"I Need to Behave": A Netnographic Study of how Students Approach Social Media in a Computer-Mediated Job Market under Platform Capitalism

Abstract

The digital infrastructures that have been created in the last twenty to thirty years have completely transformed the socioeconomic environment. Some authors argue we live under surveillance capitalism, due to new business models based on data extraction and analysis. In this computer-mediated job market employees find themselves constantly monitored, as digital platforms blur the borders between personal and professional life and encourage a constant work of self-commodification. This is the world students approach as they graduate from their education and transition into working life. Many other authors have explored the relationship between technology and sociological and economic conditions. From ideas of surveillance and platform capitalism, to the instrumentalisation of technology by corporations, to the study of user’s motivation for online behaviour. This research project aims to provide an interdisciplinary empirical contribution to the current literature on technology, job market, social media and digital work. The focus of this study is to understand how business student's activity online could be connected to their perceptions of this new computer-mediated job market. While previous literature has centred around professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn, our work aims to investigate the repercussions of the current socioeconomic conditions on students’ use of recreational social media. We attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of the empirical phenomenon using an interpretivist analysis of qualitative data, collected through six semi-structured interviews and a four-week long netnography. The thesis reveals that subjects are constantly trying to satisfy an imagined audience through image management, self-censorship and the creation of a meta-narrative. Their restraint is not a conscious attempt to appear professional or protect their privacy, but the result of following self-imposed normative behavioural norms shaped by the architecture and business models of the platforms they use to express themselves.