Role

The (IRB-approved) qualitative procedure used to approach the aforementioned research questions integrated a think-aloud protocol (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) into a semi-structures interview. For the think-aloud part, participants were asked to look at different Facebook Pages that contained like-displays, while verbalizing their thoughts accordingly. Based on Pulakos and Schmitt (1995), the interview protocol was comprised of situational (in-depth questions regarding the presented profiles) as well as experience questions (regarding participants’ experience with the like-feature in the past).

Details will be outlined in the following .

6.2.1 Sample and Procedure

Ten students from a media psychology program (50% female) participated in the study, after being recruited via bulletin boards (online and on campus) in January and February 2012. There were no particular preconditions for participation, except that interviewees were required to have a Facebook

profile and to be active and regular users of the SNS. The ten participants had been Facebook members for one to four years (M = 2.47, SD = 1.22) and used Facebook on a daily basis, between 20 minutes and 3.5 hours per day (M = 77.78 minutes, SD = 63.57).

On arrival at the lab, participants were informed about the general topic of the study and the details of the interview procedure. With respect to the general topic, participants were told the aim of the study was to assess their impressions regarding the design of different Facebook Pages. To avoid demand characteristics, the particular relevance of the like-displays for the purpose of the study was not pointed out. Participants further were notified about the fact that at some point during the interview they would be asked to log into their Facebook account to be able to observe the presented Pages exactly the way they would face them, if they had encountered the Pages in the course of their own daily Facebook browsing activities. Before the beginning of the procedure, participants gave their written consent on participation and the fact that the interviews would be audio-recorded.

The interview procedure (for details on the interview protocol see next section) started out with some general questions about participants’ Facebook usage. After the first interview part, participants were asked to log into their Facebook account and in the following they were shown two different kinds of stimuli: Four different Facebook Pages and one Recommended Pages Ad. With regard to each of the four Pages, participants were asked to verbalize their first impressions about different elements of the Page which was complemented by additional questions of the interviewer. Subsequently, participants were shown a Recommended Pages Ad in which - based on a Facebook algorithm - an overview of a small number of seemingly random Facebook Pages is displayed, showing only the title, profile photo and a fan- or friend-display. After answering further questions with regard to the Pages shown in the Recommended Pages Ad, participants were asked to log off their Facebook account.

Following that, participants answered some additional interview questions about their like-behavior and past experience with the liking of Facebook Pages.

Finally, participants filled out a short questionnaire to assess demographic information (age, gender, major, semester). Overall, the procedure took between 70 and 90 minutes (see table 2), depending on how much participants elaborated on different aspects of the profile. After the interview, participants were informed on the real purpose of the study, explaining to them why they had been asked to log into their Facebook account. Cookies were deleted after every session. All interviews were conducted by the same interviewer to avoid interviewer effects. The respective interviewer memorized the protocol in detail and conducted two trial interviews prior to starting with the first participant to be able to adjust to participants’ behavior during the think aloud procedure, e.g. to skip those questions

Table 2: Procedure of Study 1

Task Duration (approx.)

Interview Part I Participants answered interview questions about Facebook usage

Participants chose one of the presented Ads and gave reason for their choice; additional in-depth interview questions were answered

5 minutes

Interview Part II Participants answered interview questions about their use of and experience with the like-feature

10 minutes

Questionnaire Participants filled out questionnaire about demo-graphic aspects

5 minutes

that participants had already answered in the course of describing their impressions of the Page. An overview of the whole procedure is provided in table 2.

6.2.2 Interview Protocol

The interview protocol was created on the basis of the research questions and the outlined theoretical background regarding conformity and self-presentation.

The first interview questions addressed participants’ general Facebook use, without any particular reference towards the like-feature (time spent on Facebook; how long they have been using the platform; most frequent activities; whether and if so, how they update their profile information; which people of their network are able to access their posts and whether there existed information that they would not share on Facebook).

During the first part of the think-aloud procedure, participants were asked to verbalize what they thought of each presented Facebook Page as a whole and the associated topic. The interviewer then asked additional questions about how likely participants would be to like that Page (or not) and for what reasons. After this, participants were instructed to verbalize the impressions they got regarding different elements of the Page (Page header, profile picture, photos displayed in the overview of the photo section, textual information, and like-displays). The interviewer addressed all elements on every

Facebook Page presented so that there was no indication of the real purpose of the study to avoid demand characteristics. After verbalizing their thoughts, participants were asked several in-depth questions about each element, such as its relevance for participants’ impressions and intention to like the Page. Participants were asked to explain why they thought the respective element of the Facebook Page elicited that particular impression/reaction and if it would evoke a different impression/reaction if it contained different information (e.g. a different profile picture, more textual information, more photos, more/different friends displayed as fans).

During the second part of the think-aloud procedure, when shown the Recommended Pages Ad, participants were asked to choose one Page of the ones presented that they would look at in more detail or that they would be willing to like. Further, they were asked to explain their decision.

The last interview part consisted of questions that addressed participants’ use of and experience with the like-feature in more detail (e.g. what kind of Facebook Pages are liked most often, whether they could recall a situation in which they liked a Facebook Page and for what reasons, what they think of the like-feature in general and whether they would like something if none of their friends could see this action).

6.2.3 Presented Material

During the first part of the think-aloud procedure, participants were shown four Facebook Pages (for an overview see table 3). Two drinks and two television shows were chosen to cover different kinds of topics. Of each kind of topic, one product was very popular and one product was rather unknown to assess differences in reactions towards known and unknown topics and towards different numbers of fans and friends who are fans. Popular topics were Coca Cola and The Simpsons while the unknown topics were Black Can 28 (a locally distributed energy drink) and Modern Family (which had not been broadcast in Germany at that time). The last two topics were assumed to be unfamiliar to the sample but not downright unknown so that there was the chance of participants’ friends being displayed as fans.

During the interview period, Facebook introduced the Timeline for Facebook Pages (Axon, 2012).

After about half of the interviews had been conducted, the respective Pages successively switched to the new layout. This was considered not to be crucial to the success of the study, since the new layout displayed the like-displays even more prominently than the old layout. In contrast to the old layout, however, the Page displayed less static information on the main Page (e.g. the "About"-section was not directly visible), hence the interview procedure had to be adapted accordingly. No changes were made in the interview procedure with regard to the like-displays as the actual topic of the study.

Table 3: Presented Facebook Pages in Study 1

Known Unknown

Drink

Coca Cola Black Can 28

Total number of fans (January - February 2012)

37.5M - 41M 73k - 85k

known by 10 out of 10 participants 1 out of 10 participants liked by 0 out of 10 participants 0 out of 10 participants Number of participants’

friends displayed as fans

2-16 0-3

TV Show

The Simpsons Modern Family

Total number of fans (January - February 2012)

38.5M - 47M 5.5M - 6M

known by 10 out of 10 participants 1 out of 10 participants liked by 2 out of 10 participants 0 out of 10 participants Number of participants’

friends displayed as fans

13-48 0-7

Table 4: Example for Paraphrasing

I: Can you give an example, where it would be more important? P1: Ok, so I’m a vegetarian. And, I don’t know, if there we such a Page and I would like that, then this tells more about me than if I liked Coca Cola. Because vegetar-ian. If P1 were to like a respective Page, that would tell more about P1 than if he/she were to like Coca Cola.

Through that, people would come to know about P1 because it is personal.

The Recommend Pages Ad was called up by typing the word “test” (a random search query which was the same for all participants) into the search bar and clicking the “see more results” option, after which the Ad was presented on the right part of the results Page. The Ad contained an unspecific number of recommended Pages.

6.2.4 Data Analysis and Coding Frame

All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The parts of the interviews that addressed elements of the Facebook Pages not of interest to the study were cut from the transcripts before transcripts were paraphrased for the purpose of summarization and explanation (Mayring, 2007). For an example see Table 4.

Paraphrases were subject to qualitative content analysis using MaxQDA, a software program used for “systematically describing the meaning of qualitative material. It is done by classifying material as instances of the categories of a coding frame” (Schreier, 2012, p. 1). The analysis followed a partly inductive and partly deductive approach (Schreier, 2012). Main categories of the coding frame represented topics addressed within the research questions, while subcategories were mainly

extracted from the material in a deductive way by selecting relevant content and assigning it to the respective main category (Schreier, 2012). Every paraphrase represented a coding unit and codes (main as well as subcategories) were allowed to overlap.

Overall, 15 main categories were defined: Facebook use, first impression of the Page (RQ1), information contained in fan-displays (RQ3a), (potential) reactions to fan-displays (RQ2), reasons for (potential) reactions to fan-displays (RQ3b), aspects affecting (potential) reactions to fan-displays (RQ4-6), information contained in friend-displays (RQ3a), (potential) reactions to friend-displays (RQ2), reasons for (potential) reactions to friend-displays (RQ3b), aspects affecting (potential) reactions to friend-displays (RQ4-6), purpose of liking a Page (RQ7a), preconditions for liking a Page (RQ7b), own likes (RQ7a), self-presentational audience (RQ7c). Because of the nature of the coding scheme, in which fan-and friend-displays were coded separately, RQ4a (concerned with differences between fan- and friend-displays) will already be implicitly addressed in the process of answering the other RQs. A summary of the findings up to that point will be provided when explicitly addressing RQ4a in the results section. An additional main category referred to the Facebook Page at hand: type of Page (e.g. familiar/unfamiliar topic, drink/TV show), meant to allow identifying overlaps with other categories to address RQ6 (concerned with the impact of participants’ prior knowledge and opinion about the topic of the Page). The definition of the main categories was conducted in an iterative process, during which several other researchers were consulted and the coding frame was adapted accordingly several times. The codes constituting the respective subcategories contained factual codes (e.g. time spent on Facebook, topic of the Facebook Page) as well as referential codes (e.g.

information contained in the fan-display: product is popular). Finally, 10 - 20% of the interview material (paraphrases) was extracted and cross-coded by a second coder, applying the existing coding frame.

A satisfactory inter rater reliability ofκ= 74 was obtained (Landis & Koch, 1977).