My PhD Blog

Tomorrow at Safer Internet Day the social network site Netstationen will be covering the event from their online TV channel.

See Netstationen’s online tv channel here - live tomorrow between 12.00 -15.00.

A new Danish survey dealing with young people’s use of the internet to purchase or sell sex shows that every tenth of the participants in the survey has received payment.

2367 Danish young people between the age of 14 and 24 have participated in the survey.

• 79,8 % of them have never given or received any payment for sex - and don’t know anyone who has.
• 9,8 % of them know someone who has either given or received payment for sex.
• 9,1 % of them have received some kind of payment for sex.
• 1,3% of them have given some kind of payment for sex.

The study is conducted by Cyberhus, a Danish online community for children and young people run by social workers, for Aarhus City Council. Read more about the study here and read the whole report here (only in Danish).

It is important to know that one cannot simply conclude that one out of every tenth youngster in Denmark has received payment for sex. As project coordinator, Jonas Ravn, says in a newsletter from Cyberhus:

Man kan ikke ud fra undersøgelsen konkludere, at hver 10. unge i Danmark har solgt sex. Men 9,1 procent af de unge, der har valgt at deltage i vores undersøgelse, har fået betaling for at levere seksuelle ydelser. Men egentlig er det ikke undersøgelsens primære mål at undersøge omfanget, men at se på, om og hvordan de unge bruger nettet til at lave aftaler om sex.

Also, the definition of payment includes not only money, also but material things such as alcohol, cigarettes and clothes.

Furthermore, the study shows that the sale and payment of sex often take place between friends and acquaintances. And most often as a sudden impulse.

Yesterday the Danish news media reported on a new Facebook group called “Stop Pretty Boys!” (see e.g. press coverage here, here or here). The group was created by two Danish students as a joke and in order to ridicule boys who care about their looks, wear tight clothes, make-up or a lot of self tanning cream etc. On the site the creators upload pictures of boys/men who they consider to be “pretty boys” and the members of the group then make fun of and comment on the pictures. According to the news media, this is the fastest growing Facebook group in Denmark (at the moment there are slightly over 28.000 members).

A couple of journalists called me up yesterday to ask me what I think of this group, if it is a form of bullying, a new Facebook trend and so forth. First of all, as a researcher I really don’t have any opinion about this group. I have not been following it and know very little about it. Therefore, I didn’t want to comment on it. Second of all, I do not consider this kind of public ridicule to be a new “trend” or “phenomenon” in relation to online social networking. It is not what online social networking is really about and it is in stark contrast to the normal loving discourse between IRL-friends on social network sites. (more…)

Next Tuesday, February 12, I am participating in “Safer Internet Day 2008“.

Safer Internet Day is a yearly event organised by Insafe, the European internet safety network. Last year 43 countries from all over the world participated in the event.

This year’s theme is “Life online is what YOU make of IT”. I am participating in the Danish part of the event which takes place at the science museum, the Experimentarium, in Copenhagen and is arranged by The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People. Here, many of the most popular social network sites for children and young people in Denmark, like Arto.dk, Habbo.dk, Netstationen.dk, MSN.dk and Cyberhus.dk, will participate both online and offline. See the Danish programme here.

During the event I will be presenting some of the primary results from the online questionnaire about young people’s use of social network sites that I launched last year at Safer Internet Day together with the Media Council. There are some really interesting data on the different experiences - both good and bad - that Danish youngsters have online. I will upload a small fact sheet presenting the data on the actual day. (However, as the data are part of my PhD project I haven’t deeply or theoretically analysed them yet. But some preliminary conclusions can be drawn.)

Watch the official Safer Internet Day 2008 video clip here.

In Denmark young people use the phrase “camme frækt” about having web cam sex.

Here is a video that shows why web cam sex is not always a good idea:

See other videos from the Danish Media Council for Children and Young People here.

As some of you might know, the students at Aalborg University are studying under what is called “The Aalborg Model”, which means that they do problem oriented project work in groups. Therefore, they hand in a rather huge (usually 100-120 pages) project report each semester dealing with an open-ended problem of their own choosing.

Formerly, each group would defend their project during a group exam lasting approxemately two or three hours. This semester, however, we were not allowed to conduct the group exams due to a resolution carried out by the government saying that group exams are not allowed at the Danish universities; the students have to sit for an examination individually. Therefore, our students studying under “The Aalborg Model” are forced to defend their joint projects during an individual exam.

Because of that, my January has been more than usually busy. I just counted that I have held 32 individual oral exams this past weeks (in stead of eight group exams as it would have been in the good old days).

Even though all the exams went really well and the students had produced some interesting projects, I cannot help but feel that it is a real pity that they cannot defend them together. Not only is it more time consuming for me as the examiner to prepare 32 different individual 30 minute-exams rather than eight group exams, but it is also a shame that the great discussions and the high level of abstraction, that usually are part of a group exam, now disappear.

Well, I just wanted to let you know why I have been so absent on the blog lately - and tell you that now the exam rush is over I will be blogging about the many interesting upcoming activities I am attending - e.g. a PhD course next week, a trip to Berlin and Safer Internet Day 2008 on February 12.

More about that in blog posts to come

Please notice that I have a new office phone number. See contact info.

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…)

Today it is exactly one year since I started “My PhD Blog” and it is time to do a little status update.

I have written 52 blog posts during this one year period. That equals one blog post per week,which I think is acceptable. Especially, considering the fact that I only blog about my activities as a PhD student or subjects related to youth and online social networking.

Here are some other blog stats provided by WordPress:

As for my PhD project, I must admit that this first year of the project period has gone by extremely fast. I am amazed at how much time goes by with non-project related stuff - such as teaching, supervising, reading and answering e-mails, attending meetings and network activities, writing papers and articles, giving talks, attending conferences and PhD courses, giving press interviews and other stuff. All of which are really exciting activities, but only very peripherally related to my project.

When it comes to my project I have been engaged in data collecting. I have conducted two qualitative online questionnaires which altogether generated more than 3000 answers. Moreover, I have been doing different kind of ethnographic studies. I would label it “ethnography” rather than “virtual ethnography”, because some of my data collection take place outside cyberspace. Actually, the more I think about it, I dislike to concept of “virtual ethnography” or “online ethnography”, because I think that online social networking cannot be separated from offline life. That is something I will get back to in a later blog post. Among other things, I am working on a concept I call “nexus ethnography”. But more about that in the new year.

I hope that 2008 will be a productive year and I look forward to blog about my activities.

Happy New Year to all.