Abstracts accepted!

Ted and I submitted two co-authored abstracts to the upcoming “Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0” conference, and got word that they were both accepted (as reported here, Abstracts accepted! « The ACSIS Blog)

Here is the one that I am first author on

Which Web 2.0? – Why context matters

Web 2.0 has provided the individual with a variety of online community venues to participate in. Critics of Web 2.0, and indeed the broader concept of “virtual community,” argue that involvement in such online contexts can detract from, and erode elements of the self and interpersonal relationships (Kraut et al., 1998; Kroker & Weinstein, 1994; Stoll, 1995). The Internet has been described as a technology which can either fragment the user, causing the individual to dichotomize their identity into “real” and “virtual” (Turkle, 1996), or socially construct the User into a homogenous “amorphous being without gender, form, place, time, knowledge, voice or power” (Rose, 2003:7). This paper argues that neither approach is sufficient to fully understand the effects of online participation to the self and “real” life (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Katz and Rice, 2002).

In approaching the online self as a research subject, it is important not to assume that all social networking sites will have the same effects on identity and interpersonal relationships (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Kennedy, 2006; Robinson, 2007), like all social research, context matters. These contextual differences are demonstrated with comparison of two leading social networking sites online today, Facebook and MySpace. In general, Facebook and MySpace are viewed as interchangeable types of social networking sites, many tend to believe that both sites provide the same services and have the same general purposes for the user. However there are definite contextual differences between the two platforms. For example, Facebook is a closed-system network which encourages online contact between existing friends, and friends of friends. Conversely, MySpace is an open-system, and friend requests from strangers are not uncommon. These differences can lead to different assumptions of user-control of content and privacy, and safety, but also towards the purposes of individual use; where MySpace best serves the user who wants to “pimp1” themselves to a global community, and Facebook best serves the user who wants to “play with” their existing real-world contacts in a virtual environment.

This paper will be a comparison of these two leading social networking sites, in terms of their potential social and personal value to the individual user. Drawing on experience with both sites, observation, and existing research on the topic (Boase and Wellman, 2004; Carroll et. al, 2001), it will be argued that context matters as much online as in the real world, particularly in terms of how and why the user participates in certain online communities.

1 http://www.pimp-my-profile.com/ 

Charlene Croft – Croft is a currently completing her Honour’s degree in Sociology/Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University and is research coordinator for the Atlantic Centre for the Study of the Information Society. Croft regularly gets to put theory to practice by using the participation architecture of the internet, such as Web 2.0, to communicate with our research communities and build critical interest around the centre’s activities and projects.

Ted D. Naylor – Naylor is a manager and researcher with the Atlantic Centre for the Study of the Information Society. Naylor is studying the changing nature of Canadian higher education in a doctoral dissertation at the University of Alberta. In 2004 he received a major doctoral studentship award from the Inter-university Centre for the Study of Work and Globalization (CRIMT), University of Laval.

References

Boase, Jeffrey and Barry Wellman (2004) “Personal relationships: On and off the Internet” (draft)

Carroll, Jeannie, Steve Howard, Frank Vetere, Jane Peck, John Murphy (2001) “Identity, power and fragmentation in cyberspace: Technology appropriation by young people” In Proceedings of Australian Conference on Information Systems, 2001. Coffs Harbour, Australia.

Katz, J. and R.E. Rice (2002) Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, involvement, and interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Kennedy, Helen (2006) “Beyond anonymity, or future directions for internet identity research” New Media and Society, Vol. 8(6): 859-876

Kraut, R., M. Patterson, V. Lundmark, S. Kiesler, T. Mukhopadhyay, & W. Scherlis (1998) “Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?” American Psychologist, 53, 1017-1031

Kroker, A. and M.A. Weinstein (1994) Data Trash: The theory of the virtual class. New York: St. Martin’s Press

Robinson, Laura (2007) “The cyberself: The self-ing project goes online, symbolic interaction in the digital age” New Media and Society Vol9(1): 93-110.

Rose, Ellen (2003) User Error: Resisting computer culture. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Stoll, Clifford (1995) Silicon Snake Oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York: Doubleday.

Turkle, Sherry (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.