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

Wed May 30 15:14:17 PDT 2007

Your points (dr_haqiqah at yahoo.com) presuppose a lot of psychology and  
may be real research but your saying it is what "you are seeing"...  
also I see you as saying your superior to these socially awkward  
others and in my opinion I am seeing that as a root of bullying in  
groups. That is just an opinion based on RL and my feelings reading  
this type of identity psychology. I am critical of it all.

But you are just putting these few thoughts together as I am...

I would be curious for the origins of *identity politics* as I  
presently trace this to late 1980's international socialists that is  
outside North American sociology and *identity^ where I might know  
Goffman.

two points...

1. to study some parts of myspace such as my old jam band's page one  
would have to have knowledge of fame and the music business. And just  
ask a musician. No need for presupposing what is going on on music  
pages. People are trying to get famous or as in my case share my  
music on-line with not much effort. Apparently Robert Murdock the  
owner of myspace now owns the rights to our songs.

2. I joined Face book two weeks ago... late to the party because  
previously when I visited it it was a youth site but now has opened  
up and my boss is there on facebook. Ok so are a few friends at work  
maybe 800 / 6000 workers. Then I find all my anarchist union comrades  
are there, my high school friends in Toronto are there, my relatives  
are there. I can't agree that these people are really any more  
socially isolated than myself. My point may be some users fall in  
your made up community but there are too many RL people there too IMHO.

Now all the educated people are making witty things on their pages  
but are they real or virtual? more or less? I am not sure that can be  
measured.

Is this anything but self expression...Do you really know someone's  
self better than they do? to paraphrase Jean Paul Sartre?

back to your point (dr_haqiqah at yahoo.com) how do you include people  
who hide data in a study are these less reliable data? Your point  
about the data validity is taken.

Peter Timusk,
B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2007).
just trying to stay linear.
Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.

On 30-May-07, at 2:35 PM, Dr. T. Michael Roberts wrote:

> 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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