Dear Colleagues, I'm urgently looking for analyses (ethnographic and/or survey) for adult use of Facebook. There's lots of good university stuff and the Ito-boyd et al enterprise on teens, but would like to know more about general population use. This would be grist for the Rainie-Wellman _Networked_ book. As I am on the road till Thurs eve, attachments would be great (especially by Monday AM), but pointers to articles would be fine too. Thanks Barry Wellman, from Beautiful BC and not Hot, Humid ATL. _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________ On Sun, 15 Aug 2010, Lee Rainie wrote:
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:38:54 -0400 From: Lee Rainie <lrainie@pewinternet.org> To: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Subject: RE: wrong about Facebook unfriending in Chapter 5
Let's assume now that Chapter 5 is in your hands, so you make the next round of edits and changes.
******* Director Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project 1615 L Street NW - Suite 700 Washington, D.C. 20036 202-419-4510 Website: http://www.pewinternet.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrainie
-----Original Message----- From: Barry Wellman [mailto:wellman@chass.utoronto.ca] Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 1:24 PM To: Lee Rainie Subject: Re: wrong about Facebook unfriending in Chapter 5
Well, you happened to find the only chunk that Rhonda McEwen wrote. As you know, I am FB ignorant. I would say scrap as an entire section, and leave a still-relevant para. as part of the previous section. OK? Could you do that, or should I?
Pls try and answer by tonight, as may be cut off internet, and I want to get Lilia moving on huge job of fixing cites/references in 5. (She's away getting married after this coming Friday: I have a good backup, but less experienced.) Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
On Sun, 15 Aug 2010, Lee Rainie wrote:
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:49:53 -0400 From: Lee Rainie <lrainie@pewinternet.org> To: Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> Subject: wrong about Facebook unfriending in Chapter 5
Barry:
I wanted to check on this before I got back to you, but I'm now sure that your passage about Facebook mechanics on unfriending in Chapter 5 is wrong.
You wrote:
"Unfriending brings a different dynamic to relationships that exist partially online. While network individuals often interact one-to-one, the act of unfriending gets communicated to the unfriender's entire network - similar to the situation when villagers observe one person shunning another."
The reality is that nothing is communicated to anyone's network - the unfriender or the victim of unfriending - when an unfriending occurs. The "victim" can uncover the unfriending by scrolling through her entire list of friends to see if the unfriender is listed. If not, then she knows she's been unfriended. Under certain settings, the "victim" can also find out about being unfriended when she searches for her unfriender on FB and isn't given access to the unfriender's pages. But under no circumstances now or in the past has a blast message gone out to the victim's network when an unfriending occurs. Of course, the unfriender could post on her wall that she's shunning the victim, but that's very different from the auto-message mechanics that you described in this passage.
It *used* to be that when someone changed her relationship status on FB, that message was automatically broadcast to her entire network, so there was lots of excitement when people said they were a couple and lots of drama when they broke up because everybody was immediately alerted to the change of status posting. However, that has changed in recent months as FB has tried to give users more chances to control the blasts of info. Now, people can change their status without it being announced to their networks. All of this, of course, is NOT related to unfriending, but it's enough of a comparable situation that I wanted you to know about it.
So, this chunk of the chapter should be scrapped or rewritten. The fact is that FB mechanics do allow people to monitor others' network structure more easily than in the past - to look for common friends; to see who's in someone's network; to check someone is friends with someone else. But the implication that unfriending is a publicly broadcast act is not right.
Lee
******* Director Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project 1615 L Street NW - Suite 700 Washington, D.C. 20036 202-419-4510 Website: http://www.pewinternet.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrainie