A new start

I will be using this blog to map out the progress I make on my research project, using this as a research diary, required by the uni besides the actual research.

What are the recent changes about my project? After meeting with my project supervisor, Gavin Stewart, I started thinking about certain changes in the subject. Where the initial idea was to find out how people use groups within the greater network of Facebook it's now developing in a different direction. The big question, the one that surrounds the whole theme, is if social networking software makes people more social...

Personally I think that social software's main reason for existence is to strengthen existing bounds between people, making it easier for persons to stay in contact. Sites like Facebook make your network more visible, with for example pictures and updates from your friends, so that you are constantly updated on the current situation of your network. This is a big difference between the old 'technologies' of the adress book and the phone book. Now all information is in one place, easily accessible at any moment, if you have an internet connection.

The most important aspects of my research that I have to adress at the current time are:

- Methodologies: How am I going to do the research, what are the appropriate methods to find out the answers for my research question? The current ideas are doing a questionnaire with the option of follow-up questions to get more details out of certain answers people might give.

- Sampling: Contacting people on Facebook, using the site's search engine to look for people within one network, London, and within the age limits of 18 and 25. I will then have to use a sequence of numbers to decide who will be contacted or not. This sequence will have to be random and will come from the internet site random.org.

- Refinement: "Does social software make people more social" is a question with a very wide focus. What is 'social' exactly. The question will probably evolve in something more specific along the lines of "How do the available tools on Facebook influence the relations with your friends?"

- Tools: Facebook features different tools for people to explore and use to contact their friends. Examples of this are the walls, poking, presents, tagging of pictures, commenting on pictures, and then there are the multitude of applications developed by third parties. All of these provide a way of communicating with your friends, directly or indirectly.

- To do:
Refine research question, create pilot questionnaire, drawbacks and advantages of the used research methods, background reading.