Granddaughter Beware! An Intergenerational Case Study of Managing Trust Issues in the Use of Facebook

We offer a qualitative analysis of on-line safety practices and expectations in a community setting to look at trust practices that contribute to the complexity of information behaviors in the use of social media. Staging an encounter between local families by bringing together grandmothers and granddaughters at a workshop, we interrogate resulting discussions to understand how information practices are deployed to perform and interpret social identity. The analysis reveals the importance of trust practices and in particular, shows the tension between inward-looking and outward-looking behavior and how different perspectives on trust influence the manner in which communities work to protect members and police alternative uses of Facebook. In doing so, we add to knowledge about on-line safety and trust practices and the roles that families and tools play in supporting, enforcing and augmenting these practices.