Your points (dr_haqiqah@yahoo.com) presuppose a lot of psychology and may be real research but your saying it is what "you are seeing"... also I see you as saying your superior to these socially awkward others and in my opinion I am seeing that as a root of bullying in groups. That is just an opinion based on RL and my feelings reading this type of identity psychology. I am critical of it all. But you are just putting these few thoughts together as I am... I would be curious for the origins of *identity politics* as I presently trace this to late 1980's international socialists that is outside North American sociology and *identity^ where I might know Goffman. two points... 1. to study some parts of myspace such as my old jam band's page one would have to have knowledge of fame and the music business. And just ask a musician. No need for presupposing what is going on on music pages. People are trying to get famous or as in my case share my music on-line with not much effort. Apparently Robert Murdock the owner of myspace now owns the rights to our songs. 2. I joined Face book two weeks ago... late to the party because previously when I visited it it was a youth site but now has opened up and my boss is there on facebook. Ok so are a few friends at work maybe 800 / 6000 workers. Then I find all my anarchist union comrades are there, my high school friends in Toronto are there, my relatives are there. I can't agree that these people are really any more socially isolated than myself. My point may be some users fall in your made up community but there are too many RL people there too IMHO. Now all the educated people are making witty things on their pages but are they real or virtual? more or less? I am not sure that can be measured. Is this anything but self expression...Do you really know someone's self better than they do? to paraphrase Jean Paul Sartre? back to your point (dr_haqiqah@yahoo.com) how do you include people who hide data in a study are these less reliable data? Your point about the data validity is taken. Peter Timusk, B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2007). just trying to stay linear. Read by hundreds of lurkers every week. On 30-May-07, at 2:35 PM, Dr. T. Michael Roberts wrote:
What I see happening on MySpace is personas being created that allow the person behind the account to be more real, more open and less selective about the kinds of information that is put out there. Many profiles and blogs begin as fishing expeditions put up by persons who are very isolated in RL and are searching for a virtual community were they can enact themselves much more fully than they ever do in RL.
People who do this typically create a mask or persona to use in this pursuit that is not easy to trace back to a RL source. The value of the persona is the opportunity it creates to enact a self that is often spoiled in RL within a community where the presentation of this stigmatized self will be validated by “people like me” who come together to make a virtual “We” community which is based on a counter-narrative invalidating the spoiling narrative.
Many people involved in such counter-narrative based online communities come to feel that who they are within that community is a true presentation of self. The RL presentation of self, in turn, is seen as being a mask that must be worn to avoid negative consequences and maintain access to social resources that would lessen or vanish in response to a RL presentation of the authentic self. The bottom line is that the profile that you have trouble tracing back to a RL source is more likely to contain accurate information than one that is easy to trace to its RL source.
I’m clueless about Russia so this example may be silly but, suppose you compared 50 profiles that were easily traced back to their RL sources to 50 that were not. We will assume for simplicity that both samples are random in relation to the larger populations being sampled. What would it tell you that 10/50 hard to trace profiles claimed atheism whereas only 3/50 easy to trace profiles did? One good way to find out what is stigmatized and how strongly is to notice where the percentage of people claiming an allegiance or characteristic varies significantly depending on whether the profile is hard to trace or easy to trace. These are just random thoughts off the top of my head. I hope they are useful but, if not, never mind.
--- Alexander Semenov <semenoffalex@googlemail.com> wrote:
Hello everyone, recently I was surfing Russian facebook-clone vkontakte.ru and decided to count statistics of political preferences. I don't consider my results to be valid, so I've decided to ask about any thoughts, articles etc. on the validity of blogs as a source of socio-demographic data (age, gender, location, political and religious preferences etc.). While I think that other interests such as music, reading, films etc. are quite reliable I can't say the same about socio-demographic data. What do you think? Thanks in advance. Best wishes, Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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“We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality.” Henry Jenkins
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