[Air-L] Journalist inquiry: Facebook

[Matthew Allen]

Just asked by a journalist about people doing research USING FB...hasn't got access to air-l so posting on her behalf: Please reply to HER, not me :)

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I am a freelance science journalist with an interest in social sciences, and am looking for researchers who are currently using Facebook as a research tool to study sociological questions (in other words, studies *using* facebook, rather than studies *of* facebook).
For example I can imagine it would be an ideal tool for testing the notion of 'six degrees of separation'. It might also be a goldmine of social data from which one might test various theories about how people of various ages behave differently, or people of different educational backgrounds etc. I would be interested to hear of any projects like these that are ongoing; I would also be interested to hear about the difficulties and/or ease of accessing facebook data for such research. Please feel free to contact me on nkjones at gmail.com.

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Associate Professor Matthew Allen
Head, Department of Internet Studies
School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts
Curtin University of Technology
CRICOS provider code: 00301J (WA); 02637B (NSW)
+61892663511 http://netstudies.curtin.edu.au
2009 ALTC Teaching Fellow
Immediate Past President, AOIR