THE STUDY OF THE SYMBOLS ON FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE USED BY FACEBOOKERS

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THE STUDY OF THE SYMBOLS ON FACEBOOK STATUS

UPDATE USED BY FACEBOOKERS

THESIS

By

Rizdia Ilmimaghfiroh

08360208

UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

FACULTY OF TEACHING TRAINING AND EDUCATION

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

2012


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ACKNOWLEGMENT

First of all, I would like to say my deep and internal gratitude to Allah SWT for the wisdom, strength, source of inspiration, and guidance trough my difficult time in doing this thesis.

My great appreciation and gratitude is for Mr. Drs. Soeparto, M.Pd as my first advisor and Mr. Drs. Sudiran. M.Hum as my second advisor. Thank you for the kindness, advice, criticism, motivation and patience in guiding me to doing my thesis. I am very grateful to have them as my advisor and for all the time they gave to me during the writing process of this thesis.

My gratitude to my family; my father, Mistari, for the understanding and encouragement in keeping my focused; my mother, Alfiati, for all the time she has spent to pray for me; my old sister and brother, Neng Lia and Mas Hamzah, for supporting me in their prayer, in providing me with love, care and funds.

My thankfulness to my beloved boy who have place within my heart, Arga Dwi T, who always strengthens and encouragements me in doing my thesis well. Thank you very much for his love, understanding, and affection that he gave to me for all this time.

For all my best friend “ Kepompong” Anggita, Angger, Brian, Sandy thank you for giving me support and for being my best friends for these four years. To all the rest of my friends whom I cannot mention one by one, thank you all. Allah blesses me so much for giving me friend like them all.

Malang, 31st July 2012


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LIVE IS CHOICE!!!!!

EVERYTHING THAT MAKE YOU SAD, LEAVE IT!!!

EVERYTHING THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY, SAVE

IT!!!!

NEVER GIVE UP KEEP SPIRIT!!!!!!

I dedicate for:

My family


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vi

TABLE OF CONTENT

Approval ... i

Legalization ... ii

Motto and Dedication ... iii

Acknowledgement ... iv

Abstract ... v

Table of contents ... vi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study ... 1

1.2 Statements of Problem ... 4

1.3 Purpose of the Study ... 4

1.4 Scope and Limitation ... 4

1.5 Significance of the Study ... 4

1.5 Definition of Key Term ... 5

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1 Facebook ... 6

2.1.1 Home ... 7

2.1.2 Profile ... 12

2.2 Symbol ... 15

2.2.1 Kinds of Symbols ... 15

2.2.2 Facebook Symbol ... 17

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research Design ... 25

3.2 Informant of the Study ... 26

3.3 Research Instrument ... 26

3.3.1 Observation ... 26


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vii

3.4 Data Collection... 28

3.5 Data Analysis ... 28

CHAPTER IV FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Finding ... 30

4.1.1 Kinds of Facebook Symbols ... 30

4.1.2 The meaning of Facebook Symbols ... 33

4.2 Discussion ... 38

CHAPTER V CONCLUTION AND SUGGESTION 5.1 Conclusion ... 46

5.1 Suggestion ... 47

5.1.1 Suggestion for the Lecturer ... 47

5.1.2 Suggestion for the students and learner ... 48

5.1.3 Suggestion for future researcher ... 48

BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abraham, M and Paulman, A. 2010. Facebook For Dummies 2nd Edition. Canada:willey publishing

Anne,C and Lary, M. 2012. A Parents’ Guide to Facebook. Connect safely.org and iKeepsafe Coalition

Ary, D. 2010.Introduction to Research in Education. United state of America: wardworth group

Bogdan, Robert. C and Biklen, K. 2003. Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods.United state of America: pearson education group

Boyd, Danah. 2004. Friendster and Publicly Articulated Social Networking.

Barkeley: University of California

Fiske, Jhon. 1990. Introduction to Communication Studies 2nd Edition. London: Routeldge

Fraenkel, Jack. 2012. How to Design and Evaluating Research in Education (Eight Edition). New York: Mc. Graww Hill

Fsymbols.com. (online) 10 April 2012. Accessed on April 17, 2012

Hall, James. 1996. Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art.

United stated America: Westview. Press

Louis, Dr. 2012. Symbolism in Literature. Scribd. Inc

Mayfied, Antony. 2008. What Is Social Media. (www.iCross.com/ebooks)

Ross, Kenneth. 2005. Qualitative Research Methods in Educational Planing. France: International Institute For Educational Planning/ UNESCO

Samad, F. 2004. Semantic Study on Term and Symbols Used in Internet Yahoo Chat.Unpublication thesis. Malang: English dept.UMM

Shamisa,S (2004) in Fadaee, E. 2011. Symbols, Methaphores and Similes in

Literature: A Case Study of “Animal Farm”. Iran: Islamic Azad university of


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Sinha, C. 2004. The Evolution of Language: From Signals to Symbols to System.InD. KimgroughOller& U. Griebel (Eds.), Evolution of CommunicatioSystems: A Comparative Approach (pp. 217-237). Cambridge MA: MIT Press

Weber, L (2009) in Johanson, Maria. 2010. Social Media and Brand Awareness.


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1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1

Background of Study

Nowadays, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) like internet is a fast important element in the life of Indonesians. People are interested in using internet in their daily life not only to find news, entertainment but also to communicate.

As the impact of the global communication grows, people consider to join social networking to get information, make interaction and communication with all people in the world, in scope of internet users. According to Weber (2009: 7), “Social networks are places where people with a common interest activities using Web-based tools to communicate with one another”.

There are some social networking found in internet: Friendster, twitter, Myspace, Facebook and many more. According to Boyd (2004:1),”Friendster is a website that allows people to explicitly articulate their social network, present themselves through a profile (interests and demographics), post public testimonials about one another, and browse a network of people”. Friendster is built on the assumption that friends of- friends are more likely to be good dates than strangers.

MySpace has built a lot of its popularity around its music services. There are said to be over three million bands and musicians registered on it, trying to attract a fan base from the 200 million registered accounts. MySpace was the 8th largest referrer


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2

of traffic to HMV.co.uk, more even than the MSN search engine (Mayfield: 2008; 14).

Twitter was launched in 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp. In April 2007, Obvious, LLC spun off the service as a separate entity under the name

Twitter, Inc. with Jack Dorsey as CEO.Based on Boyd (2009:75), “Twitter is a social networking, allowing people to easily and instantly post status updates and news.

Twitter allows users to send “tweets” consisting of no more than 140 character of

word via twitterrific and twittbi”.

One of the most interesting pages is www.facebook.com. Facebook becomes a phenomenon in Indonesia. It is proved about 17.72% (43.06 million) users has been already register in facebook (socialbakers.com). They can do anything with facebook

because, facebook is one of social networking that helps people to communicate more efficiently and easily with their family and their friends. They also can express their imagination, creativity, and get more information of it.

There are many features in facebook that make users interested, such as tag photo

that is used for showing the photo and tag to their friends, chatting that is used for direct conversation with your friends who are online at the same time you are, poke

that is used for saying “hello”, news feed that is used for informatory, game that is

used for relaxation and facebook status update that is used for sharing.

From all of these features, Facebook status update is the one of features that is always used by every user to share their direct activity that they do, to share their feeling, and other friends could give the direct comments, to choose like sign or symbols to show that the reader interested in the status.


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3

Talking about symbols, people use symbols as a need in communication also. Symbols are also used by all kinds of group of people who share the same situation and interest. It also can be found in writing facebook status update. Facebookers

include symbols such as picture of emotion to show expression, for example; happy (:) ), angry (:-|| ), sad (:-( ), and many others to make the status more

interesting.

Samad (2004: 28), analyzed the symbols used on the internet yahoo chat, she found that there are 20 symbols in yahoo messenger; the serve only gave some symbols and pictures commonly used by chatter.

Steven and Julie (2010:18), classify the emotion in Facebook status messages

due to their nature. They analyze the suitability of various approaches to Facebook status messages by comparing the performance with symbols or labeling that the

facebokers used in facebook status messages. So they classify became binary and multi-class sentiment labeling.

Based on the statement above, the study will be conducted on analyzing of the symbols found in the facebook. The reason why the researcher decides to analyze is that symbols are used in writing facebook status update, every facebooker include symbols in the status to express their feeling. They also used the symbols to make the status more interesting to read, because in facebook, there are many variation of picture of emotion that can be used it. The usages make the researcher curious to know what symbols are, and what the meaning of the symbols. This phenomenon brings the researcher to analyze it.


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4

1.2

Statements of Problem

Based on the background of study above, the researcher formulates the problem as follows:

1. What are the symbols commonly used on the facebook status update by the facebookers?

2. What is the meaning of the symbols used on facebook status update by the facebookers?

1.3

Purpose of the Study

1. To know the symbols commonly used on the facebook status update by the facebookers.

2. To know the meaning of the symbols in facebook status update by the facebookers.

1.4

Scope and Limitation

The scope of this study is symbols such us picture of emotion used by the facebookers in writing facebook status update. It is limited on facebook status update of faceboookers on 13th May up to 9th June 2012.

1.5

Significant of the Study

Hopefully, this study is intended to give scientific information for readers about symbols in facebook. The researcher hopes the result of this study will give


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5

something meaningful to literary research and it can be used as for reference for students of English Department in University of Muhammadiyah Malang who study semiotic subject and also as an encouragement for those who want to do further research.

1.6

Definition of Key Terms

1. Social networks are places where people with a common interest or concern come together to meet people with similar interests, express themselves and communicate (Weber, 2009)

2. Facebook is social utility that connect people with others who work, study and live around world (www.allfacebook.com).

3. Update status also referred to simply as status which allows users to post message for all their friends to read. In turn friend can respond with their comment (Zuckberg, 2009).

4. A symbol is the use of a concrete object to represent an abstract idea (Louis: 2011:1).


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Sinha, C. 2004. The Evolution of Language: From Signals to Symbols to System.InD. KimgroughOller& U. Griebel (Eds.), Evolution of CommunicatioSystems: A Comparative Approach (pp. 217-237). Cambridge MA: MIT Press

Weber, L (2009) in Johanson, Maria. 2010. Social Media and Brand Awareness. Lulea University of Technology


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1

Background of Study

Nowadays, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) like internet is a fast important element in the life of Indonesians. People are interested in using internet in their daily life not only to find news, entertainment but also to communicate.

As the impact of the global communication grows, people consider to join social networking to get information, make interaction and communication with all people in the world, in scope of internet users. According to Weber (2009: 7), “Social networks are places where people with a common interest activities using Web-based tools to communicate with one another”.

There are some social networking found in internet: Friendster, twitter, Myspace, Facebook and many more. According to Boyd (2004:1),” Friendster is a website that allows people to explicitly articulate their social network, present themselves through a profile (interests and demographics), post public testimonials about one another, and browse a network of people”. Friendster is built on the assumption that friends of- friends are more likely to be good dates than strangers.

MySpace has built a lot of its popularity around its music services. There are said to be over three million bands and musicians registered on it, trying to attract a fan base from the 200 million registered accounts. MySpace was the 8th largest referrer


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of traffic to HMV.co.uk, more even than the MSN search engine (Mayfield: 2008; 14).

Twitter was launched in 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp. In April 2007, Obvious, LLC spun off the service as a separate entity under the name Twitter, Inc. with Jack Dorsey as CEO.Based on Boyd (2009:75), “Twitter is a social networking, allowing people to easily and instantly post status updates and news. Twitter allows users to send “tweets” consisting of no more than 140 character of word via twitterrific and twittbi”.

One of the most interesting pages is www.facebook.com. Facebook becomes a phenomenon in Indonesia. It is proved about 17.72% (43.06 million) users has been already register in facebook (socialbakers.com). They can do anything with facebook because, facebook is one of social networking that helps people to communicate more efficiently and easily with their family and their friends. They also can express their imagination, creativity, and get more information of it.

There are many features in facebook that make users interested, such as tag photo that is used for showing the photo and tag to their friends, chatting that is used for direct conversation with your friends who are online at the same time you are, poke that is used for saying “hello”, news feed that is used for informatory, game that is used for relaxation and facebook status update that is used for sharing.

From all of these features, Facebook status update is the one of features that is always used by every user to share their direct activity that they do, to share their feeling, and other friends could give the direct comments, to choose like sign or symbols to show that the reader interested in the status.


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Talking about symbols, people use symbols as a need in communication also. Symbols are also used by all kinds of group of people who share the same situation and interest. It also can be found in writing facebook status update. Facebookers include symbols such as picture of emotion to show expression, for example; happy

(:) ), angry (:-|| ), sad (:-( ), and many others to make the status more

interesting.

Samad (2004: 28), analyzed the symbols used on the internet yahoo chat, she found that there are 20 symbols in yahoo messenger; the serve only gave some symbols and pictures commonly used by chatter.

Steven and Julie (2010:18), classify the emotion in Facebook status messages due to their nature. They analyze the suitability of various approaches to Facebook status messages by comparing the performance with symbols or labeling that the facebokers used in facebook status messages. So they classify became binary and multi-class sentiment labeling.

Based on the statement above, the study will be conducted on analyzing of the symbols found in the facebook. The reason why the researcher decides to analyze is that symbols are used in writing facebook status update, every facebooker include symbols in the status to express their feeling. They also used the symbols to make the status more interesting to read, because in facebook, there are many variation of picture of emotion that can be used it. The usages make the researcher curious to know what symbols are, and what the meaning of the symbols. This phenomenon brings the researcher to analyze it.


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1.2

Statements of Problem

Based on the background of study above, the researcher formulates the problem as follows:

1. What are the symbols commonly used on the facebook status update by the facebookers?

2. What is the meaning of the symbols used on facebook status update by the facebookers?

1.3

Purpose of the Study

1. To know the symbols commonly used on the facebook status update by the facebookers.

2. To know the meaning of the symbols in facebook status update by the facebookers.

1.4

Scope and Limitation

The scope of this study is symbols such us picture of emotion used by the facebookers in writing facebook status update. It is limited on facebook status update of faceboookers on 13th May up to 9th June 2012.

1.5

Significant of the Study

Hopefully, this study is intended to give scientific information for readers about symbols in facebook. The researcher hopes the result of this study will give


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something meaningful to literary research and it can be used as for reference for students of English Department in University of Muhammadiyah Malang who study semiotic subject and also as an encouragement for those who want to do further research.

1.6

Definition of Key Terms

1. Social networks are places where people with a common interest or concern come together to meet people with similar interests, express themselves and communicate (Weber, 2009)

2. Facebook is social utility that connect people with others who work, study and live around world (www.allfacebook.com).

3. Update status also referred to simply as status which allows users to post message for all their friends to read. In turn friend can respond with their comment (Zuckberg, 2009).

4. A symbol is the use of a concrete object to represent an abstract idea (Louis: 2011:1).