Communication with Thomas Stenger at Child and Teen Consumption 2010 - Interdisciplinarity, theory and practice - Campus Norrköping, June 21-23 2010

1. Child and Teen Consumption 2010
- Interdisciplinarity, theory and practice -
Campus Norrköping, June 21-23 2010
Learning by « hanging around » : how
teens are talking about brands and
consumption on social network sites
Alexandre COUTANT - Thomas STENGER
coutant.alexandre@gmail.com - stenger@iae.univ-poitiers.fr
University of Poitiers, France, CEREGE, CEPE
Diffusable sous licence Creative Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

2. Teens and consumption on SNS
• « Youth & SNS » Research Project
– granted by the French National Postal Service
(2008-2009)
– A multidisciplinary team of 7 researchers in
Marketing, Communication and Computer Sciences
• Three main issues :
– Defining what are SNS within the « social medias »
– Understanding what kind of activities are going on
these sites
– Exploring brands visibility and what kind of
interactions are possible with young users

3. Methodology
• 24 months of online participative observation on the
most popular SNS in France (Facebook, Skyrock, Myspace,
Netlog, Lexode)
• Online questionnaire (n= 635)
• In-depth interviews of 65 French teenagers and
young adults (13-27 years old)
• Analysis of the platform design and systematic
profile analysis (n= 38)
• Case study relying on a monitoring of brands
actions
• Semantic analysis and network analysis of 7041
profiles on Facebook (Tetralogie)

4. SNS definition
• SNS are web-based services that allow individuals to :
– (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded
system,
– (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a
connection, and
– (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those
made by others within the system. The nature and
nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site
(Boyd, Ellison, 2007)
– (4) base their interest mainly on these first three points and
not on any particular activity (Stenger, Coutant, 2009a,
2010).

5. Friendship vs interest driven online activities
• “Interest-driven participation has to do with more of the
geeks and creative types of practices, where youth will
connect with others online around specializes
interests, such as media fandom, gaming, or creative
production”
• “Friendship-driven participation is what most youth are
doing online, and involve the familiar practices of
hanging out, flirting, and working out status issues on
sites like MySpace and Facebook” (Ito & al., 2008)
 every day life conversations (Certeau, 1980 ; Proulx, 1994))
 frivolity (Coutant, Stenger, 2010)

6. A place for brands ?
• Interview results (Stenger, Coutant, 2009b) :
– Ads are identified and ignored
– No one had already consumed on the platform. Neither do they perceive
these sites like commercial spaces
– Brands devices are not recognized (pages, jeux, groups)
– These devices are appropriated by teens, who twist them for peer
sociability uses (self presentation, flirting, joking  « hanging out »)
– Frivolity: how to data mine interactions not dealing with a particular point
and often switching from face value to private joke
• Radical opposition to promotional speeches held by web-
marketers, SNS and sometimes research in marketing
• Qualitative results confirmed by Tetralogie quantitative analysis
• BUT, observation as Tetralogie results highlight that even
if brands are not visible, a lot of interactions are dealing
with consumption

7. Tag cloud made with the « activities »
label

8. Tag cloud made with the « status »
label

9. Tag cloud made with the comments

10. Generalized spaces of ordinary
prescription
• Prescription: potential and more or less intense
influence someone or something can have one one’s
choice
• Broad theoretical framework (Hatchuel, 1994, 1995,
1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2008) used in ergonomy,
management or sociology of labor
• Online studies : effects of “official” film critics
prescription or of netusers recommendations and
opinions (Stenger, 2004, 2006, 2008 ; Debenedetti,
2006 ; Dellarocas, 2003, 2006, 2007 ; Godes et
Mayzlin, 2004 ; Larceneux, 2007 ; Belveaux et
Marteaux, 2007). No studies on SNS
 Define tools and individuals making and
participating to ordinary prescription

11. ordinary prescription

12. Software encouragement :
Social encouragement :

13. Les Rsn : un espace de prescription
ordinaire généralisée
• Several steps of willing and
consciousness of the prescriptive activity :
– A minima prescription
– Public declaration
– Intentional prescription
– Software prescription (Top News, friends and
reconnections suggestions, newsfeed
management, applications and mashups)

14. A successful sociotechnical chain of
prescription
• A pacified place to present oneself (Coutant,
Stenger, 2010)
• Software encouragement taken over by users
themselves
• Reactivity :
– changes in status (to distinguish links, videos,
articles, etc)
– Choice to publish or not every activity
– Other sites activity import
– Changes in pages and groups to include it in the
newsfeed, redirection ti the page when someone is
joining it, justified suggestions of pages and groups

15. Child and Teen Consumption 2010
- Interdisciplinarity, theory and practice -
Campus Norrköping, June 21-23 2010
Thank you
Alexandre COUTANT - Thomas STENGER
coutant.alexandre@gmail.com - stenger@iae.univ-poitiers.fr
University of Poitiers, France, CEREGE, CEPE