I'd been resisting a response to the "so what" question until i heard back from the survey designers, but i must admit that i'd like to now join Lentz's soapbox. I'm having a hard time analyzing the data, because i can't figure out what the questions are asking. Since i can come up with about 10 different ways of answering each question, i can't even imagine what the subjects were thinking. The question on the UCLA survey that rubbed me the wrong way the most was: "Do you use multiple screen names with different personalities?" What does that _mean_? I was hoping that there was clarification in the survey, but this is literally how the question was asked (although it was used to conclude information about communication role-play and sexed behavior). What constitutes a screen name? Are we talking about an instant messanger screen name? An email account? A Win2K login? A separate screen name for MSN Passport and Yahoo? What constitutes a different personality? Is this only when it is performed to be something that you are not (suggested by the common teen response)? Might a personality refer to the amount of information you give away about yourself? Or the type? i.e. the separation of content revealed in a work versus home context (which i'd guess to be fairly common amongst adult US users). If only 7.2% responded positively to this, it couldn't have meant all the different ways in which people use separate "screen names" to communicate with different people about different things? (Or could it have?) I get the gut feeling that i could use the data to make quite a few contradicting (or inaccurate) statements about behavior, which makes me tremendously worried. For example, i could see makers of login-convergence systems read this to say that users have no need for separate logins or email addresses. Am i the only one who can imagine how this data can actually be used in a harmful manner? danah
From: RG Lentz <rgmagnolia@earthlink.com>
Also, these studies are so absent 'context' that it begs the question: why are Internet researchers focusing on this? Where's the beef? Soapbox here, but does it not bother anyone that there is so much money/effort going into such tracking studies? To what end? I'll risk posing the 'so what' question to get some discussion going.