Friends, Friendsters and Top8: Writing community into being on social network sites
"Are you my friend? Yes or no? 'This question, while fundamentally odd, is a key component of social network sites. Participants must select who on the system they deem to be Friends.' Their choice is publicly displayed for all to see and becomes the backbone for networked participation. By examining what different participants groups do on social network sites, this paper investigates what Friendship means and how Friendship affects the culture of the sites. I will argue that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally. In turn, this provides individuals with a contextual frame through which they can properly socialize with other participants. Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve the social tensions that emerged due to technological limitations. At the same time, I will argue that Friending supports pre-existing social norms yet because the architecture of social network sites is fundamentally different than the architecture of unmediated social spaces, these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which we are accustomed. [...]"
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Thanks for the pointer!
Hi Matt,
Thanks for pointing this out!
It seems that the First Monday site is currently down. Until it's back up, you can also download the paper here: www.danah.org/papers/FriendsFriendsterTop8.pdf
Regards,
Edwina
Great paper
Gosh, I had forgotten how stressful it was being a teenager.
Reading all the angst about where people place in the "Top 8 Friends" list reminded me how many of the younger people who are using these systems are vulnerable individuals who are seeking to be "Added" to reinforce their self-esteem. How hard it is for the academics teaching them to avoid getting pulled into their power plays and tiffs. I guess that was the community of kids who were willing to talk to that particular investigator.
Now I just wish that all those nice geeks and senior executives I've got to know through technology networking were willing to be as open. That would make for an great extended Dilbert riff. Tense and nervous, Dilbert "prairie dogs" over the partition before getting back to updating his LinkedIn profile. YES! Uberboss at Corporate Corp has accepted his invitation. Now everyone will know that he is in with the in-crowd. But what is this? He realises that he has fallen behind the pace in how many connections he has added!! He reaches for the rolodex of business cards...
This paper also made me realise why people in Social Media are so unwilling to do the kind of job I do, bridging between corporate and academic worlds to speed Open Innovation. Apparently, we are "whores" because we connect to people who are not close personal friends. This attitude is particularly evident on Facebook, which people seem to be using as an extended family photo album available to their dispersed relatives, so Friends are quite intimate. Whereas on LinkedIn I guess we are all so used to presenting ourselves in a corporate fashion and negotiating value with our Connections that calling someone a "whore" would just cause them to laugh out loud.
from China_tsinghua university
Thanks for your excellent paper.
I am really intersted in Facebook, youtube and twitter. I am a phd candidate from China. It's very exciting to see you have done such fruitful work for us forth coming researchers. Nice to me you.
Hope that if you can contact me at the email: yxpang@126.com so that I can learn more from you.
Merry Christmas