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Monika Kennedy

iFrame

Paul's comments in red

Proposal

How have women taken to social networking in the 21st century?

  • Hypothesis and assumed future development
  • Background: Development of social networks and some history

    But Sophy Silver from Facebook said … "We have 300 million users in 70 countries worldwide." http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20091118/tuk-facebook-rejects-child-protection-cr-45dbed5.html 18.11.2009

  • Technology generally: Is it gender driven?
  • Methods: Analyse Rapleaf study, blogs (compare data), facebook (questionnaire), use of email
  • Outcome of analysis
  • Conclusion

[13th Nov] Still think 'women' is a bit general. Maybe narrow according to age, class, race, locality, employment status. Something to tighten it up and enable you to go for the depth.

Initial proposal submitted May 2009


Key words: Women, technology, language

Is the usage of social networking gender specific? How does it differ?

Definition of social networking: Blogs, Email, Chat rooms, Forums, Texting on mobile phones  

[13th Nov] Social networks like Facebook? LinkedIn? maybe focus on one site/service?

Method: A questionnaire of a relevant group of people using social networking will form the primary data. The results of these findings will aim to answer the above question.

Or: Comparison of different blogs, looking at language used. Textual analysis.

[13th Nov] Are you going to do qual interviews too?

Some initial questions: How does the language used differ from each other? Do women contact each other more frequently than men? Is this background specific? Looking at live events, do women organize themselves through social networking? Has technology [13th Nov] Not sure what you mean by this? got its own gendered language?  How do women make events known? What do the media say about this organization? What is reported on the use of gender specific networking? [13th Nov] Interesting idea comparing representations of online women with 'real experience' of women online. How they see what they do compared with what is said they do. Is technology considered gender laden?

First literature to be examined:

Adam, A. and Green, E. 2001, Virtual Gender, Technology, consumption and identity. Routledge: London

Beasley, C. 1999, What is Feminism? Sage: London

Kirkup, G. and Smith Keller, L. 1992, Inventing Women. Polity Press: Cambridge.

Kramarae, C. 1988, Technology and Women’s Voices. Routledge: London.

Pacey, A.  1983 (8th edition 1996), The Culture of Technology. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rothlschild, J. 1983, Machina Ex Dea, Feminist Perspectives on Technology. Pergamon Press: Oxford.

Wajcman, J. 1991.Feminism Confronts technology. 89Polity Press: Cambridge.  

[13th Nov] Check out the work of Danah Boyd http://www.danah.org/, Donna Harraway, Angela McRobbie.



Ideas (October 2009)

  • Female identity – how has representation changed since ‘Jackie’?
  • Gender studies – Are women still the ‘second sex’?
  • The role of females in society – Jackie, as case study
  • Re-presentation: The role of females in society
  • Female identity and positioning – The internet is pink.
  • Women, change and development – representation on and off line  
  • The internet is pink! Women and social networking
  • Women, technology, and language - Has technology got its own gendered language?
  • Women and social networking – How do women use language online?
  • The construction of women – some examples
  • The changing faces of women – Jackie and other examples
All still seems a bit big. 'Women'? big issue. Representation? bigger issue. Women and representation? huge issue and frankly done to death. I think you're getting nearer when you narrow it down with 'the Net' but that too is a huge issue. What about one small specific Net practice: Twittering, a single "women's forum", a particular "women's" photography group on Flickr or a "women's" group on Facebook? You could then have a controlled and targeted thing to analyse, people to talk to and focus for theories around language, gender, networks etc.

General ideas:

  • Project should be open, on the cloud. Would like to link to former projects done at BBK. Create creative commons project. 
Obviously I think this is is interesting but you have to think about why you want to do it this way. getting feedback while you work is one thing but are you hoping to use the wisdom of crowds? involve the people you are analysing? commenting and analysing the network in some way? I think a clear statement about why this project needs to be in the Cloud/open source.

Methods:

  • Content analysis text/ news papers
  • Vox pops/Questionaires
  • Interview

Seems fairly straightforward but again, why these methods. What will each tell you and why is it necessary to do them? Can you tie this into the Cloud issue and research in the Cloud. Widget on Facebook? game? Twitter interviews? etc.