In this article, I found most interesting is the use of
Social Networking Sites (SNS) to gain popularity in a social highlight. The author finds that the "vast majority
of participants agreed that many individuals use SNS to become more
popular". In a sense it seems to be
a popularity contest among whatever community people may belong to, for example
high school, or college. This might be true
to the specific targeted audience of this study, because in my personal
experience, I notice people at my work and among family have SNS to mainly stay
in touch with old friends and family.
The popularity perspective is funny in a sense that, even if a high
school student leaves the campus of the school, there is still a society in
which he has to represent and maintain.
I also found it very interesting that certain elements of SNS, such as
MySpace's "Top 8" section brings a sense of hierarchal ranking, in
which participants of this study "admitted they were very conscious of
where they ranked in their friends' list".
I learned that potential drama in "real life" is played out in
the online social network world as well.
Most of this study displayed what I would expected, such as the purposes
in researching people, the privacy matter, and the easy ability to communicate
with others. However, the popularity
thing is simply odd...maybe it's just my age (25) and if I were 18 again, maybe
I would feel the same way as the participants in this study...
Hi Rob,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some interesting points. I thought that the importance of popularity was intriguing also. On the topic of popularity and people's thirst for it, I kind of laughed at the mention of "scene kids" talking about how many people they'd friended, because it just seems like an odd thing to talk about face-to-face. I also thought it was weird for a subculture to be so tied in with a social media site. Its kind of funny to think about how much people want to feel validated, and how having a lot of friends on Facebook, having a bunch of followers on Twitter and etc. can make people feel good.