Outage of Meta-owned Social Network Sites (SNS) - University students' experiences and insights for strategic communication practice and its relevance for social acceleration

Abstract: This thesis explores the socially constructed phenomenon that has arisen as a result of the proliferation of social network sites that has penetrated our daily lives. The qualitative study analysed how university students experienced the global outage of Facebook, Instagram and, WhatsApp on October 4th, 2021, because of the Meta-owned ecosystem of social media. Moreover, the study examined how 2 groups of university students, coped with the outage by using non-Meta social network sites, other asynchronous and synchronous communication tools, or simply used the outage to disconnect from social media. The theoretical framework centered on social acceleration to illustrate the advancements in technical acceleration, as well as the uses & gratifications theory to give context from the perspective of university students and their reasons for using social media. Social constructionism was chosen as the research paradigm for the study. The results of the study came up with specific examples of how airlines are expected to develop their Twitter profiles as a major customer complaint management channel because university students have learned to contact airlines through Twitter to communicate their problems. The reactions towards the outage also showed relevance and connection to the theoretical framework. The study also showed how university students viewed SMS texting, and that they would also use LinkedIn as a secondary communication platform if needed. The data collection method included two focus group discussions of a total of 11 individuals, and the data was analysed through thematic content analysis. The findings from the data indicated that university students are aware they are in constant interactions with people while going about their daily lives, and this gives a heightened sense of an accelerated pace of life because of the synchronous nature of certain social network sites. That they are always in touch with social media means that communicators have to understand their communicative behaviours and be flexible with their strategic communication on social media. The study ends with a call to action for future research within social acceleration and the uses & gratifications theory and the imperative need for communicators to tap into other SNSs for strategic communication.