Here’s an outline of what I’ll be discussing at the College Communicators Association pre-conference workshop: “A Practical Guide to Social Media.” (I’m covering the social networks portion of the workshop.) The audience are mostly PR practitioners, and have likely heard of Facebook, etc., but don’t participate on these sites.
If you have any criticisms and/or suggestions, please leave a comment! This outline is still in draft form, so it will likely change up until the workshop begins at 1 p.m. Thursday.
- I’m using danah boyd’s excellent definition of social network sites: “A ‘social network site’ is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.”
- Brief history of some well-known social network sites (Six Degrees, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Breaking down danah’s definition into its component pieces.
“Profiles”:
- Do profiles belong to people, groups, or Fakesters?
- Facebook’s distinction between groups and individuals
- MySpace’s connection to entertainment personalities
“Semi-persistent public commentary”:
- Wall posts on Facebook; comments on MySpace
- Comments as social currency: Get a comment, leave a comment
- Public commentary: Stream of activity made visible via the News Feed on Facebook
- Self-conscious solicitation/manipulation of commentary
“Traversable, publicly articulated social network”:
- Making connections visible and explicit (display of affiliation)
- Characterization of connections on Facebook (friend detail)
- Friends vs. “friends”: What does it mean to befriend someone on Facebook?
- Case study: The News Feed and abrupt changes in relationship status
- “Stalking” people on Facebook; lurkers as the silent majority
Social network sites as platforms:
- Advertising (Microsoft and Facebook)
- Advocacy (candidates and causes)
- Applications (esp. on Facebook)
- Growing communities and critical mass (Colbert Facebook group)
Issues:
- Disconnect between students’ conception of social network sites and staff/faculty/parent conception
- “Serious” use of social software: LinkedIn vs. Facebook
- Anecdote: coworker noticing “I’m interested in…” and getting the impression that Facebook is a dating site
- Friendster’s ill-advised focus on dating to the exclusion of Fakesters (affiliation, play)
- Multiple personalities vs. single profile (depth and flexibility of profiles)
- Privacy and intrusion by institutions—use a real-life analogy
- Students’ ability to juggle different social connections/group affiliations
- Signal vs. noise: Once everyone uses Facebook to broadcast messages, how can you tell what is worthwhile? Will communication on Facebook eventually follow the path of other media (decreasing signal-to-noise ratio in email, blog comments, etc.)
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