FB in FYC: Facebook Use Among First-Year Composition Students

This article presents results of a survey of 474 first-year composition students about their Facebook use. Findings suggest that students do not see Facebook and first-year composition as being related. However, students seem to enact certain skills from first-year composition on Facebook, such as audience awareness, awareness of rhetorical situation, invention, and even process writing. Other findings include that students who like writing or thought they were good writers were more likely to see a connection between Facebook and first-year composition, that students were much more likely to use privacy settings than previous research suggests, and that there was a strong correlation between how often students perceived certain groups viewing their content on Facebook and how often they had that group in mind when posting. These implications suggest that making students aware of these practices on Facebook may make it easier for students to more clearly see connections between composing practices on Facebook and in first-year composition.