give face to peers and safely violate the code of the street as previously observed in other street youths (Garot, 2007). Tagging was also appropriated to signal status differences such as in the case of AR5 and his friends who were tagged as famous rappers such as 50 Cent and Lloyd Banks, instantiating Cintron’s (2005) observation that street youths appropriate and recontextualize mainstream symbols for their own purposes. Tagged as Young Buck, AR5 was gratified to be regarded as a group leader ‘‘that everybody looks up to,’’ thus gaining him face among his gang members. Although it has been observed that SNS links between individuals can be largely ‘‘mutual, public, unnuanced and decontextualized’’ (Donath & boyd, 2004, p. 72), our respondents used information



such as tags, gang code numbers, and gang symbols posted on people’s profiles to flesh out and decipher relational links among people. These information cues aided in our respondents’ relational interactions and facilitated the development of effective facework strategies. Another means of gaining face was playing an active role in mediating disputes. Two respondents (AR3 and IR5) shared their experiences of intervening when arguments between interested parties were played out in a very public fashion on Facebook. These youths would actively intervene in the online arguments on Facebook, while seeking to ease tensions between the adversaries offline, and when the dispute was eventually settled, the mediators would have earned themselves face within the group. The visibility of their involvement and successful intervention as viewed on Facebook by the social network would help to cement their status among peers. Even Facebook friend requests can involve facework. IR5 shared that he was cautious about accepting friend requests from people whom he knew were always getting into trouble with the authorities. However, to give them face, he felt obliged to accept their requests nonetheless, but would protect himself by carefully managing how he interacted with them on Facebook as their accounts were likely to be under surveillance. In so doing, he and various other respondents who did likewise had learnt to give face without necessarily compromising on their own safety, acceptance by peers, standing within the group, and regard by others.

Losing Face Avoiding the loss of face was just as, if not more important to our respondents than gaining face, considering the social costs of embarrassment and humiliation that accompanied it (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2002). However, Facebook’s publicness, the very affordance that facilitates gaining face among peers, also compounds the challenge of avoiding loss of face. The lack of distinction between public and private spheres on Facebook and the overlaps between an individual’s different mediated, networked publics engender collapses in social context that can be awkward and inconvenient (boyd, 2008), thus complicating the task of facework on SNS. In situations where social contexts converge, variances in self-presentation are difficult to control, and presenting different selves to multiple and perhaps conflicting audiences can be a daunting though inescapable part of managing face, as different expectations may be associated with different public spheres. Such concerns were certainly uppermost in the minds of many of our respondents as they used Facebook to manage their social relations with different peer groups, parents, relatives, and even counselors and across the sample, a range of strategies was employed. As explained earlier, a key priority for our respondents was to maintain a clean record and this meant keeping an untainted and positive image of themselves for certain key constituents in their lives such as parents, teachers, relatives and counselors. Yet, like all youths, our respondents enjoy and feel affirmed

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by the company of their peers and sustaining peer relations via Facebook was therefore crucial to them. To actively avoid ‘‘context collapse’’ (Wesch, 2009), some respondents would have more than one Facebook account, each catering to a different audience and presenting distinct faces of themselves, as exemplified by respondent IR4: R: This [good] account I do it for family and friends that are close to me. My bad account I do it (laughs) for my crew, my dancing team and all those, you can call it the bad guys, friends, lalaland : : : all those things. I: So what kinds of things do you post on your two accounts? R: The good account I will definitely post the good things, the bad account for sure have bad comments, or those comments that are out of this world. I post a lot of things, those clubs : : : my mum knows I club, drink, smoke, but a few things she doesn’t know. So those are in my other [bad] account. Okay my good account I only accept friends who are studying, praying: : : : My bad account is for my club, bikes, gang: : : : IR4, 17 years, in high security rehab

In creating and managing two accounts, IR4 is able to avoid losing face among his social groups. Each representation ensures that the relevant group ‘‘sees’’ only the expected image, thereby gaining face for himself. Notably, presenting one’s image in a positive light does not necessarily involve doing ‘‘positive’’ things. For a gang and its members, the ‘‘wild’’ side conveys a public face to ensure IR4 gains a positive reputation among his peer group, thus gaining face in one social context while avoiding the loss of face in another. But not all respondents felt that they managed the risk of context collapse effectively. AR1 had felt obliged to accept his teachers’ friend requests and shared that he was more restrained in his updates and had to remember to refrain from using vulgarities: ‘‘after adding my teachers [as Facebook friends] I try to censor [myself] a bit more.’’ Furthermore, compartmentalizing one’s social networks into neat and discrete components is hardly a straightforward affair due to the relative ease with which relational linkages are made on SNS, and the complex web of offline relations underlying online ones. Another fascinating instantiation of the desire to avoid loss of face was observed in respondents who had proxy management of their Facebook account. As these respondents were incarcerated and had limited and sporadic access to Facebook, they asked their siblings, mothers, or friends to maintenance their Facebook accounts on their behalf. Two respondents in particular made a concerted effort to conceal the fact that they had been incarcerated: ‘‘I don’t want people to know [I am in a rehabilitation home] because like : : : (pause) I : : : [it’s] not a very good thing to tell people’’ (IR3, 17 years, in high security rehab). While engaging in illicit activity and boasting about it could serve as currency for gaining face as discussed earlier, these respondents regarded being caught and incarcerated as an inconvenient truth that they wished to downplay. With their proxy-managed online activity, they could avoid losing face as people in their Facebook networks were none the wiser about their incarceration.


While one could seek to actively avoid a loss of face by taking pro-active measures, having complete control over one’s personal circumstances is clearly not possible. One respondent experienced a loss of face when he admitted to having been tricked by a rival gang member into ‘‘friending’’ him on Facebook: ‘‘I [was] helping over there [during a gang fight], that guy (rival gang member), I punched [him] lah, and then he run: : : : Then I post on Facebook my punch of that guy. Then suddenly this Chinese (rival gang member) he has a, like, fake Facebook. This Facebook name called Hakim (an obviously Malay name), he add me [on Facebook] then I accept. Then [I realised] it’s not Hakim. It’s actually the Chinese guy: : : : Then he posted [on my Facebook] ‘‘You the one who hit me right?’’.


IR6, 16 years, in high security rehab

In this situation, his bid to gain face by posting the photograph of the assault backfired when his victim retaliated. On Facebook’s ‘‘hyperpublic’’ (boyd, 2008, p. 138) platform, the visibility of one’s misstep amongst peers from one’s personal and rival social networks exacerbates the humiliation that accompanies the loss of face.

Conclusion ‘‘Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.’’ (Facebook, 2012)

The technological scripting (Akrich, 1992) of Facebook as a prosocial platform for sharing one’s special life events, maintaining meaningful connections with treasured friends and acquaintances, and widening one’s social sphere in an atmosphere of openness sits awkwardly on users who appropriate Facebook for boundary-testing and socially disapproved behavior, such as the youths in our study. The openness which Facebook seeks to foster is incongruent with the nuanced nature of these youths’ peer interactions, at once self-promotional (to gain face) and protective (to avoid surveillance and arrest). Given the distinctive life experiences of juvenile delinquents, whose priorities diverge in significant ways from those of mainstream youth, our study contributes to a wider appreciation of the depth and complexity of online communication by young people. These youths’ online practices, geared towards gaining face, giving face, and not losing face via SNS have a pronounced social and relational dimension that seems to be less obvious with SNS research on other youths. The power dynamics underlying gang interactions, when played out in the online SNS environment, become highly visible and observable to gang members and their expanded social networks. This visibility both invigorates and complicates the facework that the youths engage in because the publicness of SNS can amplify the positive effects of


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gaining face, complicate the equivocal consequences of giving face, and exacerbate the adverse implications of losing face. Transposed against the underlying pressures for these youths to demonstrate gang loyalty and raise their status within the group, technological affordances of SNS such as posting status updates, comments and photographs, tagging, and viewable friendship networks are appropriated for posturing, power aggrandizement, and reputation management. Notably however, facework via SNS can be a risky enterprise because of the possibility of context collapse and vulnerability to surveillance by the authorities and rival gangs, both of which youths attempt to creatively circumvent. Whereas prior research has made significant strides in understanding the processes and purposes surrounding young people’s interactions with friends and the formation of new acquaintances online (e.g., boyd, 2008; Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Ito et al., 2009), these studies have not touched upon the cultural dimension of their peer interactions and affiliations. By employing the Asian concept of face, our analysis has drawn attention to the power hierarchies and expectations of mutual obligation and reciprocity that undergird peer interactions among juvenile delinquents, especially those in gangs. To the best of our knowledge, the application of the Asian concept of face to an understanding of Facebook interactions has also not hitherto been attempted. Our study also extends the field by explicating a different dimension of impression management that has already been extensively researched into (see, for example, DiMicco & Millen, 2007; Rosenberg & Egbert, 2011). For juvenile delinquents, impression management goes beyond presenting one’s best self to the world. For them, detrimental consequences may ensue if their impression management in the form of online facework is not well-managed. Failure to give face to gang mates may invite alienation, ostracism, retaliatory action and surveillance. When the complexities of facework migrate to the online environment and are transposed onto Facebook’s architecture, it necessitates careful negotiation by users. Facework on Facebook is fraught with complexity and involves negotiation that is dependent on one’s shifting circumstances. While the period of adolescence is difficult for all youths, juvenile delinquents have the added burden of growing up in an environment framed by reform, rehabilitation, and control. Placed within counseling and rehabilitation programs, our respondents’ journey of personal development and self-discovery was largely mediated by voices of authority, albeit well-intentioned. As they passed through the various stages of the rehabilitation process, these youths were therefore faced with constantly shifting life circumstances that compounded the challenges of facework. In their use of Facebook, the youths navigate the forces of peer networks as well as those from the rehabilitative and policing authorities that exert power over these youth and which complicates the facework they perform both on- and offline. Our study has various limitations. With a larger sample size, there could have been a greater possibility of eliciting a wider spectrum of strategies related to facework on SNS. Also, the addition of offline participant observation would have added a layered perspective to the analysis of online practices, especially given the



objective of grounding the research in concentric circles of context. Even within the examination of online practices, it might have been beneficial to engage in real-time observations of SNS in-use, rather than relying solely on self-report and revelations of selected parts of SNS profiles. Indeed many of these were considered in the initial research design. However, this is a difficult population to gain access to, much less study in great ethnographic detail. Even with institutional support not many youths came forward to be interviewed, and the researchers were careful not to exert any implicit coercive influence, mindful of the sensitive nature of the youths’ backgrounds. The youths who did consent to participate were guarded in their disclosures, possibly the result of repeated encounters with the police. The institutional setting itself may have prevented more disclosures, emphasizing as it did the power difference between the youths and the adults they were speaking with, as well as their lack of freedom. Ethical concerns prevailed over empirical needs in any event of a conflict between the two. The power asymmetry in the research setting mirrors that which the youths are subject to as a part of their lived reality. The careful implementation of creative facework strategies, while an indication of some level of autonomous agency, does take place within the structural boundaries and disciplinary mechanisms of state surveillance. The necessity of navigating between the Scylla of gang loyalty and the Charybdis of police detection positions facework at the intersection of multiple power dynamics. Our study has attempted to capture the challenges faced by the youths in this complex milieu.

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