Ethnographic Study of LJ Friending Reasons
http://www.livejournal.com/community/weblogsociology/2568.html
What is a friend?
stubbs is working on an academic analysis of "friends" within LJ. His work explores what happens when people's definitions of "friend" differ. He prepared a list of different definitions for lj friend:
* as content
* as offline facilitator
* as online community
* as trust
* as declaration
* as courtesy
* as nothing
He goes on to postulate that characteristics unique to online friendship feed conflict and drama.
How do you define "lj friend"? Have you experienced conflicts due to differing definitions? Should LJ use a different word to describe this relationship?
Most online media have social applications embedded implicitly or explicitly in their
design. Recently, developers and users have become especially focused on these
applications, leading to a newfound enthusiasm for so-called “social software.” For
example, social networking services have been developed with features explicitly meant
to help members expand and capitalize on their social networks.
Popular social networking services include Friendster (for finding dates), Ryze (for
finding jobs), and Tribe (for finding recommendations and listings). All of these services
require that users publicly articulate their relationships to each other using the system’s
mechanisms. Often, there is only a single binary mechanism of articulation, which merely
specifies whether or not a relationship exists. Articulation of such simplicity destabilizes
the meaning of the relationships in the minds of the service’s users (boyd 2). While boyd
presents a cursory description into this phenomenon, there have been no detailed
ethnographic accounts. Acts of articulation on LiveJournal are often the catalysts of
explosive drama, making LiveJournal a prime candidate for studying how relationships
are affected by social technology. I conducted an ethnographic survey of LiveJournal
users, with the intention of asking two questions: What is the significance of friendship
amongst users, and what are the social consequences of this significance?
http://www.exposedbrain.com/archives/hyperfriends.pdf
What is a friend?
stubbs is working on an academic analysis of "friends" within LJ. His work explores what happens when people's definitions of "friend" differ. He prepared a list of different definitions for lj friend:
* as content
* as offline facilitator
* as online community
* as trust
* as declaration
* as courtesy
* as nothing
He goes on to postulate that characteristics unique to online friendship feed conflict and drama.
How do you define "lj friend"? Have you experienced conflicts due to differing definitions? Should LJ use a different word to describe this relationship?
Most online media have social applications embedded implicitly or explicitly in their
design. Recently, developers and users have become especially focused on these
applications, leading to a newfound enthusiasm for so-called “social software.” For
example, social networking services have been developed with features explicitly meant
to help members expand and capitalize on their social networks.
Popular social networking services include Friendster (for finding dates), Ryze (for
finding jobs), and Tribe (for finding recommendations and listings). All of these services
require that users publicly articulate their relationships to each other using the system’s
mechanisms. Often, there is only a single binary mechanism of articulation, which merely
specifies whether or not a relationship exists. Articulation of such simplicity destabilizes
the meaning of the relationships in the minds of the service’s users (boyd 2). While boyd
presents a cursory description into this phenomenon, there have been no detailed
ethnographic accounts. Acts of articulation on LiveJournal are often the catalysts of
explosive drama, making LiveJournal a prime candidate for studying how relationships
are affected by social technology. I conducted an ethnographic survey of LiveJournal
users, with the intention of asking two questions: What is the significance of friendship
amongst users, and what are the social consequences of this significance?
http://www.exposedbrain.com/archives/hyperfriends.pdf