I'm curious how they will build a network with a fake profile. Are they going to set up an entire fake profile and contribute to larger public discussions (ex: FB groups or a post from an account they follow) without having any friends? To me, if I saw that I would immediately assume it was a fake account and I doubt I would engage with it in a realistic/natural way. Are they going to try and friend random people? One another? People they know? Another option might be a site where people are typically anonymous or use pseudonyms such as Twitter, Snapchat, or Reddit. Reddit, in particular, would let you get around the problem of not having anyone following/friending the account. But it would have to be a different kind of project since with few exceptions people do not follow account names outside of a single thread. If you want to explore a more Goffman-esque set of questions, Instagram might be quite interesting. Best Liz On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 10:30 AM, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
Thanks, Daniel,
On 10/01/18 15:55, Daniel Thomas wrote:
On 10/01/18 14:43, Charles M. Ess wrote:
A research project involves a small number of students, legally minors - and requires that they set up fake FB accounts for the sake of role-playing in an educational context? Of course, fake accounts are a clear violation of the FB ToS.
Is the use of facebook necessary for this research? Are the role-playing accounts interacting with the wider network or just with each other? If the role-playing accounts are only interacting with each other then could a self-hosted open source social network system be used? This would bypass facebook ToS issues.
Excellent points and considerations!
But, FWIW: FB was chosen precisely in order to be accessible to a larger public, both online and offline (e.g., activities affiliated with the project coordinated online and involving representing the fake personas offline).
Again, many thanks!
best, - c.
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no _______________________________________________ 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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