Danes on Facebook

Gothenburg.
The final AoIR 2010 panel for today starts with Lisbeth Klastrup, who’s presenting on a study of how Danes participate in Facebook. While the overall Facebook community now numbers some 500 million users, how localised and fragmented is that community, for example along national and local lines? Examining the Danish Facebook community might provide some useful answers to this question. Some of this is also related to overall cultural patterns, of course – the importance of local and family ties to a national culture, for example; a ‘national intimacy’ which is relatively strong in Denmark. Contrasted with this is a ‘banal globalism’ – a general but relatively shallow interest in global events and issues.

Lisbeth engaged in a survey of Danes (including expats) on Facebook, to examine these questions. Of the 700 responses, 18% were between 16 and 24 years old, 35% were 25 to 34, and 30% were 35 to 44. 49% were from Copenhagen, and 90% used Facebook on a daily basis. 91% of the respondents were Danish, and 24% communicated in Danish only; another 52% used Danish predominantly on Facebook. German and Swedish were the major other languages. Danes interact mostly with other Danes, as well as with people they met while travelling; there was very little communication between Danes and recent immigrants.

Topics of interaction were private life, Danish news, and discussion of international language videos; this goes also for people who communicate more in languages other than Danish (e.g. expats). Global activities included sending videos from international sources, or joining international brand groups or activist causes. So overall, local and national themes were most interesting to Danes, and the national language matters most; internationally, shared humour also seems to be important, this, perhaps is one example of ‘banal localism’.