Definition

Social Network vs. Social Networking

Social Network, as the emphasis is on the ability to articulate and communicate ones social network rather than on the process of initiating relationships (2007) We use the term Social Networking in this study because it was the most commonly term used by our student population

How some researchers define SNS

These three features - profiles, Friends lists, and comments* - comprise the primary structure of all social network sites, although individual sites provide additional features for further engagement. While SNSes allow visitors to wander from Friend to Friend and communicate with anyone who has a visible profile, the primary use pattern is driven by preexisting friend groups. People join the sites with their friends and use the different messaging tools to hang out, share cultural artifacts and ideas, and communicate with one another.

Key properties of SNS

(boyd, in press)

1. Persistence: Unlike the ephemeral quality of speech in unmediated publics, networked communications are recorded for posterity. This enables asynchronous communication but it also extends the period of existence of any speech act. 2. Searchability: Because expressions are recorded and identity is established through text, search and discovery tools help people find like minds. While people cannot currently acquire the geographical coordinates of any person in unmediated spaces, finding ones digital body online is just a matter of keystrokes. 3. Replicability: Hearsay can be deflected as misinterpretation, but networked public expressions can be copied from one place to another verbatim such that there is no way to distinguish the original from the copy. 4. Invisible audiences: While we can visually detect most people who can overhear our speech in unmediated spaces, it is virtually impossible to ascertain all those who might run across our expressions in networked publics. This is further complicated by the other three properties, since our expression may be heard at a different time and place from when and where we originally spoke.

History of Social Networking Sites

1995 = Classmates.com founded 1997 = Six Degrees of Separation founded 2002 = Friendster.com founded (dating playful) 2003 = MySpace.com founded 2004 = Orkut.com founded 2004 = Facebook.com founded

What is a Social Networking Service (SNS)?

Are these SNSs? Blackboard Digg Facebook MySpace Second Life Slashdot Wikipedia World of Warcraft

Social Networking & Education

The Horizon Projects Call for Scholarship identified social networking tools as possible educational tools for building learning communities (October 2007) Other research has focused on student use of social networking applications, and other technology, for social, out-of-school learning

Self-identification in a Virtual world

Communications in a virtual world like Facebook or MySpace is decontextualized. Friendster motivated people to grapple with explicit presentations of self, creatively build playful networks. Users are in a loose mode. Users have no control of multiple disconnected audience.

An example of out of control

A 26-year old teacher in San Francisco created her profile when all of her SNS friends joined the service. After a group of her students joined the service, they questioned her about her drug habits and her friendship with a pedophile. Although her profile had no reference to drugs, many of her friends had both. Furthermore, one of her friends had crafted a profile that contained an image of him in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform with testimonials referencing his love of small girls. While his friends knew this to be a joke, the teachers students did not.
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Example of collegeday mentality

Mr. X is an active Facebook user, beginning in 2005, checking every day, multiple times a day. He primarily uses the site for maintaining friendships with close, but geographically distant, friends. He has over 200 friends on the site, 35 of which are employees he met at new hire events. When he joined the company, he did not change anything about his profile or the pictures of himself. His current profile links to many photos of him drinking alcohol (including directly out of a beer keg) and attending numerous college parties. He feels that Facebook is for fun and relates only to personal life and hopes that if his manager ever did see this page would understand that it has nothing to do with his professional life.
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Example of dress to impressed

Before starting his job, Mr. Y purposefully cleansed all information about himself on the internet: from Facebook, his blog, and his personal website. In particular, he removed all photos of himself involving drinking alcohol.
Actually after things are posted on the Internet, they stay there forever! People have a way to reveal deleted information. Like a political campaign, the candidate checks his/her own past over the Internet to see if any negative things might be used by his/her opponents. But usually it is too late.
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Example of Living in the Business World

Ms. A joined Facebook at the urging of her coworkers. Since joining, she has posted dozens of photos of herself and has received dozens of wall posts from her coworkers. Most of her Facebook friends are coworkers whom she started with at the same time. These are people she goes to lunch with and socializes with after work. She works closely with some, but others could be considered as part of her extended work network.
Conservative strategy: Stay away from strangers and people that you dont know enough. But this type of conservative SNS users are mostly found in the business world. College kids love to reach out to strangers.

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Access to SNS by strangers

Users
Three types of SNS users:
College days Dressed to impress Living in the business world

Staggering Statistics
Levy (2007)

MySpace:
More than 66 million users visit each month 12 percent of all time on Internet spent there

Facebook
23 million users visit each month More than 2 million users joined in April (150,000 a day)

Recent Facebook Changes

February 2006 High school users allowed September 2006 All users allowed May 2007 API expanded/changed
More than 40,000 developers have requested to be part of the project, around 1,500 applications have been produced so far, and some of the most popular went from zero to 850,000 users in three days.

How many students use Facebook?

ECAR (2006): More than 70 percent use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and of those 65.9 percent do so several times a week or more. Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe (2006): 94% of MSU freshmen Stutzman (2006): In week 1, 85% of UNC freshmen; by week 16, 94% Vanden Boogart (2006): 94.4% of participants at 4 different institutions

Frequency of Facebook Daily Use

N 0 - 30 minutes 1539 30 minutes - 1 hour 837 1 hour - 2 hours 362 2 hours - 3 hours 89 more than 3 hours 30 Total 2857 Percent 53.9% 29.3% 12.7% 3.1% 1.1% 100.0%

How many friends do they have?

Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe (2006): Students reportbetween 150 and 200 friends on the system. Vanden Boogart (2006): The average respondent had 145 friends at their institution and 127 friends at other institutions. Golder, Wilkinson, & Huberman (2006): Of the 4.2 million users in our dataset, we found a median of 144 friends and mean of 179.53 friends per user.

What are they doing on Facebook?

Vanden Boogart (2006): The highest area for use on Facebook is staying connected to high school friends. One would expect more people using Facebook to connect to college peers; however a very small percentage (21.1%) are using it for this purpose.

Why do they use Facebook?

1. 2. 3. 4. Gossip Directory Diversion Voyeurism and exhibitionism

Social Networking Site Use

93.2% 88.6%

62.5%

27.0%

4.0% 2.8% Any SNS Active User

3.4%

8.1%

10.5%

Facebook Past User Never Used

MySpace

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Findings
Students are less able to articulate value of Academic SNS use (serious) than of nonAcademic SNS use (for fun). Self-identification/presentation or imaging building is not an expressed concern by students.

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First Used a SNS

Age first used any SNS
32.8% respondents were 14 years or younger 58.8% were 15-17 years 18.4% were 18 or older

Which SNS did you use first?

84.2% MySpace 13.0% Facebook Others < 3%

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Preferred - Why
75.8% Facebook
New friends use Facebook For college students Design: simple, structured
Safer

23.9% MySpace
Old friends use MySpace Most familiar Design: ability to customize/create Fun/music

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Frequency of SNS Login

63.4% 60.9%

30.8% 18.8% 12.3% 5.4% 20.1% 14.2% 4.7%

27.0% 23.7% 18.6%

Any SNS

Facebook

MySpace

Several Times a Day At Least Once a Week

At Least Once a Day Less than Once a Week

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Measuring Social Networking Experiences

# Friends # Hours per Week Spent on SNS

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# Friends on All SNS by Preferred SNS

38.2% 30.8% 24.1% 20.1% 20.2% 17.9% 19.6%

11.6% 6.5%

11.0%

50 or Fewer

51-100

101-200

201-300

301 or More

Pref Facebook

Pref MySpace

2 = 3.702E1; P<.001

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# Friends on Preferred SNS by Preferred SNS

36.7% 29.1% 25.7% 21.9% 18.9% 14.0% 11.9% 14.4% 14.4% 13.0%

50 or Fewer

51-100

101-200

201-300

301 or More

Pref Facebook

Pref MySpace

2 = 2.258E1; P<.001

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# Hrs Per Week on All SNS by Preferred SNS

27.2% 26.8% 24.4% 21.9% 19.6% 17.0% 13.5% 17.0% 17.9% 14.7%

1 hour or less

2-3 hours

4-5 hours

6-10 hours

11 or more hours

Pref Facebook

Pref MySpace

2 = 3.544; n.s.

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Importance Preferred SNS Campus Friends/Contacts

ASU academic advis ors ASU faculty ASU s tudents that I s ee in person My ASU roommate ASU clas smates that I see in person Friends from my res idence hall that I s ee in person Friends from my res idence hall that I have not met in person ASU clas smates that I have not met in person ASU s tudents that I have not met in person 51.3% 48.9% 45.7% 44.4% 44.0% 43.6% 39.0% 37.1% 36.0%

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Does Your Preferred SNS Improve or Enrich Your

Academic life at ASU?
37.4% Facebook Users say Yes 15.3% of MySpace Users say Yes

Non-Academic life at ASU?

70.3% Facebook Users say Yes 44.2% of MySpace Users say Yes

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Privacy expectations & awareness

Acquisti & Gross (2006): Most of privacy concerned undergraduates still join the network Govani & Pashley (2005): Facebook users generally feel comfortable sharing their personal information in a campus environment. [Survey] participants said that they had nothing to hide and they dont really care if other people see their information. Jones & Soltren (2005): Women definitely selfcensor their Facebook data more than men do.

Participatory Divide
Boyd (in press): Those who only access their [MySpace] accounts in schools use it primarily as an asynchronous communication tool, while those with continuous nighttime access at home spend more time surfing the network, modifying their profile, collecting friends, and talking to strangers. When it comes to social network sites, there appears to be a far greater participatory divide than an access divide.

NYU New Student Orientation

Facebook-related exercises during group interviews Statement on Orientation Leader Contract:

I will be conscious of how I represent myself in all forums, including electronic ones, such as Facebook or Myspace [sic].

Implications
Academic use is limited; SNS is still a playful thing. Despite posting personal information on public websites, student responses seem to suggest an illusion of privacy and that SNS are used primarily for communication. Campus SNS program initiatives, whether academic or non-academic, should be mindful of SNS as a presentation or image building tool that may affect their future.

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Our Future Research

This is an initial project - exploratoryand we have more exploring to do Follow-up focus groups could be helpful Would like to examine specific user patterns within identified academic and non-academic campus SNS groups or networked contacts

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