My PhD Blog

This weekend the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende published an article about children and young people’s use of social network sites and how much knowledge parents have about their children’s online activities. The article is based on the survey I have conducted together with with The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People. It uses some empirical examples from our study and the overall message is that parents should go online with their kids.

You can read the article here (unfortunately only in Danish). I like the cartoon that goes along with the article

I am in Greece at the moment. At a beautiful summer resort in the breathtaking Halkidiki, which is located in the south eastern part of Central Macedonia. I am here on a working holiday - not attending the Networked Learning Conference, which will take place here the next couple of days, but Thomas, my boyfriend, is attending, so I thought it would be a nice idea to come with him and get a bit of reading done.

So far, it has been really nice. The weather is great and I have been sitting by the pool reading. One of the books I am reading is “Connecting – How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age” by Mary Chayko. It is rapidly becoming one of my favourite books. It deals with how people form different sociomental bonds with others with whom they seldom communicate face to face, who they don’t even know or have never met IRL.

The book was published in 2002 – before online social networking was really an issue, and nowhere in the book the them ‘social network site’ is mentioned, but I feel like I am reading about online social networking and how people form and maintain online connections on e.g. Facebook – and why it is important to have  connections to both particular and typified others (e.g. a chat friend, a faraway relative, a deceased family member, a celebrity or even a fictional character) and why these connections are just as important to us as our daily face to face interactions.

I think that I will use the book and some of its concepts in my dissertation when explaining and defining online social networking. Even though it doesn’t deal with social network sites, Chayko acknowledges the fact that she could be writing about upcoming technologies that might change how we connect and form social bonds in the age of the Internet: “It is a safe bet that technologies that are being developed, refined, and disseminated as this is written will lead to currently unimaginable changes in our society, in the nature of connectedness and in thinking itself” (p. 15). Did someone mention Facebook, Bebo, Orkut…?

Tomorrow morning at 7.15 I will be in “Go’ morgen Danmark” on TV2 (Danish television). I will be talking about the new survey I did with the Danish Media Council for Children and Young People. See more about the show here.

Today I have an article out on the Danish internet portal Kommunikationsforum. The article is called “Hvorfor fænger Facebook?” (Why is Facebook fascinating?) In the article I describe 10 fascinating phenomenons about Facebook. I do so by drawing some parallels between Danish youngsters’ use of social network sites and how grown-ups in Denmark are using Facebook at the moment.

The article is only in Danish, but can be read here.

As my first blog post in 2008 I hereby invite all the readers of “My PhD Blog” to participate in a little post-holiday exercise :-D.

It is a brainstorm on all the different categories of social network sites that exist at the moment. I will start by listing the categories I can think of - with exemplary sites. Please feel free to add more. And feel free to correct me if you think that some of my categories, or examples used, are off.

I am aware that some of the sites I mention will fall into more than one category. Many of the sites are - because of my research interests - Danish, but I would like to know about international examples as well.

Social network site categories

1. Youth - e.g. Arto, NationX, SKUM, LunarStorm, Bebo
2. Friendship - e.g. Facebook, Friendster
3. Games/fun - e.g. Habbo Hotel, Netstationen
4. Business/CV - e.g. LinkedIn
5. Music - e.g. LastFM, MySpace, myvoice
6. Video/entertainment - e.g. YouTube, Vix.dk
7. Photos - e.g. Flickr
8. Pets - e.g. Catster, Dogster
9. Religion - e.g. MyChurch, GodTube
10. Academic/professional - e.g. KForum
11. Political - e.g. Radikale.net
12. Libraries - e.g. Vores Bibliotek
13. Discussion - e.g. Mingler
14. Death - e.g. Mindet.dk
15. Enemies/hate - e.g. Enemybook, Hatebook, IFHY (I Fucking Hate You)
16. Anti-social - e.g. isolatr, NoSo, Snubster
17. School - e.g. HG Space, Ekademia
18. Design - e.g. Threadless, NotABrand
19. Children - e.g. GoSupermodel
20. Blogging - e.g. Blog.dk
21. Sleep and wake up - e.g. Sleep.Fm

Those were the different categories I could think of. There must be several others

(I know that some of the sites I used as examples would perhaps not fall under the definition of a social network site - that depends on the definition…)

I have a new, small article out in the December newsletter from Insafe on social networking. The article is in English (for once) and is called “It’s all about real life: On youth and online social networking”. Here I present some of the results from the survey I have been doing in collaboration with The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People.

Read the article here.

Arto recently launched “Arto Idol” as part of their social network site. Here the users can participate in an online talent show (similar to “Scenen er din”, “American Idol” or “Britain’s Got Talent”) within six categories. Each month the site will elect the 10 best participants in the competition.

It is possible for the users to comment on each other’s videos - very much similar to YouTube. What strikes me so far is that the users comment really positively on each other’s videos. This is similar to the positive and loving atmosphere that can be found in their use of the picture galleries or in their profile texts (as I have written about in this article). I will definitely keep an eye on this new initiative. Does anyone know of something similar in other countries?

Check out Arto Idol here.

Last week I attended a seminar in e-Learning Lab within the Network on ICT and Learning. The topic of the seminar was “Communities of Learning” and international guest Caroline Haythornthwaite presented her interesting thoughts on how to develop and maintain online learning communities. After that some of the members of the network presented their experiences with creating online (e-learning) communities.

One of the practians presenting a case was Tommy Møllegaard Siim from EUC Nordvest (a Danish vocational education centre) who had been engaged in creating a community (or, as I would call it, a social networking site) for the HG students called HG Space. Here, the students can create profiles, chat, blog and upload videos - and the school can post information about school activities, changes in timetables and so on. Also, there is a “wall” displaying cool profiles - very similar to other popular social networking sites.

It is really interesting to see how this school has embraced the concept of social networking - an idea I have been urging many schools to take up during my lectures the last couple of years. And so far, it seems that it has been a real success for ECU Nordvest - at least according to Tommy Møllegaaard Siim and the activity on the site.

Instead of being afraid of online social networking I think that schools should do something similar to this - and turn social networking into something positive which is connected to the school and school activities.

At the moment there is a debate going on in Denmark about the fact that Arto has created a domain called ingencensur.dk which allows students to access Arto even though the site is blocked at their school. This has caused many schools to criticise and rage against Arto.

However, in stead of worrying about their students using social networking sites I think that the schools should embrace social networking or even create their own site, like EUC Nordvest has done. Young people (and the rest of us, hence the popularity of Facebook) have an urge to connect with one another online - so why not within a school setting?

My paper in the Danish journal DF Revy is now published. The paper defines “the digital library users of the future” by describing how today’s youngsters use the internet and social networking sites when communicating and socialising.

You can download the paper (unfortunately, only in Danish) here.

I just returned home after a long, but really interesting day at the “UNG 2.0″-conference in Næstved arranged by the The Danish Library Association.

More than 120 people (mostly librarians) attended the conference which was filled with visions for the library of the future with room for young people.

The Danish news station TV2 East covered the event and I gave a small interview after my presentation.

See the whole coverage from the conference here.