Data-Gathering Clarification

A couple of students from class have asked about Part I of the Data-Gathering Project.  Here is a brief explanation of what you should do for this project:

Part 1:  First, you will gather data by using the most recent 25-45 status updates.  Go through your status updates and simply copy/paste the quotes directly into a word document.  Include dates/times, as these may be relevant in your analysis.  

Notes: In this task you should observe and evaluate your FB page.  What have you placed on your wall?  What do your status updates say?  How have you constructed your online identity?  How do you portray yourself through your FB page?  You are simply reading through your FB page and drawing some conclusions. 

Part 2:  You will then father information about yourself, or your 'friend' based on their interaction on other people's Facebook pages.  You will gather postings/comments you have made on your friends FB pages or 'side' conversations you have contributed to on your pages or other pages.  Again, go through and gather past comments you have made on 'friends' pages, or comments on pictures, etc....  Use as many as needed to construct your identity. 

Notes: Questions to ask yourself in this section:  Have you let your guard down with your comments?  Do you see a different pattern with your comments than with your status updates?  What other patterns emerge?  Do you only comment on certain posts from friends? 

Part 3: In addition to these two text based constructions, you will gather and analyze at least 8 pictures to represent who you have constructed yourself to be on the popular social networking website.

Notes:  Again, you should analyze your FB page (or that of the same friend as you did in Parts 1 & 2).  

Part 4: Finally, you will draw conclusions by analyzing the data you have collected.  (HINT:  Use the Burkitt text to inform this part of your project).  In other words,  ‘construct’ who you have represented yourself to be on the popular social media website.  Try to analyze yourself from an outsider’s perspective.  What do they see?  What do your friends see?  The conclusions that you draw can be a summary of ideas, formatted in bullet points.  The adjoining assignment to this data-gathering project will use all information gathered, and you will put together a final analysis paper based on your data, and your analysis.  Please do not go through your Facebook page and ‘clean it up’ before engaging in this assignment.  Be honest with yourself throughout this process. 

Notes:  This is, by far, one of the most important parts of this project.  Part 4 will help you write your Media Representation Project by looking at the data you have gathered in this project.  How do you represent yourself (or how does your friend represent themselves on FB)?

This project will basically inform your next project, the Media Representation Project.  You are essentially confronting three different ideas by putting into "Practice" (this is a 4-unit practice course, and this project represents the additional unit for this class) your observations.  

Here are the three ideas you will be confronting throughout the process of the Data-Gathering Project, and the Media Representation Project:

1). What do I think?  The data-gathering portion will do a lot of this for you.  What are your observations about your FB page, or the FB page of one friend that you chose to evaluate (Parts 1-3)?

2). What do they say?  This part will be accomplished in the Media Representation Project.  You will need to inform your analysis by figuring out what researches have said about media representation.  (HINT:  Use the Burkitt text)  You will also ask some HR departments how they use social networking.  (This will make more sense once you read through the Media Representation Project).

3). What does this mean?  Again, this will be accomplished in the Social Media Representation portion of the project.

For right now, let's just focus on the What do I think? part.  The other two parts will come as you begin to work on second portion of the "Practice" unit in this class, the Social Media Representation Project.

I hope this clears up the Data-Gathering portion of the "Practice" unit project for Comm 131P.