“Family” and Social Media: From Interviews Using Life Documents

Abstract

This paper aims to give a detailed description of how people maintain a relationship of ‘family’ in everyday life. It has been said for a long time that ‘family’ became diverse. Previous research has shown that ‘family’ is strongly interrelated with media. Among others, we focused on social media that have more and more users in recent years. We conducted in-depth interviews with young women who are active users of social media. Based on ideas of life history method, we used usage history of social media as a kind of life documents in interviews. This enabled us to give a detailed description of a few but diverse cases. A series of social media practices is described, using a “case example-code matrix” based on interview data. The interviewees handle various social media function skillfully and do interaction rituals towards their ‘family’ based on keitai literacy acquired while they were teenagers. Having these skills, they hold the strategic high ground in relationship with parent generation in social media. Their everyday lives are intricately-linked with a set of smartphone and social media. It is difficult to ignore social media, if we are to know how they maintain a relationship of ‘family’.