My research so far has yielded some interesting results. I have 38 responses to my survey, and most of them are fairly varied. All of my participants have been over the age of 18, with most of them in the 22-25 year old range (25 of the 28 participants). There were almost double the number of female participants as male, and most of my participants lived in Virginia, but there were responses from several east coast states. All but one of the survey participants stated that they used writing in a social capacity, and most of them indicated that they also used it in a casual work capacity as well. Almost all survey takers indicated that writing was at least somewhat important to them, and fewer but still most of the participants indicated that Facebook was at least somewhat important to them.
There was a huge range in the number of Facebook friends each participant had, with the median falling around 459 friends. The high number was 1800 and the low was 0, so I'm not sure if that 0 person just didn't have a Facebook or had one but had no friends added. Most of the survey participants have had a Facebook account for more than four years, and none of them have had one for less than one year. One of the questions with the most even distribution of answers was Question 9, which asked how much time each participant spent on Facebook per day. Most people answered that they spent more than 20 minutes per day on Facebook, with the most falling between 20-50 minutes per day.
After the general demographic and usage statistic questions, I posed questions asking about how Facebook affected daily life for participants. The first asked about the effect of Facebook on work habits, and most people answered that it hadn't positively or negatively affected them. A few of the responses indicated that Facebook was indeed distracting, but if they didn't have it, they would have just found other distractions. Some answered that Facebook was blocked on their work computers, and some indicated that they just checked it on breaks and that it wasn't detrimental to their ability to concentrate. Of course, some also indicated that it was distracting and that they got less work done.
A much larger group of people indicated that Facebook was a big distraction from schoolwork, but this question also didn't apply to some of the survey takers who weren't in school, so there was a smaller audience. As far as Facebook's effect on social life, most people (25 survey takers) agreed that it had a positive one. Several people indicated that it was useful for keeping in touch with people you probably wouldn't see often otherwise, especially in the case of military relocations. 6 people indicated that it had negatively affected their social lives, mostly because they made less of an effort to see people offline. One of the more interesting sets of answers came from the question about how Facebook affected writing ability. Most people indicated that either it didn't affect their writing ability at all, or that it positively affected them because it's a public forum and they didn't want to be judged for poor grammar and spelling in front of all their friends.
One question asked whether or not people considered Facebook interactions to be writing. This set of answers turned out fairly close, with 55% of people voting yes and 45% voting no. Some people responded that it was a form of communication, but that they didn't consider it writing except in the cases of people who posted poetry and other forms of creative writing. The last question asked how the participant feels about Facebook, and by far the most popular answer was "I like it but I don't need it."
Based on my research so far, I've learned that much of the hype about Facebook negatively affecting writing ability has been disproved, if the opinions of the subjects are to be believed. Most people who have taken my survey believe that Facebook has made them better writers because they don't want to look stupid in front of their friends, which is something I haven't seen in any journal article yet. I'm going to attempt to gain a wider audience of survey takers in the next few weeks to give me a better research sample, and I think I'm aiming for 50 participants at this point.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Research Blog 5: The Faces of Facebookers
Zywica, Jolene, and James Danowski. "The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating Social Enhancement and
Social Compensation Hypotheses; Predicting Facebook™ and Offline Popularity from Sociability and
Self-Esteem, and Mapping the Meanings of Popularity with Semantic Networks." Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication 14.1 (2008): 1-34.EBSCOhost. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=120&sid=aeb748bf-48d8-44d9-9284-d18b92f4cbee%40sessionmgr115&vid=3>
Jolene Zywica and James Danowski’s article addressing the popularity of Facebook users online and offline started out with two hypotheses from previous studies as to the relationship between offline and online popularity. The Social Enhancement hypothesis, “Rich get Richer,” stated that the people who were considered popular offline would become more popular through Facebook usage. The Social Compensation hypothesis, “Poor get Richer,” would mean that people who were unpopular offline would become more popular via Facebook and have many more virtual friends than they do real life friends.
The research builds from these two theories, eventually concluding that in the case of Facebook, neither is necessarily true because online popularity reflects offline popularity. Unlike many other SNSs, people on Facebook are more likely to add friends that they’ve already met in real life, which was assumed to mean that the number of Facebook friends a person has is similar to the number of friends they have offline. There was quite a bit of variance on that matter, however, because the research found that younger people tend to exaggerate their self images online and added lots of people without any particular care for how well (if at all) they know the person. The research examines what it really means to be popular online versus offline, and finds that offline and online popularity are entirely different.
I would recommend this article to other social media scholars, especially ones focusing on the same field that I’ve chosen, which pertains to relating social media personas to the offline counterparts. The research was conducted via a long survey which was presumably distributed to people across many age groups because of the wide age range the results cover, which is similar to the research I’m doing for this class. I feel that a survey with the option for comments allows research participants to quickly and effectively articulate their feelings on the subject without feeling overwhelmed or like they’re giving up a huge amount of time to participate.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Research Blog 4 - Tomorrow Will Not Be Like Today
Williams, Bronwyn T. "" Tomorrow Will Not Be Like Today": Literacy and Identity in a World of Multiliteracies." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 51.8 (2008): 682-86. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. .
“‘Tomorrow will not be like today’: Literacy and identity in a world of multiliteracies” by Bronwyn T.Williams addresses the way young people interact socially online and offline in the age of social media. The article opens with a description of an adolescent girl and her day after she gets home from school. She and a friend call each other on the phone and multitask with ICQ, a MOO, homework, private chats, and the phone conversation. The girl’s activities aren’t unique to her, however, because Williams interviews other students with very similar habits. The generation currently in its teens is known for doing a thousand things at once, and this article provides an example in the form of a direct quote from that particular teen.
Similarly to a few of our readings so far, Williams points out that identities online are much different from identities offline, even referencing the 90’s comic caption, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” that we discussed in class. People can form their online selves in a way that would be more difficult offline, in a way that we can more easily hide physical and cultural characteristics.
Williams suggests that our online involvement with pop culture has influenced our ways of creating online identities, because of the way it shapes our social interactions through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. “Students I have talked with tell me that the song a person has playing on a MySpace page, or the list of that person’s favorite movies, may be a decisive factor in determining whether to interact with the person online. In fact, some scholars (Jenkins, 2006; Livingstone, 2002) have pointed out that
Williams suggests that our online involvement with pop culture has influenced our ways of creating online identities, because of the way it shapes our social interactions through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. “Students I have talked with tell me that the song a person has playing on a MySpace page, or the list of that person’s favorite movies, may be a decisive factor in determining whether to interact with the person online. In fact, some scholars (Jenkins, 2006; Livingstone, 2002) have pointed out that
popular culture is one of the most powerful organizing forces in determining where young people go online and with whom they interact.” (684) The end of the article points out that Facebook and other social networking tools could be good learning tools as well, and could be used to bring classrooms closer together.
I would definitely recommend this article. It was well written and insightful on the topic of the younger generation’s use of social media and its potential uses within the classroom. Harnessing the community aspect of social networking for the good of the class seems like the logical next step, since its rise in popularity.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Research Blog 3 - Determinant Factors of Time Spent on Facebook
Ulusu, Yeşim. "Determinant Factors of Time Spent on Facebook: Brand Community Engagement and Usage Types." Journal of Yasar University 5.18 (2010): 2949-957. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Oct. 2010. <http://joy.yasar.edu.tr/makale/no18_vol5/02_yesim_ulusu.pdf
Yeşim Ulusu's research on how Turkish people spend time on Facebook provides background on Facebook and other social networking sites, including its creation, initial audience, expanded audience, and original uses. The study was performed to determine the real reasons people use Facebook and the effects online marketing may have on those people, making it interesting and relevant to me as a professional social networker.
Yeşim Ulusu's research on how Turkish people spend time on Facebook provides background on Facebook and other social networking sites, including its creation, initial audience, expanded audience, and original uses. The study was performed to determine the real reasons people use Facebook and the effects online marketing may have on those people, making it interesting and relevant to me as a professional social networker.
The article addresses the marketing possibilities Facebook provides, but is unique in that it also provides information on the user's perspective and attitude toward Facebook ads as well. The study results state the obvious, to any current Facebook user: "As it is supported by the literature, our research also revealed that users generally ignore the advertisements on their profile page and moreover they don’t want to be [fan]/friend of any brand community if they continuously receive notifications from the community," (8) though it also acknowledges that Turkey is relatively new to the world of marketing via social networking sites, implying that the results may change in the future once they’re better established in the game.
On the topic of writing, the article could have been improved if it had been passed through another editor with better English and proofreading skills, as there were several spelling and grammatical errors throughout the article that seemed to be due to a translation issue from the researcher’s main language, Turkish. Poor proofreading and translating in a published article don’t speak well to the validity of the journal.
Aside from the translation, the researcher’s conclusion seemed to be valid from my experience. The author concluded that “the main Facebook usage factors were ‘Social networking,’ ‘Writing on wall,’ ‘Entertainment,’ ’Searching for friends,’ and ‘Free time.’” (7) Those seem to be common reasons for people to use Facebook in Turkey and the US, but they are also fairly vague and general, and they encompass most of the features Facebook has available. This almost makes it seem as though the research hasn’t established anything worth a whole study.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Research Blog 2 - Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites
Roblyer, M.D., Michelle McDaniel, Marsena Webb, James Herman, and James Vince Whitty. "Findings on Facebook in Higher Education: A Comparison of College Faculty and Student Uses and Perceptions of Social Networking Sites." The Internet and Higher Education 13.3 (2010): 134-40. SciVerse. Web. 3 Oct. 2010. .
Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, and Whitty’s study on Facebook usage as an educational tool determined that students are much more likely to view Facebook as a potential learning tool than educators, but the researchers suspect that this is just a “snapshot” of popular conceptions and that more educators and students alike will be more likely to view Facebook as an effective learning tool in the future. While the survey which provided the data for this study was taken at a “mid-sized southern university,” it is used to represent the relationships educators and students share with technology on a much larger scale.
The study concluded several things, among them the finding that more students were likely to have Facebook accounts than professors. 95% of students and 73% of faculty had accounts, which demonstrated the overwhelming popularity of Facebook among both college-aged people and older, though the students were still more likely to engage in online social networking. The study also concluded that students were more likely to check both email and Facebook with equal frequency, while professors checked email much more often than they checked their Facebook accounts, which the researchers interpret to mean that students value email and Facebook equally as forms of communication. Social uses of Facebook were reported to be much more common than educational uses among both groups, with “instructional purposes” coming in as the least common use of Facebook in their survey. The researchers propose that Facebook can be used as an educational tool by encouraging communication between teachers and students through a “mentor” model, as well as among students to promote camaraderie and “potential to take action.”
While I would recommend this article to others interested in Facebook’s usage in an educational setting, I would also encourage the researchers to familiarize themselves with the Facebook platform and the online habits of their target groups a little more. The article includes a study done in 2001 detailing the importance of instant messaging in the lives of teens between the ages of 12 and 17, which was certainly relevant ten years ago, but says very little about the current IM usage among teens because of the fad-like nature of IM programs, which aren’t as popular now that social networking sites have gained control of the internet. The article also says “Facebook seems to have changed this rule since that time,” in reference to entities and groups being allowed to have Facebook profiles, which isn’t true and could have been fact-checked prior to publication. Facebook’s rules have changed to allow for “pages” and “groups,” but “profile” pages are still (and probably will remain) for individual users.
Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, and Whitty’s study on Facebook usage as an educational tool determined that students are much more likely to view Facebook as a potential learning tool than educators, but the researchers suspect that this is just a “snapshot” of popular conceptions and that more educators and students alike will be more likely to view Facebook as an effective learning tool in the future. While the survey which provided the data for this study was taken at a “mid-sized southern university,” it is used to represent the relationships educators and students share with technology on a much larger scale.
While I would recommend this article to others interested in Facebook’s usage in an educational setting, I would also encourage the researchers to familiarize themselves with the Facebook platform and the online habits of their target groups a little more. The article includes a study done in 2001 detailing the importance of instant messaging in the lives of teens between the ages of 12 and 17, which was certainly relevant ten years ago, but says very little about the current IM usage among teens because of the fad-like nature of IM programs, which aren’t as popular now that social networking sites have gained control of the internet. The article also says “Facebook seems to have changed this rule since that time,” in reference to entities and groups being allowed to have Facebook profiles, which isn’t true and could have been fact-checked prior to publication. Facebook’s rules have changed to allow for “pages” and “groups,” but “profile” pages are still (and probably will remain) for individual users.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Metaphor Blog #1 - Flight of the Conchords "The Humans Are Dead"
The Humans Are Dead - Flight of the Conchords
Flight of the Conchords are a comedic folk musical duo from New Zealand who have released several albums and had a popular HBO show. Their song "The Humans Are Dead" depicts two robots singing about how they killed all humans so that they could rule the world. While the song is obviously written to be comedic, it utilizes some common literary and film themes of technology versus humans, also seen in such works as The Matrix, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I Robot. The struggle between technology and its creators has been a popular theme for years, but only with the most recent advancements in robotics technology has it become a realistic concern.
In the video above, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are dressed as robots that sing and dance now that the humans are all dead in the distant year 2000. They express no emotion during this song, which is a characteristic often depicted of robots, particularly in Ridley Scott's film Bladerunner, loosely based on Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Toward the end of the video, they sing "Once again, without emotion. The humans are dead." to enforce their lack of human emotional qualities. Interestingly, though, we usually assume that singing and dancing are activities that would be done for fun, implying that the robots are incapable of emotion but are still capable of enjoying themselves and having a good time. They sing, "We used poisonous gases and we poisoned their asses...It had to be done/(The humans are dead)/so that we could have fun," and follow that with a "binary solo" composed of zeros and ones and the phrase "Come on, sucker, lick my battery," implying that these robots engage in recreation of the non-musical variety as well. The song ends with, "Once again, without emotion. The humans are dead..." before the robots power down.
The robots' relationship to humans is obviously not good, as the only human depicted in the video is lying dead in the street, and their only interaction is when the Jemaine robot kicks him in the toe to confirm that he's dead. The robots are celebrating now that the humans are gone and state that "the world is very different...there is no more unhappiness" since their uprising, implying that the humans were oppressive before the robots "poisoned their asses" so that they could dance the robot and the robo-boogie. In the second part of the song, which ran during the credits of HBO's Flight of the Conchords pilot, the Jemaine robot asks if they can talk to the humans to make things better, but the Bret robot responds "No, because they are dead," before they both launch into a "binary solo" and "robo-boogie" session.
A few differences between Bret and Jemaine's robots and traditional robots appear in the song. For instance, the Jemaine robot errs in stating that, "There is only one kind of dance: the robot," which we see when Bret corrects him to include the robo-boogie as well. The commonly held perception of robots is that they don't make mistakes when it comes to memory, but these robots contradict themselves and each other. Also, many traditional robots don't interact socially or have levels of formality that vary depending on who they're addressing, but these robots assert that they use the word "affirmative" instead of "yes," "unless it's a more colloquial situation with a few robofriends." While these robot contradictions were obviously placed to add to the comedic effect of the video, they also set the Bret and Jemaine robots apart from classic robot standards.
Flight of the Conchords are a comedic folk musical duo from New Zealand who have released several albums and had a popular HBO show. Their song "The Humans Are Dead" depicts two robots singing about how they killed all humans so that they could rule the world. While the song is obviously written to be comedic, it utilizes some common literary and film themes of technology versus humans, also seen in such works as The Matrix, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I Robot. The struggle between technology and its creators has been a popular theme for years, but only with the most recent advancements in robotics technology has it become a realistic concern.
In the video above, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are dressed as robots that sing and dance now that the humans are all dead in the distant year 2000. They express no emotion during this song, which is a characteristic often depicted of robots, particularly in Ridley Scott's film Bladerunner, loosely based on Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Toward the end of the video, they sing "Once again, without emotion. The humans are dead." to enforce their lack of human emotional qualities. Interestingly, though, we usually assume that singing and dancing are activities that would be done for fun, implying that the robots are incapable of emotion but are still capable of enjoying themselves and having a good time. They sing, "We used poisonous gases and we poisoned their asses...It had to be done/(The humans are dead)/so that we could have fun," and follow that with a "binary solo" composed of zeros and ones and the phrase "Come on, sucker, lick my battery," implying that these robots engage in recreation of the non-musical variety as well. The song ends with, "Once again, without emotion. The humans are dead..." before the robots power down.
The robots' relationship to humans is obviously not good, as the only human depicted in the video is lying dead in the street, and their only interaction is when the Jemaine robot kicks him in the toe to confirm that he's dead. The robots are celebrating now that the humans are gone and state that "the world is very different...there is no more unhappiness" since their uprising, implying that the humans were oppressive before the robots "poisoned their asses" so that they could dance the robot and the robo-boogie. In the second part of the song, which ran during the credits of HBO's Flight of the Conchords pilot, the Jemaine robot asks if they can talk to the humans to make things better, but the Bret robot responds "No, because they are dead," before they both launch into a "binary solo" and "robo-boogie" session.
A few differences between Bret and Jemaine's robots and traditional robots appear in the song. For instance, the Jemaine robot errs in stating that, "There is only one kind of dance: the robot," which we see when Bret corrects him to include the robo-boogie as well. The commonly held perception of robots is that they don't make mistakes when it comes to memory, but these robots contradict themselves and each other. Also, many traditional robots don't interact socially or have levels of formality that vary depending on who they're addressing, but these robots assert that they use the word "affirmative" instead of "yes," "unless it's a more colloquial situation with a few robofriends." While these robot contradictions were obviously placed to add to the comedic effect of the video, they also set the Bret and Jemaine robots apart from classic robot standards.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Research Blog 1 - "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?"
Muise, Amy. "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?" CyberPsychology and Behavior 12.4 (2009): 441-44. EBSCOhost. Mary Ann Leibert, Inc. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. <http://web.ebscohost.com....>.
Response to: "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?"
The article addresses the issue of jealousy in romantic relationships and how it is encouraged by Facebook use. Muise argues that Facebook provides a visual of our partners' interactions with their social groups, which wouldn't otherwise have been available to us. Stemming from this increased visibility, people in young relationships may find cause for concern with their partner's social activity, such as poking, wall posts, and adding friends. The research finds that people who were the jealous type before Facebook also tended to be more jealous on Facebook (obviously), but also said that people who spent more time on Facebook were significantly more likely to be jealous of their partners' interactions as well.
The reasons suggested to be behind this trend were 1) "accessibility of information," 2) "relationship jealousy," 3) "Facebook as an addiction," and 4) "lack of context." (p. 443) All of these factors together contributed to the highest rates of Facebook-inspired jealousy within a relationship, but it wasn't able to be determined whether more time spent on Facebook was causing the jealousy or if jealousy was encouraging more time spent on Facebook. Muise suspects that the two are so intertwined that they feed into each other and create a loop of jealous Facebooking activity. A large factor in Facebook jealousy may be the information found about partners' friends: "78.9% reported that their partner has added previous romantic or sexual partners as friends. Almost all of the participants in the current sample (92.1%) reported that their partner was at least somewhat likely to have Facebook friends who they do not know. (p 442)"
I would certainly recommend this article to my peers who are experiencing Facebook jealousy, because my friends and I are the generation this article was investigating. It's a problem I have experienced firsthand and know to be an issue in several of my friends' relationships, and wasn't a problem before Facebook became such a large part of our lives. The article's suggestion that time spent on Facebook correlates to the levels of Facebook jealousy could serve as a solution to the problem as well, assuming that the users are capable of limiting their time on Facebook despite the addiction. Breaking down the possible reasons that Facebook causes jealousy may allow future participants in young relationships to realize the destructive power Facebook has.
While I do agree with the article's point that Facebook is responsible for much jealousy in young relationships, I also believe that it's a valuable tool, and one that our generation won't soon give up. It has been argued that Facebook is devaluing real life (offline) social networking because we don't have to go through the traditional process of meeting and talking to someone to find out personal details, but I argue that Facebook is immensely useful for making relationships deeper because it provides information we may not have discovered about that acquaintance, expanding my social web. Would I have known my new friend's birthday if I hadn't Facebook friended her?
Response to: "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?"
The article addresses the issue of jealousy in romantic relationships and how it is encouraged by Facebook use. Muise argues that Facebook provides a visual of our partners' interactions with their social groups, which wouldn't otherwise have been available to us. Stemming from this increased visibility, people in young relationships may find cause for concern with their partner's social activity, such as poking, wall posts, and adding friends. The research finds that people who were the jealous type before Facebook also tended to be more jealous on Facebook (obviously), but also said that people who spent more time on Facebook were significantly more likely to be jealous of their partners' interactions as well.
The reasons suggested to be behind this trend were 1) "accessibility of information," 2) "relationship jealousy," 3) "Facebook as an addiction," and 4) "lack of context." (p. 443) All of these factors together contributed to the highest rates of Facebook-inspired jealousy within a relationship, but it wasn't able to be determined whether more time spent on Facebook was causing the jealousy or if jealousy was encouraging more time spent on Facebook. Muise suspects that the two are so intertwined that they feed into each other and create a loop of jealous Facebooking activity. A large factor in Facebook jealousy may be the information found about partners' friends: "78.9% reported that their partner has added previous romantic or sexual partners as friends. Almost all of the participants in the current sample (92.1%) reported that their partner was at least somewhat likely to have Facebook friends who they do not know. (p 442)"
I would certainly recommend this article to my peers who are experiencing Facebook jealousy, because my friends and I are the generation this article was investigating. It's a problem I have experienced firsthand and know to be an issue in several of my friends' relationships, and wasn't a problem before Facebook became such a large part of our lives. The article's suggestion that time spent on Facebook correlates to the levels of Facebook jealousy could serve as a solution to the problem as well, assuming that the users are capable of limiting their time on Facebook despite the addiction. Breaking down the possible reasons that Facebook causes jealousy may allow future participants in young relationships to realize the destructive power Facebook has.
While I do agree with the article's point that Facebook is responsible for much jealousy in young relationships, I also believe that it's a valuable tool, and one that our generation won't soon give up. It has been argued that Facebook is devaluing real life (offline) social networking because we don't have to go through the traditional process of meeting and talking to someone to find out personal details, but I argue that Facebook is immensely useful for making relationships deeper because it provides information we may not have discovered about that acquaintance, expanding my social web. Would I have known my new friend's birthday if I hadn't Facebook friended her?
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