Avtalsgodkännande på Facebook : En kvalitativ studie kring varför den enskilda individen ignorerar det elektroniska avtalet

Sammanfattning: Around the year 2007, several news segments appeared in the Swedish media with focus on the social website Facebook. At the time, an increasing number of people in Sweden started to join the social platform and accepted the terms of contract to get access of the website, without further consideration of what they were agreeing to. This resulted in some private individuals felt violated when it turned out that major points of the contract entail that user’s private information, photos, videos and other publications that was shared on the website, were considered property of Facebook cooperation. Even though this incident made users more aware of what they should, and should not publish on the website, the episode did not result in users closing there accounts on Facebook. On the contrary, today the social platform has more users opening private accounts then before, and it is even attracting older age groups. It seems as if the general public are aware of the importance of being online and a part of the culture surrounding the Internet. It appears as if most people are ready to accept and sign different electronic contracts without considering the possible consequences that may follow, as long as it means that they can be part of today’s digital and information society. Very few read the contract before signing it, and we want to know why that is. Is it really that simple that the public is being too lazy to read through longer texts? We do not believe it is that straightforward. We therefore wish to find out why people tend to not read the contracts on Facebook, and research if there may be a sociological reason behind it. We would also like to see if there is a difference in how younger and older Facebook-users are handling the contract. To find out the answers to our question formulation we used a qualitative method where we carried out two focus groups and six personal interviews to obtain field data that we later compared with Anthony Gidden’s theories on the modern society. Four thematical questions were the basis of the analysis. The four thematical questions that were used are the following; Habits and behaviour patterns, inclusion and exclusion, the self and trust, and age differences. Our final results showed us that the reason of why people tend to not read the terms of use can be explained through the modern society that has changed the normative global communication, to the extent that the private individual no longer reflexes over the short comings of not reading electronic agreements. In conclusion, our research has shown that the general public does not read the Facebook agreement since they simply do not care about it. The risks of modern society have convinced us that terms of agreements and contracts in general should not be bothered with. The excessive need of swapping and gaining information and belonging to a group is more important than critically handling agreements.