Facebook rituals: Identifying rituals of social networking sites using structural ritualization theory

摘要

This article applies structural ritualization theory (SRT) to identify different rituals and determine their importance in the daily lives of social networking sites (SNS) users, especially Facebook users. A mixed-methods approach of in-depth interviews and netnography viewed through the lens of SRT allowed us to identify and analyze the types of rituals users engaged in, and how these rituals impacted users and evolved over time. During customer journeys on the SNS of Facebook, users shared daily ritual practices in distinct behavioral stages. Production and consumption of these daily rituals are important to marketers in SNS platform design for building and maintaining connectivity between users and the SNS platform.