Facebook as a shaping force for students' experiences of transitions into higher education

As technological developments accelerate, and neo-liberal ideologies shift the ways that universities ‘do business’, higher education is facing radical changes. Within this context, students’ need to ‘succeed’ at university is more important than ever. Consequently, understanding students’ transitions within this shifting higher education landscape has become a key focus for universities. It is now pertinent to explore how social-networking sites (SNS) influence students’ experiences as they transition into university. In this paper, we offer two ethnographic case studies of how students use one SNS (Facebook) as they travel through their first year of undergraduate study and suggest that Facebook is used not only for dynamic participation in the social fabric of university life, Facebook is the go to space to organise their academic and social lives, using it as a hybrid space to negotiate between home and university. As such, Facebook offers student-users a ‘liminal tool’ for negotiating and facilitating resources and networks within the first year at university.