“Making the world more open and connected”: Mark Zuckerberg and the discursive construction of Facebook and its users

The dominance of online social networking sites (SNSs) sparks questions and concerns regarding information privacy, online identity, and the complexities of social life online. Since messages created by a technology’s purveyors can play an influential role in our understanding of a technology, we argue that gaining a complete understanding of the role of social media in contemporary life must include qualitative exploration of how public figures discuss and frame these platforms. Accordingly, this article reports the results of a discourse analysis of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public language, foregrounding the evolution of his discourse surrounding Facebook’s self-definitions, the construction of user identity, and the relationship between Facebook and its users.

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