You are looking at it and reading it!
"On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data" by STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Each day about 1,700 juniors at an East Coast college log on to Facebook.com to accumulate “friends,” compare movie preferences, share videos and exchange cybercocktails and kisses. Unwittingly, these students have become the subjects of academic research.
To study how personal tastes, habits and values affect the formation of social relationships (and how social relationships affect tastes, habits and values), a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, are monitoring the Facebook profiles of an entire class of students at one college, which they declined to name because it could compromise the integrity of their research.
Yup, just implant that little computer chip in your ass, too, kids!
Social scientists at Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, the University of Texas and other institutions are mining Facebook to test traditional theories in their fields about relationships, identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement.
More DATA-MINING, huh? Why I never go to them!
Much of the research is continuing and has not been published.
Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and her colleagues suggest the information gleaned from Facebook may be more accurate than personal information offered elsewhere online, such as chat room profiles, because Facebook is largely based in real-world relationships that originate in confined communities like campuses.
Somehow, the concept of the VIRTUAL WORLD as the REAL WORLD bothers me!
Most researchers acknowledge these limits, yet they are still eager to plumb the site’s vast amount of data. The site’s users have mixed feelings about being put under the microscope.
Katherine Kimmel, 22, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati:
"[I find it] fascinating that professors are using something that started solely as a fun social networking tool for entertainment, [and she suggested yet another study: how people fill out Facebook’s “relationship status” box]. You’re not really dating until you put it on Facebook.”
And what makes you think anyone cares about WHO YOU are dating?
These SELF-CENTERED sites are SICK, readers!
Derrick B. Clifton, 19, a student at Pomona College in California:
“I don’t feel like academic research has a place on a Web site like Facebook. [If it is going to happen, professors should ask students’ permission]."
I don't even like it happening, because it is a sign of AmeriKan Tyranny and Fascism!
Gonna DAT-MINE the sites!
FUCK OFF, Nazis!
Although federal rules govern academic study of human subjects, universities, which approve professors’ research methods, have different interpretations of the guidelines.
Samuel D. Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, who uses Facebook to explore perception and identity:
“The rules were made for a different world, a pre-Facebook world. There is a rule that you are allowed to observe public behavior, but it’s not clear if online behavior is public or not.”
Well, I certainly agree that online is public.
Here I am!
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard sociology professor who is also part of the research and a sociologist and internist who was an author of a study that received wide attention this year for its suggestion that obesity is “socially contagious.”:
“Employers are looking at people’s online postings and Googling information about them, and I think researchers are right behind them.”
Employers are googling your name?
No wonder I can't find a good job!
Starting to doubt the WONDER of technology, let me tell you!
Yup, UP YOUR ASS with a microscope!
Among other topics, the Harvard-U.C.L.A. researchers are investigating a concept, first put forth by the pioneering German sociologist Georg Simmel, known as triadic closure: whether one’s friends are also friends of one another. If this seems trivial, consider that a study in 2004 in The American Journal of Public Health suggested that adolescent girls who are socially isolated and whose friends are not friends with one another experienced more suicidal thoughts.
Oh, God, now they try to turn it into PROTECTING the CHILDREN again!
Well, WHERE WHERE WERE YOU, MSM?!?!
WHERE WERE YOU?!!!!!!!!!
That's why I don't like web socializing!
INFO ONLY!
Dr. Christakis: “Triadic closure was first described by Simmel 100 years ago. He just theorizes about it 100 years ago, but he didn’t have the data. Now we can engage that data.”
Yeah, right!
Think I'm going to believe anything you mad-doctor, high-priests of society have to say?
No thanks! I'm tired of being lied to, readers!
