As part of my degree, I have written an academic paper on the social networking site, Facebook. I discuss how boundaries are blurred when it comes to sharing private and public information and how some users treat Facebook like a private diary.
This paper has been uploaded to a website which showcases other papers written by my student peers. Topics covered include social networks, online gaming, communities and identities.
We are holding an online conference where people…yes even you…can go to the conference website and read the papers. You don’t need to read all of them, but if you could read mine at least that would be fantastic. However there are some fabulous and very interesting papers which are worthy of a read too!
To show that you’ve read mine, can you please leave a comment underneath my paper? It will show my lecturers that I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain! lol
My paper can be found here and the link to the conference site is here.
Happy reading…and remember, please leave a comment under my paper…and any other papers which get you thinking!
Stage 2 is about preparing for the 2000-2500 word paper for the Online Conference. There are 4 streams:
Communities and Web 2.0
Social Networks
Identity in Communities and Networks
Communities and Online Gaming
Social Networks
Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship
This paper discusses the history of social networking sites, what attracted users to them, and what made them succeed or fail. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationality based identities. Tools of communication vary among social networking sites, i.e. mobile connectivity, blogging and photo/video sharing.
We define social networking sites as web-based services that allow individuals to:
construct a public or semi public profile within a bounded system
articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection
view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system
Here is a brief history:
1997 - SixDegrees.com was the first recognisable social networking site and failed because it was considered ahead of it's time
AIM and ICQ supported buddy lists
Classmates.com connected school friends
1997 - 2001 - Friends, AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet and MiGente were considered dating sites
1999 - Live Journal and Cyworld
2000 - LunarStorm
2001 - Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn and Friendster. Friendster has been considered one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history. It lost members due to technical problems, server crashes and negative press coverage
2003 - MySpace became very popular because it connected bands with their fans and because they welcomed younger members. They were also the first to introduce html customisation into member profiles. Around this time blogging services with SNS features became popular like Xanga, LiveJournal and Vox
2004 - Facebook began as Harvard only, then all university students and eventually anyone could join
Reference
boyd, d., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1).
Personal Networks and the Personal Communication System
This paper by Jeffrey Boase discusses how social interactions are affected by online communication. Interesting points from this reader:
Although it is true that individuals may sometimes form new social ties through one medium such as the Internet, as these ties become close they are often contacted through other means, either in person or by phone
Social ties have two important dimensions - cognition and behaviour. The cognitive dimension includes the belief that a social tie exists as well as feelings of closeness, memory of past interaction and knowledge about that tie. The behavioural dimension is interaction that typically occurs by way of mediated and unmediated communication.
Web 2.0 Technologies and Community Building Online
This paper by Palloff and Pratt defines Web 2.0 as the second generation of the World Wide Web, offering higher levels of user interaction and collaboration. Much of Web 2.0 emerged from the desire of young people for self-expression through creation of content posted on the Web, easy communication with peers, and ways to stay connected to friends. However many adults are now using Web 2.0 technologies to also stay connected with their networks, as are businesses for marketing purposes.
The more common forms of Web 2.0 technology include, but are not limited to:
There are many pros and cons when using Web 2.0 technology. Some negatives include:
copyright issues (ie Facebook owns whatever you share)
people can wander into suspect areas or sites by accident
archiving and loss of content with uploaded files
social networking sites may blur the lines of formality
References:
Boase, J. (2008). Personal Networks and The Personal Communication System: Using Multiple Media to connect. Information, Communication & Society, 11.4, 490-508
Palloff, R. M. & Pratt, K. (2009). Web 2.0 Technologies and Community Building Online. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning
Net204 is about Internet Communities and Social Networks, particularly looking at virtual communities. We are asked to think about how technology has changed communities.
This week I watched a YouTube video by Michael Wesch, a Professor of anthropology called 'An Anthropological view of YouTube".
Quotes and notes from this video referring to communities:
Over 50% of YouTube videos have an 18-24 year old in them and the same number of 40-55 year olds watch YouTube as do teenagers
When media changed - human relationships changed
Why has community been in decline? Women went to work which meant less time for other activities, shopping moved from the corner store to the huge supermarket. These historical events resulted in "massive communities of suburbia becoming disconnected and connected only by roads and TV's. New forms of networks and communities began emerging"
We are currently in a state of "networked but individualised" and we are becoming increasingly individual but many of us still have this strong value and desire for a community
What makes YouTube so popular?
When recording a video you don't know who is going to be talking back to you, you have an invisible audience, it's asynchronies, you never know when they're going to watch you
Context Collapse = when you talk to someone in real life you talk within a context, whereas when talking to a camera, there is no context. What you are saying or doing can be taken out of context by the viewers, however, and particularly if your video is remixed by another person
There is a lot of reflection on YouTube - many people discuss their inner most thoughts because they are not anxious or shy talking about themselves in the privacy of their own bedroom. Nobody is around them. There are no faces staring back at them, so many people feel very liberated making a video
YouTube offers the possibility of connection without constraint
Over 200,000 videos are uploaded daily
The YouTube Authenticity Crisis
lonelygirl15 first came to international attention as a "real" video blogger who had achieved massive popularity on YouTube. The show was eventually proved as a hoax by suspicious viewers who identified the actress playing Bree as 19-year old American-New Zealand actress Jessica Rose. The three creators of lonelygirl15 were Mesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, California, Miles Beckett, a surgical residency dropout turned filmmaker, and Greg Goodfried, a former attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg.
When lonelygirl15 was ousted the, YouTube community was outraged and pleaded that YouTubers should be real people, that YouTube is a place for people to just be themselves. The creators of lonelygirl15 responded with this:
lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone.
She is no more real or fictitious from the portions of our personalities
that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with people around us.
Did you know:
The thumbnail image which appears next to your uploaded video is taken from the exact centre of the clip? Some YouTubers insert a shocking or sexy image to grab the viewers attention which entices them to click the thumbnail and watch the video. Mmm interesting marketing ploy!
Wikipedia
We were asked to look at this article on Wikipedia about Virtual Communities and comment on the structure of the article and the relevance of information. Here is my response:
The first thing I notice about this Wikipedia article is the structure. At the top of the page you can view the article (as normal), can edit the article if you are a registered Wikipedia user, and view the history of changes which contributors have made. I was curious to see what was edited and by whom so I looked at the 'View History' tab. A list of all changes to the article appears with the name of the contributor who made those edits. There were many changes to the article made a many contributors. I chose a contributor at random and it appeared to be a bot which picks up errors. See attached screenshot.
Another user I chose at random was by the name of Bellagio99. He/She states on their profile page: "Where Google supplies an unorganised list, Wikipedia tries to organise information chaos into comprehensible bytes". I thought that was an interesting statement...considering Google is quite organised in my opinion. His profile can be viewed here.
Once I began reading the article on virtual communities I noticed that under the heading 'Online Chatrooms' the article states: "The original development by CompuServe CB hosted forty channels in which users could talk to one another in real time. The idea of forty different channels led to the idea of chat rooms that were specific to different topics." This made me think about CB radios and the community of CB radio users. I remember using a CB of a relative when I was a kid and I recall hearing very inappropriate conversations.
I wondered if CB radio users were one of the first virtual communities? I did some reading on CB radio use and discovered that during the 1970s CB radio use became so popular that the licencing board couldn't keep up with licence applications so dropped the requirement. This mean anybody could use a CB radio. Because the laws were lax and there were no regulations the CB community became quite vulgar and full of racism and sexual discussions (Tynan, 1978).
Other things I noticed about the article on virtual communities (and Wikipedia in general) is we don't know how accurate the information is that we are reading, often statements are not backed up with evidence, the contributors are not necessarily academics or experts in the topic, articles give a brief overview rather than a thorough understanding. Wikipedia may be perfect for children who want a quick explanation or definition, but it isn't suitable for academic papers.
References
Bellagio99 (n.d.) Profile Page. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bellagio99
Tynan, K (1978). The New Yorker Profiler: Fifteen years of the Salto Mortale Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1978/02/20/1978_02_20_047_TNY_CARDS_000326477?printable=true
Wesch, M. (2008). An Anthropological Guide to YouTube. Retrieved January 2, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU&feature=channel.
