Investigaciones Academicas sobre Facebook

Considerando el explosivo aumento en el número de usuarios que ha tenido Facebook este año en Chile y su consagración en los medios masivos, no es de extrañar que se transforme en una materia de estudio en las Universidades. En ese contexto, mi amigo Matias Assun me consultó sobre investigaciones recientes acerca de Facebook. Como todavía tengo acceso a las bases de dato de la London School of Economics, con miles de publicaciones académicas indexadas, realicé una búsqueda que quizás podría servir como referencia para aquellos interesados en el tema.

Sin más prólogo: Lo que tienen a continuación son los artículos académicos sobre Facebook que encontré publicados en el primer semestre del 2008. Ojalá sean de utilidad y obviamente los invito a leer todo lo que he escrito acerca de facebook en estas páginas.

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Too Much of a Good Thing? The Relationship Between Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Facebook

Authors: Tong, Stephanie Tom; Van Der Heide, Brandon; Langwell, Lindsey; Walther, Joseph B.

Source: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 13, Number 3, April 2008 , pp. 531-549(19)

Abstract:

A central feature of the online social networking system, Facebook, is the connection to and links among friends. The sum of the number of one’s friends is a feature displayed on users’ profiles as a vestige of the friend connections a user has accrued. In contrast to offline social networks, individuals in online network systems frequently accrue friends numbering several hundred. The uncertain meaning of friend status in these systems raises questions about whether and how sociometric popularity conveys attractiveness in non-traditional, non-linear ways. An experiment examined the relationship between the number of friends a Facebook profile featured and observers’ ratings of attractiveness and extraversion. A curvilinear effect of sociometric popularity and social attractiveness emerged, as did a quartic relationship between friend count and perceived extraversion. These results suggest that an overabundance of friend connections raises doubts about Facebook users’ popularity and desirability.

The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep?

Authors: Walther, Joseph B.; Van Der Heide, Brandon1; Kim, Sang-Yeon1; Westerman, David2; Tong, Stephanie Tom1

Source: Human Communication Research, Volume 34, Number 1, January 2008 , pp. 28-49(22)

Abstract:

This research explores how cues deposited by social partners onto one’s online networking profile affect observers’ impressions of the profile owner. An experiment tested the relationships between both (a) what one’s associates say about a person on a social network site via “wall postings,” where friends leave public messages, and (b) the physical attractiveness of one’s associates reflected in the photos that accompany their wall postings on the attractiveness and credibility observers attribute to the target profile owner. Results indicated that profile owners’ friends’ attractiveness affected their own in an assimilative pattern. Favorable or unfavorable statements about the targets interacted with target gender: Negatively valenced messages about certain moral behaviors increased male profile owners’ perceived physical attractiveness, although they caused females to be viewed as less attractive.

Opinion piece: Falling in Love 2.0: Relationship marketing for the Facebook generation

Author: Meadows-Klue, Danny

Source: Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, Volume 9, Number 3, March 2008 , pp. 245-250(6)

Abstract:

Until now the relationship between brands and consumers has been one way. The rules of marketing had to change, and the web has proved a catalyst in bringing the changes forward and amplifying their scale. The removal of frictions in the spread of information has created a radically different landscape for marketers to work within and this is a key element in understanding how the first generation of internet marketing works. The sudden emergence of the Web 2.0 marketing techniques demand additional approaches, and while most marketers are still wrestling with the first generation, savvy brands are exploring the landscape that social media and social networks create for marketers. These techniques are allowing much deeper drivers in social change to be unleashed, with a profound impact on planning customer connections. The new generation of relationship marketing responds to the additional challenges of digital media literacy, and in the right hands can trigger a rebuild of the entire marketing mix. Relationship marketing for the Facebook generation demands both thinking and acting differently.

Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence

Author: Danah Boyd

Source: Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 13-20 (2008)

Abstract

Not all Facebook users appreciated the September 2006 launch of the `News Feeds’ feature. Concerned about privacy implications, thousands of users vocalized their discontent through the site itself, forcing the company to implement privacy tools. This essay examines the privacy concerns voiced following these events. Because the data made easily visible were already accessible with effort, what disturbed people was primarily the sense of exposure and invasion. In essence, the `privacy trainwreck’ that people experienced was the cost of social convergence.

Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression

Author: Sonia Livingstone

Source: New Media & Society, Vol. 10, No. 3, 393-411 (2008)

Abstract

The explosion in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster is widely regarded as an exciting opportunity, especially for youth.Yet the public response tends to be one of puzzled dismay regarding a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of privacy and a narcissistic fascination with self-display. This article explores teenagers’ practices of social networking in order to uncover the subtle connections between online opportunity and risk. While younger teenagers relish the opportunities to recreate continuously a highly-decorated, stylistically-elaborate identity, older teenagers favour a plain aesthetic that foregrounds their links to others, thus expressing a notion of identity lived through authentic relationships. The article further contrasts teenagers’ graded conception of `friends’ with the binary classification of social networking sites, this being one of several means by which online privacy is shaped and undermined by the affordances of these sites.