Ashley Hunter
Social Network Analysis Prism-MySpace
What is community?
Community, for the purposes of this class assignment, will be a group of self-interested individuals, connected in some way, participating in local interaction or exchanges within an adaptive system.
What is social networking?
I define social networking as purposeful self-interested action of interacting with others for some return, whether it be financial, friendship maintenance, or fulfilling wants to express oneself (the return on which would be the level of utility or satisfaction obtained from such behavior).
Our sites or artifacts: MySpace | FaceBook | SecondLife
Our lenses:
- Trust- is established very easily because of the low cost of obtaining and maintaining friendships. For example, if I become friends with someone new to myspace and they aren't that great, I may block them or discontinue my use of the site.
- Accountability- Very few people like buttheads. The myspace community and the administrators of the site track down bad users and eliminate them from myspace with the click of a mouse.
- Identity- is however much you feel comfortable revealing. You can be yourself and provide lots of information or you can pretend to be someone else entirely.
- Reputation- is easy to obtain, but hard to ever erase. If you are a good steward of myspace, you will have as many friends as you like and people will appreciate you. If you are a poor steward of myspace, you will probably be blocked and deleted. The only way to obtain a new reputation is to begin a new myspace account.
- Privacy- is quite good. No one is binding and gagging people to get them to join myspace. Users can block or make private many features. If people felt that their privacy was being highly invaded, they would cancel their myspace or not join in the first place.
- Surveillance/monitoring- is handled by myspace police. There are people that work all day just to delete bad users.
These four are inter-related, as we’ve discussed. To the extent you have accountability, you can trust. To the extent it is easy to create, re-create or change identity, reputation is de-valued, taking us back to trust (or the lack of it). To the degree there is surveillance, there is loss of privacy.
-The above statement is copied from the research prism simply because I forgot to delete it, but I'm leaving it here because it helps connect the individual definitions a lot.
Social capital:
How is it embedded, mobilized, transacted, measured?
Social capital is embedded in myspace through all of the members' resources. (Friends, connections, etc.)
What are the self interests in play? The better question is when aren't the self-interests in play. Everyone is completely self-interested. This does not change when one is purusing myspace, shopping at the grocery, or any other act.
Same questions for knowledge capital and capital-capital (economic).
Knowledge capital and monetary resources are again embedded in weak ties and friendships. For example, you may have lots of great ideas and no cash, while a dear friend of a friend is spending venture capital like he's on vacation. Networks like myspace facilitate exchange between self-interested individuals.
Social networking (social interaction):
How does it work? People contact other people with similar interests, etc. through a variety of mediums.
Why does it work? Online, it works well because it is pretty easy. There are low costs of entry into a social network.
Why does it work that way? Technology is becoming cheaper and easier to obtain.
What uses and gratifications do users/members have or are seeking? Individual tastes and preferences oftentimes dictate specific reasons why people join social networks like myspace. Some join for business purposes, others for personal pursuits, while others still choose to mix the two.
How reciprocal is the network? The network is fairly reciprocal between individual users and moderately reciprocal between the myspace powers-that-be and the myspace community. It is fairly simple to contact customer service, etc. If a situation arises where this is not the case, the demand for myspace is so high that users whose accounts have been somehow lost simply 'redecorate' by making a new myspace.
How are new members acclimated? Members are usually acclimated quickly because most everyone that joins myspace already knows someone who is a member, or for those who do not know people, Tom is always available to be your buddy and the myspace site constantly puts up thumbnails of 'cool new people.'
Interface (human-computer interaction):
What is it about the design of the interface that facilitates and/or inhibits community? The interface faclitates community because all one has to do is simply sign up and they are connected to millions of people, each with their own page.
How much control over the site or place or space do users have? Users have lots of control within a specific set of boundaries. They can design and network pretty much to their heart's content.
How flexible and adaptable is the site design? The design is very flexible. It's all just code, not granite. The myspace model can add and take away new stuff whenever it desires. The only problem I see with myspace is that their user base got fat before the system was entirely ready to feed them all, leading to too many 'unexpected errors' and the like.
How clearly does the site communicate the community’s policies and purpose? The policies of the site are stated fairly clearly and cleanly. However, if they falter on anything, it is that they don't sell themselves well enough in the 'about' section. Myspace is a much better tool than they let on. Admittedly, they are the fat cats in the social netoworking world, so I suppose innovation and increased ad revenues aren't necessarily at the forefront of myspace's plans right now.
Think of the interface and its designer as the mayor of a town. How does the mayor govern? How inclusive or exclusive? How “in touch” with the community’s needs? How much planning is being done?
A mayor generally governs with the idea of job maintenance in mind. It is in the mayor's interest to please a large number of people. He will probably be more concerned with the city's wants than their actual needs. I am skeptical of the amount of actual planning being done by most city governments although lots of money is spent in its name.
Private social networking sites, however, are held accountable to serving the community's needs. Most everything they do is transparent. People can see exactly what is going on with their own, as well as other sites. Unlike our dear mayor, with one mouse click, users can drop a social networking site and switch to another. Lots of justifiable planning is done with myspace. Everything myspace does is important to newscorp and its shareholders.