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. Im 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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