jump to navigation

Lecture on Social Networking and Virtual Ethnography March 16, 2007

Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Aalborg University, Academic, Arto, Moral panic, Social Networking, Social networking sites, Virtual Ethnography.
add a comment

Today I gave my first “real” lecture as a PhD Student at the University. The students were from 6th semester at Communication Studies and the subject was social networking sites (with Arto as case), moral panic, virtual ethnography and Nexus Analysis.

If you are interested in these subjects you can check out my PowerPoint presentation from the lecture which is available for download here (unfortunately, it is mostly in Danish, but there are many pictures and social networking examples :-)).

The meaning of a friendship? March 9, 2007

Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Arto, Friendship, MySpace, Social Networking, Social networking sites.
15 comments

Concurrently with social networking sites and services becoming increasingly popular the notion of ‘friendship’ is changing.2007-03-07_151952.png Many of the large social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Facebook and Arto are using the friendship metaphor in relation to the contactvenner.jpg lists. This means that the word ‘friendship’ has a new meaning online and rings more hollow than in its original sense.

Even though you have to be accepted as a friend from the other part, it is quite easy to collect many friends (since almost everyone wants a high number of friends). As a result young people often have more than 100 ‘friends’ on their friend lists. Then, what do they do when they want to signal who their actual or ‘real’ friends are? (more…)

FakeYourSpace In Real Life Troubles March 7, 2007

Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Fakers, Friendship, MySpace, Social Networking, Social networking sites.
4 comments

It seems that FakeYourSpace – a website that provides fake friends for social networking sites – has shut down.
A blog on social networks reports today that the site has some legal problems:

FakeYourSpace Facing Very Real Problems

FakeYourSpace shut down today, citing “legal problems”. The specifics weren’t mentioned, but we know that iStockPhoto had contacted the company regarding the misuse of model’s images, and it also seemed that FakeYourSpace might be against the terms and conditions of those social networks.

It seems that the problem is that the models the site offers as fake friends are in fact real people 🙂 Read the rest of the post here.

I was wondering where the site had gone. A few days ago I noticed that it was no longer to be found on the URL www.fakeyourspace.com.

Online survey status March 1, 2007

Posted by Malene Charlotte Larsen in Academic, Research, Social Networking.
add a comment

After only a few weeks online more than 2100 Danish children and young people between the age of 12 and 18 have answered the questionnaire that I have launched together with The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People. I think it is really impressive considering that it is a qualitative questionnaire where they have to write most of the answers themselves.

Unfortunately, only 200 parents with children between 12 and 18 years old have filled out the questionnaire so far. Hopefully, they will follow suit during the next couple of weeks 🙂 The grown up part of the questionnaire can be found here.

Read more about the online survey here (in Danish).