The Facebook Project

The State of the Facebook Project

11.29.2009 by Jeff Ginger

I thought it might be time for a sweeping website update. I've changed a bunch of stuff around here, mostly to reflect what all has been afoot. I also fixed the wiki! Sorry about that, it was down for a few weeks. You now need to create an account to contribute, it seems spam got the best of us.

If you're visiting this site for the first time I'd like to welcome you and say that we appreciate your interest. This site was started as a collection of resources between a few researchers interested in Facebook a few years back and remains today, largely inactive, but available for your use.

What you can find here:

• Some papers and publications on Facebook from a few years back, mostly by graduate students
• Some very limited datasets on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student population's use of Facebook
• A lightly developed wiki with a listing of other researchers, an outdated bibliography (early 2008 or so), and the framework for a sort of Facebookapedia
• Some links to guides related to Facebook
• Some ideas for interesting interview & research questions
• A place to get your own work up online, informally published, but placed in a relatively high-profile position
• A partial log of email discussions I've had with people about Facebook research

What you cannot find here:

• An all-encompassing or large-scale dataset on Facebook
• A company, team or community of researchers ready to help you out with your thesis
• Any kind of official or formal affiliation with the Facebook Corporation
• Direct connection to any of the major professors, graduate students or company researchers interested in Facebook
  

So! With that in mind, feel free to explore or ask me any questions you might have. I'm happy to help give feedback on your research questions or interests, I just may not be able to respond quickly.

A Talk on Racism on Facebook

08.11.2009 by Jeff Ginger

I had the honor of giving a talk on my studies related to racism and Facebook to Dene Grigar's students at Washington State University, Vancouver, recently. They belong to the Digital Technology and Culture program, which sounds like the sort of program I would have loved to enroll in as an undergraduate. In my talk I expanded on some of the topics touched on my two papers, The Missing Box and Social Capital and the Chief.

You can download a written version of the talk here.

Summer 2009: Return to Social Media

06.07.2009 by Jeff Ginger

I think it's been just about every week that I've had a young aspiring graduate student contact me asking for advice on how to best go about researching something on Facebook. It's trendy, what can we say. But there's also a lot of opportunity in the folds of this well-worn social network. My greatest suggestion to those seeking guidance is this: get to know your social research methods. No I'm not just talking about how to conduct a good interview or run a statistics test. The makings for good research actually form before all of this. Often it's really easy to rush into a project without really fully thinking about why you wish to study something and what ultimate effects or contributions your research will have. Rarely are graduate students told that they should pick a data-collection method not just on account of its validity or generalizability but also based on how well it fits their personality, resources or available time. Also remember it's okay to mess up. Students are pressured to perform so much in graduate school that they often believe the stakes for admitting a mistake are higher than they might really be. It's better to acknowledge drawbacks and limitations (and learn from them!) than to present faulty research. You might start a project with surveys about behaviors and eventually come to realize you really wanted to capture meanings with interviews - that's okay. You're here to learn. Remember that and be confident.

Okay, enough dispensing wisdom, I'm like what, 25 years old? Figured it was time for a summer update. I get to teach a social media class next year! This means I'll probably start working with this site a bit more, but we'll see. Other than this I only have two major items of note:

I had the privilege of giving a presentation on Facebook and ubiquitous learning at the HASTAC conference at UIUC this past spring. You can see the PowerPoint or better yet read the paper (starts on page 7).

It's summer. It's my last 'break' summer before I hit the remainder of my classes, area exams and the loss of most of my free time. Now's perhaps the best opportunity to talk to me if you have ideas or questions about Facebook!

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