[Air-l] Blogs as source of socio-demographic data

[Dr. T. Michael Roberts]

What I see happening on MySpace is personas being
created that allow the person behind the account to be
more real, more open and less selective about the
kinds of information that is put out there. Many
profiles and blogs begin as fishing expeditions put up
by persons who are very isolated in RL and are
searching for a virtual community were they can enact
themselves much more fully than they ever do in RL. 

People who do this typically create a mask or persona
to use in this pursuit that is not easy to trace back
to a RL source. The value of the persona is the
opportunity it creates to enact a self that is often
spoiled in RL within a community where the
presentation of this stigmatized self will be
validated by “people like me” who come together to
make a virtual “We” community which is based on a
counter-narrative invalidating the spoiling narrative.


Many people involved in such counter-narrative based
online communities come to feel that who they are
within that community is a true presentation of self.
The RL presentation of self, in turn, is seen as being
a mask that must be worn to avoid negative
consequences and maintain access to social resources
that would lessen or vanish in response to a RL
presentation of the authentic self. The bottom line is
that the profile that you have trouble tracing back to
a RL source is more likely to contain accurate
information than one that is easy to trace to its RL
source. 

I’m clueless about Russia so this example may be silly
but, suppose you compared 50 profiles that were easily
traced back to their RL sources to 50 that were not.
We will assume for simplicity that both samples are
random in relation to the larger populations being
sampled. What would it tell you that 10/50 hard to
trace profiles claimed atheism whereas only 3/50 easy
to trace profiles did? One good way to find out what
is stigmatized and how strongly is to notice where the
percentage of people claiming an allegiance or
characteristic varies significantly depending on
whether the profile is hard to trace or easy to trace.
These are just random thoughts off the top of my head.
I hope they are useful but, if not, never mind.

--- Alexander Semenov <semenoffalex at googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> recently I was surfing Russian facebook-clone
> vkontakte.ru and decided to  
> count statistics of political preferences. I don't
> consider my results to  
> be valid, so I've decided to ask about any thoughts,
> articles etc. on the  
> validity of blogs as a source of socio-demographic
> data (age, gender,  
> location, political and religious preferences etc.).
> While I think that  
> other interests such as music, reading, films etc.
> are quite reliable I  
> can't say the same about socio-demographic data.
> What do you think?
> Thanks in advance.
> Best wishes,
> Alexander Semenov.
> MA student
> Faculty of Sociology
> Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences
> (MSSES)
> http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html
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“We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality.” Henry Jenkins


       
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