the blog of nellison

NSF funding: Project to explore collaborative processes in SNSs

2009-09-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

I announced this on Twitter and Facebook, but realized I haven't done so here. Cliff Lampe and I recently received NSF funding to study ad-hoc collaborative instances in Facebook and other SNSs. More about the project is available on the NSF website. I'm hopeful that this research will produce theoretical and pragmatic insights into the new ways in which we are seeking advice, information, and support from our strong and weak ties, and am looking forward to working with Cliff and our team of awesome grad students.

Media coverage of new technologies: Some thoughts on the Facebook and jealousy study

2009-08-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Some academic studies get picked up by the popular press, but most do not. Unfortunately – and probably because it makes for more exciting headlines – the ones that are more likely to be covered seem to be those that report negative outcomes associated with our use of technology. For instance, the original research by Kraut et al. was reported widely (“Sad, Lonely World Discovered in Cyberspace”) but follow-up studies that found these negative outcomes dissipated over time received far less attention. More recently, a study that suggested Facebook use was associated with lower academic achievement was widely (and incorrectly) reported in multiple news outlets, prompting a response in the online journal First Monday.

We are seeing a similar process unfold now, in regards to a brief (4-page) write-up of an academic study examining jealously and Facebook use titled, "More Information than You Ever Wanted: Does Facebook Bring Out the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy?" (by Muise, Christofides and Desmarais) which available from the publisher's website. The LA Times, for instance, warns us that “Facebook could be ruining your relationship and driving you toward compulsively jealous behavior” and that “Facebook use may be fueling wild flights of jealous investigation.” I thought it important to say a few things about what the study does and does not do.

First of all, the study is reported as a “rapid communication” and thus does not offer details that may help readers contextualize the findings. The article focuses on a variable called “Facebook jealousy” but doesn’t include all the survey questions that were used to create this variable. Thus it is unclear what it is really measuring. Likewise, a full regression table isn’t included, which makes it difficult to assess the findings. Something can have a “significant” effect on something else, but that doesn’t mean it is meaningful. So this piece should be seen as a preliminary step prompting future research as opposed to providing a definitive, conclusive model for understanding jealousy and SNS information.

The researchers use a regression analysis to examine the effect of variables, such as gender, on their outcome variable, which is Facebook jealousy. Because they used survey data from one point in time, this analysis can’t really say anything about causality – a point that is not clear in the popular press coverage. In a regression, we use the term “predict” when talking about the effect of one variable on another, but this is not equivalent to the common understanding of ‘prediction,’ which implies a statement about something that will happen in the future. In colloquial terms, prediction implies knowledge of a causal relationship, but when describing a regression it just means that one scores on one variable (such as gender) are related to scores on another (such as jealousy).

The study finds that the most important variables for predicting “Facebook jealousy” are gender and trait jealousy; together these two variables accounted for 46% of the variance in the dependent variable (Facebook jealousy). What this means is that the more jealous someone is (overall, meaning in the “real world”), the more likely it is that they will report doing things like monitoring their partner’s behavior on Facebook. This doesn’t seem all that surprising or news-worthy to me, but rather just another example of the way in which our online and offline selves and behaviors are closely intertwined. The researchers also examine the extent to which time spent on Facebook predicts higher Facebook jealousy scores, and found that there was a significant relationship such that 2% of the variance in the dependent variable was associated with time on Facebook. 2% is a pretty small contribution. It makes sense that people who spend more time on the site would be more likely to encounter information that triggers previously existing tendencies toward jealousy and that those who were already motivated to track the activities of their partner might spend more time on the site. What this study cannot claim is that Facebook makes people more jealous. Rather, it seems that Facebook is another outlet for engaging in specific kinds of behavior that are associated with jealousy in other contexts.

The authors point out, and I agree, that more research needs to be done to really understand the ways in which information found in Facebook may contribute to feelings of jealousy. What I do not agree with is the idea that Facebook constitutes a “fundamental shift” in the ways that jealousy functions within a relationship. The authors write: “In the past, flirty gestures of interest or signs of subtle disregard remained entirely within a person’s own control, and partners in close relationships were most often not subjected to the daily scrutiny of their exchanges with members of their social circle.” A substantial body of research suggests that non-verbal communication is not always within our control, and that leakage of information often occurs. This is why we pay more attention to non-verbal information, like eye contact, than to verbal information when forming impressions and assessing statements by others (although non-verbal cues aren’t always accurate, we tend to privilege them). In both online and offline settings, we may try to send one signal but actually communicate another, and those who are looking for evidence of straying interest will find plenty to ruminate over, whether it be a boyfriend’s new Facebook Friend, an offhand comment by a mutual friend, or a seemingly shifty glance or wandering eye. In short, this is another example of the process by which we use new technologies to do things we’ve always done.

It's unlikely to happen, but I would like to see equal media attention for research that explores the positive outcomes of SNS use. For instance, the most recent issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication alone includes several pieces that describe and evidence positive outcomes of SNS use; I’d love to see equal attention paid to research like the following:

Young People, Online Networks, and Social Inclusion by Tanya Notley

Old Communication, New Literacies: Social Network Sites as Social Learning Resources by Christine Greenhow, Beth Robelia

Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participationby Sebastián Valenzuela, Namsu Park, Kerk F. Kee

Growing (up) on Facebook

2009-03-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

In Growing up on Facebook, NYT writer Peggy Orenstein notes the increased use of Facebook by adults, who are posting old photos and connecting with long-lost childhood friends. She wonders about how younger people are using the site and suggests that Facebook's "most profound impact may be to alter, even obliterate, conventional notions of the past, to change the way young people become adults." In general, I think the article is useful in articulating the need for research that explores the impact of these self-presentational opportunities on identity formation, especially among young people who are growing up with, and on, social network sites, although I don't share her concerns.

Orenstein suggests that the connections to one's past resurrected by these sites will hinder, not enhance, identity development. Alternatively, I believe online spaces can be used to forward a vision of self that can serve as a roadmap forward, even with an audience of hundreds. Indeed, this ability to strategically self-present oneself online will be a critical skill (in both professional and personal contexts) for the young people Orenstein writes about. In my work on online self-presentation in online dating profiles, I've written about the ways in which users draw upon their ideal selves when constructing an online representation of self. In one instance, reported in our 2006 JCMC article, a user listed described herself as thinner than she was in "real life" - but then went on to lose weight so as to bring her actual self closer to the self represented in her profile. In these and other examples in the literature, online spaces can serve as a context for experimenting with roles and identities, and thus can enhance the development process. The difference between online dating profiles and Facebook profiles is, of course, the presence of hundreds of "friends" who are presumably acting as a deterrent for blatant mis-representation and, as Orenstein reads it, a tether to one's past life, thus constricting options for growth. I think this concern doesn't acknowledge the ability of younger users to manage their online presence and the extent to which we expect one another to change over time. An alternate perspective could see this expanded social network of people from one's history as a supportive presence that enables individuals to stretch, knowing that they have links to their past should they need them.

A second point: the article focuses on one aspect of these sites, which is to enable self-expression, and only briefly mentions the flip side of the coin: the ability to observe others. It is described in somewhat negative terms (the student who is uncomfortable hearing about the details of a "friend") but as anyone who has spent time with Facebook's series of "Less about this person" options knows, this is an easy problem to solve. The positive side of seeing others is found in the social learning that this enables and the exposure to diverse information and perspectives that it brings. Our JCMC article on Facebook and bridging social capital (which was briefly mentioned in the NYT piece) highlights the potential benefits we receive from being exposed to a larger network of weak ties. For emerging adults, like college students, exposure to different perspectives and new information is likely to be especially beneficial precisely because they are trying on different identities and figuring out whether and how to re-invent themselves. Not all of us have the ability to go away to college, or to move to New York City or San Francisco. For young people without these opportunities, perhaps the exposure to people, ideas, and information that is enabled by these sites can serve an important role in supporting, not hindering, identity development.

Social Network Site vs Social Networking Site

2008-09-15T07:47:00.001-07:00

I read with interest the post and ensuing discussion on TechCrunch regarding Facebook's communication about intended uses of the site. Evidently, the PackRat application encourages rampant Friending, even with strangers, prompting the company to explain in an email that "Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a “social networking site.” I don't know whether Facebook is aware of the academic discussions surrounding the distinction between social "networking" sites and social "network" sites, but danah and I purposely use the term social network sites in our JCMC article, and explain the rationale behind our choice. We write:

While we use the term "social network site" to describe this phenomenon, the term "social networking sites" also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term "networking" for two reasons: emphasis and scope. "Networking" emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC).

This seems to be very consistent with the distinction that Facebook is making when they say the site is a "social utility that connects you with the people around you." The research my colleagues at MSU and I have done addressing Facebook usage suggests that, at least among the population of undergraduates we study, Facebook is most commonly used to either a. articulate existing relationships or b. develop nascent relationships that are built on some shared offline connection. Although it does happen, we find that it is far less common for these users to friend complete strangers. Additionally, as we argue in a new paper, using Facebook to find out information about weak ties may be beneficial to users in ways that connecting with existing close friends or trying to friend total strangers may not be.

(Thanks, Eszter!)

Some updates

2008-06-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

A quick update about some of my recent activities:

Last March I participated in a session on SNS at iConference in Los Angeles with danah, Fred, and Alice Marwick. I presented some of our work on social capital and Facebook.
I spoke at my alma mater, Annenberg (USC) in March as well. As part of the Virtual Communities Speaker Series associated with their APOC program, I spent a day speaking with faculty and students. The Annenberg Program on Virtual Communities is a new Master's Program being offered by the school which is innovative in many ways.
This summer I'll be in Northern California for a few weeks, working and visiting with family here. On Friday I spoke to HP's Social Computing Lab and Tuesday (July 1) I will visit Facebook and present the research I have been doing with Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe. I am also planning to speak at a panel on Web 2.0 technologies at the CRA Conference at Snowbird.

I blame twitter

2008-06-02T07:46:00.000-07:00

I have been abysmal at blogging recently, and I blame twitter. Now that summer is here, I am going to try to be more active. Fred Stutzman has posted some thoughtful insights about twitter, and I'll echo some of his ideas here. I think the two reasons I have been twittering and not blogging boil down to:
1. Knowledge of who my audience is when I blog
2. Limited amount of text on twitter
Not having a sense of who is reading is disconcerting and makes me less likely to try to fit blogging into an already busy day. Which relates of course to point 2 - the time commitment needed to maintain a vibrant blog seems beyond my capacities at the moment. Especially when it would take time away from actually getting research published. 140 characters is just so addictive and so effortless. On the other hand, twitter posts are ephemeral in two ways - they disappear (for the most part) and don't seem to be indexed by google. Thus my decision to try to maintain both modes of broadcasting, plus the occasional facebook status update, and to focus on the blog as a way to update folks about my activities and engage in pre-scholarship that will lead to published, peer-reviewed research. Wish me luck!

Freakonomics on the Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Network Sites

2008-02-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

The Freakonomics blog over at the nyt has posted a set of responses to the question, “Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological or sociological perspective?” My response is there, as are others by danah, Judith Donath, Will Reader, Martin Baily and Steve Chazin.

Overall, I found the range of opinions was surprisingly narrow, with most of us agreeing that the SNSs had both positive and negative potential outcomes depending on how they were used and who was using them. The demonization of SNSs (Myspace abductions and the like) that I expected did not materialize, and many of Chazin’s comments weren’t really SNS-specific, but rather concerns about mediated communication replacing f2f (which have accompanied the introduction of the telephone and every communication technology since).

Two points struck me:

Few would disagree with Will Reader’s claim that “Face-to-face contact is, I believe, very important for the formation of intimate relationships.” I do disagree, however, with his suggestion that college students are using SNSs to manufacture friendship networks before arriving on campus and thus insulating themselves from friends who don’t mirror their beliefs and preferences (similar to the concept of the “Daily Me”). Reader writes, “It might be if, by choosing potential friends via their Facebook profiles, it means that folk cut themselves off from serendipitous encounters with those who are superficially different from them, ethnically, socio-economically, and even in terms of musical taste.” I haven’t seen Reader’s SNS papers as none are publicly available, so this may be true for the population he is studying. But our data suggest that students typically do not use Facebook to meet new people. (This is based on our 2006 survey data as reported in the JCMC article and is reinforced in our 2007 data, which we are currently writing up.) Rather, they use the site to learn more about people with whom they share some kind of an offline connection (e.g., live in their dorm, in the same class). This information-seeking can result in a f2f conversation, a casual friendship, or may go nowhere. Although we haven’t probed the specific case of what students do the summer before they begin college, I think Reader’s concerns about students using Facebook to create social echo chambers before setting foot on campus are unfounded.

Secondly, although I agreed with many of Judith’s points (and love her work on SNSs and other social media), I did wonder about one of her statements: “[SNSs] devalue the meaning of “friend.” Our traditional notion of friendship embraces trust, support, compatible values, etc. On social network sites, a “friend” may simply be someone on whose link you have clicked.”

This echoes a common set of concerns I’ve noticed around SNSs, involving the ease with which SNSs allow individuals to link to others as “friends” and the belief that this will somehow dilute the meaning of this term. As noted by “Stacy” in her comment on the NYT blog, Facebook users we’ve surveyed are very savvy about the wide range of relationships that are described by the term Facebook “Friend.” In fact, we’ve asked users in surveys and interviews about how many Facebook “Friends” they have and how many of these are “actual” friends. Our respondents can articulate how many of their "Facebook Friends" are "actual friends" - about one-third, on average. This suggests to me that

Facebook users are able to distinguish between the term used by Facebook to indicate one’s contacts and “friendship” as traditionally conceived.
Many of these “non-actual” friends are “weak ties” and thus the source of perspectives, information, and opportunities that Judith and I reference.

This is a small point, though, and overall I thought her summary of the benefits of weak ties as enabled by SNSs was excellent, as were danah's examples of SNSs in action. I also enjoyed the comments by readers, although I'll admit I found a few of them rather crytic.

Facebook Friends

2008-01-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

So, word on the street has it that friends lists privacy controls are on the way. I believe allowing Facebook users to specify who has access to which information will allow them to take advantage of the self-presentational opportunities afforded by the site without having to use workarounds, such as a dull, dull profile or rejecting friend requests. Grouping people and then being able to control the kinds of information they have access to makes perfect sense. Unfortunately for me and all the other dozens of FB researchers, all those papers on FB Friending will have to be rewritten, trashed, heavily marked "At the time data were collected...." or otherwise tweaked. If only the academic publishing cycle wasn't so incredibly long! Or the technology didn't change quite so quickly!

Pew Study on Social Media and Teens

2007-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

Amanda et al. at Pew have released a new report, "Teens and Social Media." As I'm in Kauai with a (sick) 5-month old, I haven't had a chance to read the entire report. I did look through the topline findings and had a few initial reactions.

Overall trend appears to be that more teen users are participating in creating digital media, not just consuming it. As I remarked to the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe being able to successfully engage in online self-presentation is a facet of digital literacy and that these media production skills will be increasingly important as these teens become young adults who will use social media in many aspects of their professional and personal lives.

The report finds that girls are more likely to blog than boys; I see this as a positive development in that it reverses trends articulated almost a decade ago in a AAUW report called Tech Savvy which argued that although more girls were on the train but they "weren't the ones driving." That is, more girls were using software (such as productivity tools), but they weren't "technologically literate" (able to or interested in getting under the hood). However, the Pew report did note that boys were more likely than girls to upload videos - a task which requires more technical skills than posting textual blog entries - so let's not break out the champagne quite yet.

I found it interesting that email was less utilized among this group, but not surprising. Our interviews last spring with MSU undergraduates revealed a similar trend. Email for many of those we spoke with was a more formal communication technology reserved for situations in which its affordances were needed (for instance, sending directions) or for certain kinds of communication, such as with instructors or parents.

According to the report, 93% of US teens are online. I believe this finding should make us attend to those who don't have access more closely. As the digital divide closes, those who aren't online will find themselves in a more precarious situation. As more people come online, more processes and tasks will move exclusively online. For instance, currently MSU accepts print applications although they encourage online applications. But eventually, once the penetration rate is high enough, it makes sense that they won't accept print applications because of the added time and expense required to process them. Obviously, this example is geared towards a teen-aged population, but there are many other examples (e.g., job applications, tax forms, telephone directories, etc.). The 7% of US teens without access to the Internet deserve our attention, as every year without access puts them farther behind their online peers.

A tale of two articles

2007-12-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

Last week two mainstream media outlets - the New York Times and the Washington Post - published articles on SNSs. I, like many others, was surprised by the difference in tone and approach. The NYT article,
On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data, was a solid overview of a few slices of Facebook-centric academic research and a discussion of related issues, such as IRB concerns. The Washington Post piece, About Facebook! Forward March!, was, on the other hand, a rather cynical, mocking critique of SNS studies, with special vemon singled out for danah boyd (who I adore professionally and personally). I understand the importance of being able to laugh at oneself, and I enjoyed the clever wordplay of the article, but overall I just couldn't get past the cruel, snide treatment of academe in general and SNS studies in particular.

ECAR: Facebook as a teaching tool?

2007-12-11T12:05:00.001-08:00

Last week the folks at ECAR were kind enough to have me speak at their annual research symposium. I will post a link when the slides are available.
For my presentation, I gave an overview of SNSs (drawing on danah's and my overview article), a review of research on Facebook (such as Eszter's and Scott's work), and then talked a lot about our research on Facebook use and social capital. I did want to tailor it a bit for the audience at hand, so I included some discussion of Facebook as a teaching tool. Although there is no research that I've seen that explicitly discusses pedagogical applications of Facebook, recently I was able to speak with Fred Stutzman and BJ Fogg, both of whom have incorporated Facebook into their classes.
Fred used Facebook as a communication forum for his class, much the way others use ANGEL or BlackBoard. He felt that conversations among students were improved by the addition of the identity information provided by Facebook. Knowing what we know about the impact of anonymity on communication, this makes sense. BJ Fogg recently devoted an entire class at Stanford to the development of Facebook applications. A few of the applications created by students have been wildly successful - in a couple of cases, garnering more than one million downloads and substantial revenues for their creators.
In my talk, I discussed what I saw as some potential benefits and drawbacks to Facebook as a deeply embedded teaching tool. Overall, I conclude that Facebook has real potential to be used in limited contexts but I believe institutions of higher education should exercise caution when it comes to using Facebook for graded assignments and the like.

Some potential benefits of the site in regards to teaching and learning with Facebook:

Facebook is already integrated into students’ daily practices - students don't like having another password to remember or URL to bookmark, and using Facebook as an instructor-to-student communication forum might be appreciated by some students. Sending students reminders about assignments using Facebook might be perceived as a convenience by students - and they might be more likely to see these announcements (versus those sent by email or CMSs)
Higher level of engagement? There's a question mark by this one, but if my findings on blogging in the classroom are any indication, a new context is often more engaging and interesting (at least initially) for students
Potential to make identity information more salient during class discussions
Adds “social” peer-to-peer component
Facebook use has the potential to help students hone their digital literacy skills, an increasingly important skill for students to have in order to be successful digital citizens and professionals once they leave the university

On the other hand, there are reasons to be cautious. They are:

Facebook's (lack of) accountability to the University. Facebook is a private company and essentially can do whatever it likes in regards to changing its Terms Of Service and intellectual property and privacy policies. This puts any instructor or institution that is relying on their environment at a disadvantage. Additionally, relying on a third party to host student material (which will be graded) is awkward, given that it may or not be archived and could disappear at any time
Exposure to advertising messages - Is it ethical to mandate that students engage with a system exposes them to marketing materials
Non-users: what about the 5-21% of students without Facebook accounts?
FERPA considerations: using Facebook as a discussion board might be problematic vis a vis FERPA in that the student class list is publicly available. For an elective course in which Facebook participation is optional, it's probably not a problem.
Reshaping of instructor-student relationship: As a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed pointed out, "friending" between instructors and students is uncharted territory. Some instructors fear it leads to problematic familiarity; some students think it's creepy
Student resistance: Probably the primary reason to tread slowly. Students have a specific vision of the ways in which they enjoy using Facebook. For many, it is a playful environment distinct from their academic pursuits. Reminding them about a final exam via Facebook may be the equivalent of showing up at a frat party on a Saturday night with some calculus problems to solve -- and just as unwelcome.

In short, I think there are reasons to explore the use of Facebook and other SNSs for certain kinds of educational experiences, but only the ones that make sense from a pedagogical and a technical perspective. Some uses that seem particularly effective to me: Alumni outreach, discrete applications (like the one that allows students to search U of M's library holdings from within FB), event publicity, and matching students as mentors or roommates.

Facebooks Beacon

2007-11-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

OK, I take it back. After learning more about how Beacon and Facebook's social advertising scheme actually works, I now think it's creepy. The idea that Facebook is essentially following its users around the web is disturbing, as is the way in which the "opt out" functionality is implemented. While the idea of advertising as social recommendation is obviously appealing to advertisers (and some users), I don't think this particular strategy is the holy grail. Interestingly, when I talked my undergraduate students about it, they did not seem that concerned, although they did remark that if the ads got too overwhelming they'd leave the site. Facebook's reaction -- specifically whether it revisits the design of this feature in response to user protest -- will be interesting to follow.

OpenSocial

2007-11-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

Intriguing. Very, very intriguing.

Facebook and social advertising

2007-11-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a story on Facebook's new social advertising feature, suggesting there might be privacy implications. While I will need to learn more about specifically how the function works (and how easy it is to opt out), at this point it doesn't seem particularly problematic - assuming individuals have the right to control what information is displayed.
What I am concerned about is the user experience. My research and those of others (e.g. danah on Friending) suggests that there is a wide spectrum of relationships that are included in the typical users list of (SNS) Friends. Do users really wish to learn that someone they met once at a party two years ago and never spoke to again bought a copy of the new Harry Potter? Of course, it depends on how intrusive the information is when presented to the user -- it could be seen as a useful service (the way that some users view the News Feed).
But I do think we'll see more episodes of "facebook survivor" once this feature goes live - people cleaning out their Friends lists so as to cut down on the page clutter. There could be a real benefit to being exposed to new ideas or cultural products being consumed by people who are slightly different from oneself. The whole notion of "bridging social capital" is predicated on this. My sense is that there is a sweet spot - people who are not too different from yourself, but just different enough. If the site allows individuals to tweak their preferences so that they can essentially turn ads into useful recommendations, this could be a huge success for Facebook. But I think it's dangerous to assume that any action by a Facebook "friend" is implicitly a recommendation. The process is more complex that that.

JCMC on social network sites - finally live!

2007-11-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

I'm thrilled to announce that the special section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) that danah boyd and I co-edited is finally live! In my opinion there is a nice mix of approaches, sites, and disciplinary frameworks. danah and I wrote an introduction to the section called Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship which we hope will be useful to researchers in this area.

This was definitely a labor of love on our parts and I've jokingly called the issue "my third child." In the year or so it took to put together we went through births, deaths, and everything in between. I loved working with danah and I can honestly say she is the hardest working woman in SNS studies show business.

Enjoy!

Wikipedia vs student papers

2007-10-31T00:30:00.001-07:00

One of my students just sent me a link to this story about a professor who assigned her students to do a wikipedia entry instead of a class paper. Her motivations sound much the same as mine in incorporating blogging into my 375 class (class blog here), but I think blogging might be a better approach. The thought of thousands of college students being forced to edit or create entries is probably filling the hearts of the wikipedians with dread. I think a better approach might be to give students a choice between the two so that they don't feel forced to post to WP if they don't feel like they have something to contribute.
Yes, having them post to the Net (as opposed to handing in a paper to professor) will probably raise the level of engagement overall, but there are always some students who are chronically disengaged, and forcing them to contribute to site built on the backs of volunteer labor sounds very problematic to me.

"Searchles" and Security issues in SNSs

2007-10-31T00:08:00.000-07:00

Newsweek has an article next week called "What You Like" (with a short quote from yours truly) which describes the melding of a search engines with SNS functionality. I think we'll start to see elements of an SNS in all sorts of applications.
In other news, the ENISA position paper on Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Network Sites is now out. This was a large collaboration with all the benefits and problems typical of these ventures. Of course, I have a range of feelings about the recommendations and some I see as less necessary than others. But overall I am hoping this will be useful is helping folks think about the design and use of these sites.

Facebook Parody

2007-10-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about relationship status in facebook lately and came across this parody of an e-harmony ad. Enjoy!

Facebook and Microsoft

2007-10-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

MS and FB today announced a deal wherein MS is going to pay $240 for a 1.6% stake in Facebook. I especially love the last quote in this New York Times story: "Mr. Lorenzen and other Silicon Valley investors are often dismissive of MySpace, Facebook’s larger rival, which has more than 110 million active users and is owned by the News Corporation. “MySpace is not based on authentic identities. Facebook is based on who you really are and who your friends really are. That is who marketers really want to reach, not the fantasy you that lives on MySpace and uses a photo of a model,” he said."

Blogs for Learning is now open

2006-10-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Blogs For Learning is now officially in open beta, meaning the password is gone and we are welcoming folks in to take a look around. Specifically I'm interested in getting high-quality articles in the pipeline, focusing on any aspect of blogging in the classroom: pedagogical, technical, social, legal, etc. The site is available at http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu so please, give the site a spin and let us know what you think. We want this to be a valuable tool for anyone wishing to incorporate blogs into their teaching.

Yes, there really are that many starbucks

2006-10-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

Came accross a cool mashup today - one that charts Starbucks locations using Google Maps API: Find By Click
My worst fear has been realized as I now have proof that there are multiple Starbucks within a few blocks of each other.

facebook interview

2006-09-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

A reporter with the Daily Universe, BYU's paper, interviewed me via email about Facebook, social capital, and the announced rollout of Facebook to non-academic settings. I've copied some of my responses below in case they are of interest to others:

3) After conducting your survey, do think there is any harm as far as privacy issues on the site?
NE: There is the potential for students to disclose personal information without realizing that their true audience is not limited to their on-campus friends.

4) Facebook is planning to open up its eligibility to anyone with an email address- what do you think about this?
NE: I think depending on how it’s implemented, it could mean very little changes for current members, or it could be very disruptive. There is already a movement growing to protest this change; Facebook should tread carefully so as to not alienate its core userbase – college students who value the exclusivity of the system.

5) do you think this will affect social capital?
NE: Theoretically, it could lead to an increase in current members’ bridging social capital. This kind of social capital is based on having lots of “weak ties” – people you don’t know that well but who might provide you with valuable information or resources. Of course, it all depends on how the new system is implemented and how easy it is for people to connect with those outside their network.

6) How do you think this will affect college students willingness to use facebook?
NE: see 4 above – we could see a backlash of students who leave Facebook in protest, or because they think they’ll have encounters with people they don’t want to connect with. Some of the message boards have talked about it becoming non-exclusive like MySpace or full of pedophiles. I think this fear is overblown, but I do think Facebook will have to manage the rollout carefully. I’m surprised they are doing it so soon after the NewsFeeds incident.

7) Do you think usership will increase or decrease?
NE: Overall, it will increase. Among college students, it could decrease, depending on how the system is set up and the reaction among existing members.

8) Is there any other information, you learned while conducting your study, that you think would be valuable for college students to know?
NE: Facebook can be a valuable tool for getting information, staying in touch with people, and finding out more about people you want to get to know. But be aware that it’s not as exclusive as most people think – it’s fairly easy for law enforcement, future employers, marketing companies, and others to get access to it. Give some thought to how you want to present yourself online knowing that you may have multiple audiences for your profile.

The Dark Side

2006-09-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

This morning my daughter, K, and her friend M and I were driving to school, chatting about our three cats. We all decided Mr. Friendly (the one K named, if you couldn't guess) was our favorite. Then I mentioned that Sasha (who K thinks is "evil" because she won't submit to being put in a paper bag and dragged around the house) was Daddy's favorite. K looked at the window and remarked quietly, "Daddy always goes to the Dark Side." How did she know?

Speaking of the dark side, i'm going to be officially a Mac person again in a couple of weeks once my new macbook arrives!

New Facebook Feature

2006-09-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

I spoke with a WSJ reporter yesterday, then sent her to my colleague Cliff Lampe who was quoted in the short story they ran about facebook's new newsfeed feature. My reaction echoes that of Alex and no doubt others as well: this feature isn't doing anything other than make visible in a very transparent way the vast amounts of information that students are placing into Facebook. My sense is that students don't necessarily understand the true audience of their facebook profiles. This feature, which has generated a huge backlash among users, may be the proverbial wake-up call prompting users to either rethink the extent and nature of the information they provide or revisit their privacy settings. Unfortunately there is some evidence that suggests even after being made aware of some of the privacy issues regarding facebook, students didn't change their privacy settings.
I think Cliff's point is a good one- students feel ownership of facebook and want to have more of a voice in the design of the site. It will be interesting to see how the facebook team reacts.

Blogs For Learning in Beta!

2006-08-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that "Blogs for Learning" is now in Beta! BFL is a web-based resource for students and instructors interested in blogging in the classroom. Our primary audience is college instructors but as there seems to be a lot of movement on this front among high school teachers, we are trying to include content for this audience as well. More information soon...

Updates

2006-08-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

I again have been less than diligent in my postings. This has something to do with my lack of clarity regarding the audience for this blog. Another big article last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the perils of blogging for those dreaming of tenure: "The Hazards of Academic Blogging." My solution is to create a second blog which I'll post to anonymously. This blog, then, will be updates about my academic work and commentary about things related to my area of study - new media - with personal tidbits thrown in here and there of course.
Since my last post, I've had two articles appear in print. Both are linked from my homepage. I'm especially proud of the JCMC piece, Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment, a birthing many, many months in the making. Both of these pieces deal with self-presentation in online dating contexts, an area that is particularly fascinating to me.
In other news - we are revising our Facebook paper for publication, I'm working on another piece exploring the use of blogs in the classroom, "Blogs for Learning" is close to being ready for beta-testing, and I just got back from a week in the Bahamas having "encounters" with wild dolphins, sharks (nurse, lemon, and tiger), rays, sea turtles, and more Europeans than you could shake a stick at. I should put in a plug for Jim Abernethy's Scuba Adventures, the diving operation out of Palm Beach that ran the trip. Except for a few small unavoidable logistical problems, everything was top-notch. Now back to reality!

Sporaticity

2006-04-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

My posts have been sporatic at best and I am going to remedy this.

I participated in my first online conference last week - HigherEdBlogCon. I co-authored two presentations - one with Ethan Watrall on an online web resource we are building (with a team of undergrads and support from our college) on blogging in the classroom, which is available here; and a second presentation titled "An empirical test of blogging in the classroom" which is based on the data I collected last Fall. Although I wasn't too keen on the lack of immediate feedback while recording the screencast, the comments have been useful and I am less skeptical than before of the possibilities for these kind of events.

Typewriters

2006-01-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

We're in Northern California for the holidays, and I happened to meet an old college friend of my husband. I noticed a stack of old, manual typewriters in cases along a wall in their apartment and inquired about them. As it turns out, this woman and her husband organize letter-writing campaigns, gathering a group of like-minded ("left wing") folks together to type out letters to politicans. The motive behind this scheme is the oft-touted belief that one visibly hand-written letter is considered a representation of 100 individuals (as opposed to, say, an e-mail petition or even a computer-generated letter). They encourage individuals to mark the letters in some way so that it is clear they are generated by live human beings - putting a coffee ring on one, or perhaps crossing out a few words here or there.
This made me think about some of the findings that have emerged from my interviews with online dating participants. Many of these individuals disucssed the way in which the words in a profile (the content) were not as important clues to identity as were other stylistic aspects of the message, such as the time an email was sent, the extent to which the message included typographic or grammatical errors, the length of a profile description. I'm still thinking about the meaning of this, but I think there's something interesting here about the ways in which technology gives voice to more individuals, but in doing so mutes their individuality. And thus we work harder to insert this information back in (lugging manual typewriters around) and to discern information about others ("What time was this message sent? 1 am? He must be desperate."). Of course, SIP (Social Information Processing) theory does a similar claim, but I think there's more there to uncover -- especially as CMC norms continue to develop.

Blogs on CNN

2005-11-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

As part of my new exercise kick, I was browsing the channels at the gym and caught the end of a CNN segment on blogs. It appeared as though two bloggers (Joi Ito and Rebecca MacKinnon) were being interviewed via webcam in front of a studio audience. Neither said anything terribly new to me, but it was nice to see some of these ideas get more play in such a public forum.
As for the idea of using webcams for broadcast interviews such as this, I think the technology needs to be developed a bit more before widespread adoption. The audio, especially for Ito, was hard to understand, and the visuals were pixelated and clunky.

How to email a professor

2005-11-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

Stumbled across this post today - all about the act of emailing a professor and the norms that should be adhered to. I always get a kick out of my students addressing me as "Ms Nellison." I see this as a cue that's given off -- evidence that they perhaps haven't looked at the syllabus but rather are only responding to emails from me. And signing one's name and class is always welcome - I've received a few emails from such cryptic characters as "hotbuns54."

Bill Gates - in a new light

2005-10-30T13:53:00.000-08:00

The Oct. 24, 2005 New Yorker includes an insightful article, Healing Africa, which made me look at Bill Gates in a new light. He's spent literally millions of dollars trying to fight diseases, such as malaria, which have been essentially eradicated in the developed countries and therefore aren't popular with drug company researchers. But which still kills thousands, mostly children under 5, in African countries. This research seems so much more important than most other things many of us - myself included - are doing.

Travelin'

2005-10-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

Been busy traveling as of late. I was in Chicago for the Association of Internet Researchers conference where I presented some of my research on the effects of publicly writing about one's Ideal Self. We are still crunching the numbers and are collecting additional data to get a true control group. It turns out thinking about the Ideal Self may have effects similar to writing about the Ideal Self.
The following weekend I went to beautiful Ithaca, NY to visit the Communication Department at Cornell and participate in their research speaker series. What a gorgeous place! Some very interesting research being done -- I was especially impressed with the graduate students I met.

Blogging in Academe

2005-10-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Inside Higher Ed recently had an interesting article about academics who blog: Too Much Information. This issue is something that's come up a lot for me, most recently in a grad class i'm teaching. I am curious about the ways in which academics manage the desire to disclose with the need for impression management; the pressures to have an active online presence (especially in media fields) with the penchant for revealing minimal information that could be "used against you." (What! Assistant Professor Jones is blogging about Desperate Housewives again - when does he have time to publish!")

Anonymous blogging is sounding better and better.

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People

2005-09-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this video or heard the song, you should. it's a great example of remixed culture being more than the sum of its parts.

Update (or lack thereof)

2005-08-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

The blog has been quiet lately as we've been away on vacation and now are back but awash in household projects. Namely, a complete kitchen renovation. Well, we kept the walls up, so perhaps it doesn't qualify as complete, but pretty close!
Last week we spent a delightful, relaxing week in west virginia with my friend laura and her family. I can safely report that there is not much happening in WV. Which is a good thing.

More Blog bashing from the NYT

2005-07-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Actually, that's not quite true - but "more discouraging rhetoric" doesn't have quite the same ring. Today the NYT warns would-be bloggers about incorporating work-related content into their blogs. The title of the article, "Write all about it - at your own risk" says it all. Granted, this approach may apply to some kinds of blogs and some kinds of organizations. But what about all the organizations who have incorporated blogging into their PR/knowledge-management/public outreach strategies? Or those who benefit from blogging? How about some of these kinds of stories?

The Littlest UnderWater Hockey Player

2005-07-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Recently my husband participated in the National Underwater Hockey tournement. For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, it is played with snorkeling gear and a weighted puck at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Katerina here is modeling the typical gear, including googles, a stick (for pushing the puck along the bottom of the pool towards the goal), ear protection, and rubber glove (to keep skin on your hand as opposed to on the bottom of the pool).

Hooking Up - Where's the technology?

2005-07-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Although the recent ABC online dating reality show ("Hooking Up") is an addictive guilty pleasure, it has little to do with online dating as I've studied it for the past three years. As pointed out in WiRed (and elsewhere, no doubt), the technology that underpins these encounters is largely absent. A glimpse of an email here, a pixelated photo there, but very little of the CMC leading up to the dates is present. This is a real loss, as without it this show is much like"Blind Date" -- but with a updated hook for 2005. I guess it is the nature of the beast, as watching people type email in their jammies does not make for very exciting television. And watching relationships develop, then deteriorate, from afar satisfies the busybody in all of us.

I would have liked to see a wider range of participants and perhaps a glipse of online dating as it is practiced outside of New York City. However, I am curious to see, in the end, how this show affects the ways in which the average American perceives online dating.

2005-07-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Riled up and inspired by the postings on the recent article in the Chronicle, Bloggers Need Not Apply, I've decided to take the plunge and get serious about keeping a blog. I've had students in multiple courses keep blogs as part of their participation, so it only seems fitting that I as well venture into this territory in a more committed way.
Recent events that have caught my attention include the recent online/offline discussions about blogs and the way they mesh personal and professional lives. I'm thinking specifically of the recent article in the New York Times in which the writer describes her discomfort with her nanny's blogging activity (and the, um, rebuttal here) as well as the recent discussions in the Chronicle. As danah and others have noted, social software tools such as blogs make it easier for us to collapse contexts. Rather than keeping professional activities in one box, and personal aspects in another, everything is available and very, very searchable. When I did my interviews with teleworkers several years ago, I noted that they used ICTs (information and communication technologies) purposely to calibrate the permeability of their home/work boundaries. For instance, they might have a work telephone line and a home line, and adhere to rules about when they answered one or the other.
It seems now with the tools we have today that less calibration and control is possible. If I post something in a newsgroup and ten years later wish I hadn't - too bad. If someone wants to say something unkind about me online, so be it. I suppose there are those who see this transparency as positive, but I'm not completely sold yet.