Preliminary findings of facebook appropriation process in family context

Social Network Site (SNS) are increasingly being used within family settings to support and extend the family relationships. From hundreds of SNS, Facebook is one of the most popular across a variety of demographic categories in Malaysia. Many extant researches on SNS adoption and use have focused on individual level and disregarding the family perspective. Apart from that, most of the studies are focusing much on the initial introduction of the technology, but ignoring its later stages. Therefore, a conceptual framework named Family Appropriation of Social Network Site (FASNS) is developed to capture the SNS appropriation process criteria beyond the individual and adoption level. The purpose of this study is to explore the criteria of Facebook appropriation process among the families. As a preliminary finding, this paper describes qualitative case studies of two families who have adopted and used Facebook for some times. The result highlights the identification of Facebook appropriation process criteria from the multiple perspectives within the family context. The interpretation of the results could be used as a guideline for researchers, family therapists and SNS designers in developing a healthy family communication.