Affordances supporting mothers’ engagement in information-related activities through Facebook groups

Abstract

Social networking sites have become indispensable information and communication tools in everyday life. This qualitative study investigated the information-related activities and affordances of a Facebook group for foreign mothers living in Sweden. Four key information activities were identified: posting, monitoring, commenting and searching. These activities show how the group members accessed the information resources embedded within the group in a variety of visible, invisible, active and passive modes. The article concludes with a discussion of how these different modes are facilitated by the affordances of visibility, accessibility, persistence and associations.