The purpose of this master thesis is to study the methods Danish public libraries make use of when communicating through the social networking site Facebook. This is done by studying the public libraries in Aarhus Municipality as a case study. In Aarhus Municipality there are two public libraries identified; Aarhus Hovedbibliotek and Hasle Bibliotek as well as two public library projects; Gaming – når biblioteket spiller med and Mindspot. They are all represented through Facebook. These four participants form the case which is studied in this thesis.

The study finds that the participants in the case study all make use of Facebook because of the opportunity to actively communicate, to the client base, what the library has to offer. They do this by using both Facebookprofiles and Facebookpages. All of the participants have at some point established a profile on Facebook. Hasle Bibliotek had their profile closed down by Facebook due to the fact that, according to the rules of Facebook, no company or organization may represent themselves by a profile. The library was therefore forced to start over with a Facebookpage. Aarhus Hovedbibliotek was warned by facebook before their profile was shut down. Facebook offered to convert the profile to a page, which the library agreed to. At the present time Mindspot has both a profile and a page but has expressed wishes to close down the profile in the future. The Gaming-project only represents itself through a profile.

The four parts of the case use Facebook in different ways. They all send out various types of information about events and library related topics but only the Gaming-project manages to get frequent feedback on its distributed content from the “friends” of the profile. It is presumed that the informal tone and personal approach with which the content is spread is a factor in this matter. This is mainly explained by the theories of Clara Shih who argues that there are social norms on Facebook which influence how the network receives and respond to the content. This is supported by a theory made by my fellow students and I in a previous study on online social marketing. The theory involves seeing the internet as a virtual world in which there are several cyber dimensions. In each of these dimensions there are different behavioral conventions which determine how one should act.
Only one of the four parts of the case observes these conventions and is thereby rewarded with more feedback and activity than the others.