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Poke 1.0 - a Facebook social research symposium

A half-day social research symposium organised by the London Knowledge Lab, University of London, UK

Thursday 15th November 2007

This social research symposium will allow academics who are researching the ‘Facebook’ social networking site to meet and exchange ideas. Researchers are welcome from the fields of sociology, media, communication & cultural studies, information science, education, politics, psychology, geography and any other sphere of ‘internet research’. PhD and post-doctoral researchers are especially welcome, as are researchers considering Facebook as a potential area of research.

It is intended that there will be five or six research papers presented as well as plenty of time for discussion and face-to-face networking.

Topics for discussion will include:

* Empirical studies of Facebook users and Facebook uses;

* Issues of ethics and access when researching Facebook;

* Other methodological issues when researching Facebook;

* The use of Facebook as a social research tool;

* The future of Facebook research - emerging trends and practices.

The symposium will be free of charge but spaces will be limited and allocated on an RSVP first-come-first-served basis. If you wish to attend then email Neil Selwyn (n.selwyn@ioe.ac.uk) to reserve a place by Friday 31st August 2007.

If you wish to present a research paper then email an outline abstract of 500 words to Neil Selwyn (n.selwyn@ioe.ac.uk) by Tuesday 31st July 2007. Accepted presenters will be informed by Friday August 31st 2007.

The symposium will take place between 13.00pm to 17.30 pm on Thursday 15th November 2007 in the London Knowledge Lab (located in the Bloomsbury/ Holburn area of central London).

Relevance: This would be cool to present at as I have Facebook experience, however I don’t think that London is included with my bus pass = no funds (:.

According to this article entitled “At Some Schools, Facebook Evolves From Time Waster to Academic Study” in the Wall Street Journal some students are turning to programs that study social networks, social media, and social tools such as Facebook rather than traditional computer science or engineering programs.

A recent grad will be attending the University of Michigan program in social computing in the Fall because:

Social computing “has more of a focus on real-life applications, whereas [computer science] is very broad and more ambiguous,” he said. “I do think there’s a growing interest from students, myself included, and the universities seem to be responding to that.”

After years of worrying about how much time freshmen spend on Facebook, schools are incorporating the study of social networking, online communities and user-contributed content into new curricula on social computing. The moves, like other academic expansions into fields like videogame design, are part of an effort to keep technology studies relevant to students’ lives – and to tap subjects with entrepreneurial momentum.

Relevance: As my thesis research involves social computing and social networks, I am debating the merits of a PhD in this area vs. pervasive games. I feel that this would be useful information to share when I give my town hall workshop next month. As computing becomes more social, how does this influence the types of programs offered by universities? Would a PhD in Social Computing be as respected as one in Human Computer Interaction? Perhaps UBC should be looking at the benefits of a program in social computing or is this more applicable to SFU?

Since February 2006 Photoviolationmeter.com has operated parking meters on a trial basis at the UBC village. From the perspective of ubiquitous computing and HCI, I am interested in how extensively these are being used and the ease of use for patrons. As there are a number of regular parking meters nearly I wonder the extent to which people (if aware of the option) are willing to try something new vs. focussing on what is known.

You can pay with a credit card and then would have the option of staying up to 2 hours at which time the exact amount will be charged to your card when you drive away. The “keep clear” sign is there so that a camera on the machine can record your license number.

There are instructions to operate the machine and you can spend as 10 cents for 2 minutes and if your meter expires you are expected to pay the expired amount before leaving (flashing red light indicates a violation). Credit cards (visa/mastercard) are accepted or coins can be used. A standard keypad is provided for input.

Some questions I have: What factors determine whether someone tries a new ubiquitous technology. For example, do those who’s first language is not english avoid this machine becuase of the amount of reading required? Is time, cost to learn to use, availability of other meters nearby a factor? How are violations enforced? What privacy issues will exist now?

Relevance: System uses ubicomp technology on campus.

I am fortunate to be invited to participate in a workshop organised by the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) which is my home department. Both David Vogt and Sid Fels are knowledgeable and great to listen to, so it should be a useful session to attend if tagging interests you.

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MAGIC Workshop - Media Annotation and Tagging
June 6th, UBC Robson Square (downtown), 3-5:30pm

Directions are here.

Please distribute!

The 7th quarterly MAGIC workshop will explore the exploding area of media annotation and tagging. Please join us for 3 exciting talks:
Attendance is free but please RSVP to Lavana Lea (lavana@cs.ubc.ca)

David Vogt, CEO, CrowdTrust Technologies: Tagging technologies to make sense of everything that matters
Sid Fels, UBC: Perspectives on Human Communication Technologies, Smart Homes and Media annotation
Phillip Jeffrey, UBC: Playing tag in user-generated spaces

David Vogt, CEO, CrowdTrust Technologies ( http://www.crowdtrust.net)

“How often every day do you encounter things you know are meaningful and might need some day, yet inevitably get lost or forgotten? Think of CrowdTrust as your secure external memory drive and personal creative commons. We enable you to easily tag, keep and make sense of everything that matters in the digital blizzard of your life. Ideas, emails, places, people, images, etc, etc, - you can capture and automatically organize anything on the fly. Best of all, these ’semantic investments’ quickly become an invaluable identity asset, allowing you to create and manage actionable representations of “you” to yourself, your networks and the general public.

CrowdTrust approaches media tagging and annotation from a social/semantic perspective. All of our personal accounts are free; we offer identity, marketing and collective intelligence services for organizations.”
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Sid Fels: Perspectives on Human Communication Technologies, Smart Homes and Media annotation

Recent trends in human communication technologies focus on people’s relationships with each other, with computational artifacts and various environments people encounter in their daily lives. Research at MAGIC and the Human Communication Technologies laboratory are pushing this trend from the perspective of relationship aesthetics and design of experience and expresssion. Design for human experience and expression using information technology requires attention to how and why people form relationships with entities beyond themselves. An awareness of people’s different cognitive, physical and emotional capabilities provides a foundation for acquiring, analyzing, representing, storing, retrieving, transmitting, communicating and ultimately synthesizing human experience. In this presentation, I will discuss some of our current work on a context-aware multimedia project for the Winter Olympics and other related activities. This project sets the foundation to proceed to speculate on some new perspectives on how these technologies may develop in the future as we look at people’s relationship to their digital environment in the home and the new opportunities this uncovers.

Bio:

Sidney has been in the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia since 1998. Sidney received his Ph. D. and M.Sc . in Computer Science at the University of Toronto in 1994 and 1990 respectively supervised by Dr. Geoffrey Hinton and Bill Buxton. He received his B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the
University of Waterloo in 1988. He was recognized as a Distinguished University Scholar at UBC from 2004. He was a visiting researcher at ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan from 1996 to 1997. He also worked at Virtual Technologies Inc. in Palo Alto, CA. He is internationally known for his work in human-computer interaction, biomechanical modeling, neural networks, intelligent
agents, new interfaces for musical expression and interactive arts with over 100 scholarly publications and exhibitions. Sidney is one of the principal investigators of the Institute of Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems through his authoring a grant to create a new $22.1M facility to house interdisciplinary research using advanced technologies. He has been the Director of MAGIC since 2001.

Sidney is currently a visiting professor at NTT Cyber Solutions laboratory at Yokosuka Research Laboratories.
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Phillip Jeffrey: Playing tag in user-generated spaces.

In today’s Web 2.0 environment, tools exist to classify and organize digital content that has been uploaded – in a sense providing users with control over information they are sharing. These technologies have value in enabling both consumers and producers of the content to easily find media such as pictures, webpages, or blog posts that have been tagged. User generated sites such as Flickr and Facebook which enable tagging attach additional information or descriptions to content. These online environments provide powerful social tools for creative expression, networking, and feedback from their audience. In this presentation, I will discuss how tagging differs within these shared spaces, how the dynamics of culture manifests itself, and shed light on how the design of these environments facilitate forms of creative expression.

Bio

Phillip Jeffrey is a Masters of Science student in the Interdisciplinary Studies program. His home department is the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre. His thesis research investigates how user-generated digital spaces are being used in social and personal ways. His broader research explores social and cultural issues that emerge within the areas of pervasive games and ubiquitous computing in everyday life. His research blog is fadetoplay.com.

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Relevance: It will be good preparation for my town hall presentation later in June.

My article on Facebook for the Green College Reading Room magazine Spring 2007 issue is now online. There are paper copies available in our Reading Room for viewing. Green College is the residence I live in at UBC and this is the one year anniversary of the magazine. I recommend you look at the different issues as there are a variety of both academic and non-academic topics presented.

My feature provides a fun and informative read about how Facebook can potentially benefit students and how it is being used by Green College residents in particular.

Ideas, Friendship, and Facebook

Relevance: An opportunity to provide information about Facebook and its potential value for members of the Green College community.