So I've just been given IRB clearance to begin interviews for the next phase of the FB project! Here are my questions so far... I expect these will change, I’m not really sure just how to go about it all yet. The questions in italics are intended as possible follow-up questions depending on how conversation goes. Some of these were informed by Ellison et al. (2006).
- How long have information technologies, like computers or cell phones, played a significant role in your life?
- In what ways?
- How important are they to you?
- When did you first join Facebook?
- What got you to sign on?
- What was it like then?
- How does Facebook enter into your everyday life? What do you use it for?
- Is Facebook is part of your everyday activity; is it part of your routine?
- Do you feel out of touch when you haven't logged onto Facebook for a while?
- Do you feel you’re part of the Facebook community?
- Would you be sorry if Facebook shut down?
- How much time do you spend on Facebook?
- Do you spend time on Facebook instead of doing your homework?
- Do you browse Facebook in your free time just for fun?
- Do you ever use Facebook to intentionally look things up, like people or events?
- How about groups or clubs? Do they connect to offline organizations?
- Do you use applications? If so, which ones and for what?
- Which people do you keep up with online? Who are they in your everyday life?
- Do you think about what you see, or have seen, on Facebook when talking to people face to face?
- Does Facebook come up in everyday conversation?
- How does it appear?
- Is it a common topic?
- What do you think about the Newsfeed?
- I won’t need follows-ups to this, students could talk about it for the rest of the interview.
- Does Facebook seem to have a life of its own?
- Do parts of the system ever act, or seem to act, on their own?
- Does your profile ever seem to impact unintended audiences?
- Do you feel like you help to create Facebook?
- What do you do on Facebook that helps it to operate?
- Do you make parts of Facebook, like groups, events, or applications?
- How does Facebook work as a form of communication? What do you like or not like about it?
- Do you prefer FB messaging over email?
- How is Facebook different then say, AIM or a cell phone?
- Is it more comfortable to communicate over Facebook sometimes? (How come?)
- Is Facebook an efficient way to communicate? (How so?)
In order to answer my research questions:
The next step is to develop a series of research questions (and a corresponding study or studies) that could adequately assess the meaning and purpose of Facebook.com to undergraduate student participants on an everyday basis. What are their preferences, and why? What is the value of the technology to students? This high level inquiry yields the following specific questions:
- How do participants employ the service as a supplementary or primary informing agent? What parts of the ecology do they explicitly (Google it! < Facebook it!) or implicitly (rapid cognition, impression management) use to become informed, and in what ways?
- In the same theme, how important is Facebook as a communication medium? Do students choose it over AIM, email or texting? Where does Facebook fall - in terms of priority, context, and versatility compared to other ICT's?
- How can we find some ways users employ the system to bolster community social capital? Efforts related to political/organizational social capital are obvious, but personal tie enhancing behavior is less apparent. Does it better enhance strong or weak ties?
In this I’d like to consider the ways the online is invading the offline. How has SNS actively started to change interactions in the face-to-face world? How does it enter into the landscape of thinking during everyday affairs and exchanges? From a Science and Technology Studies perspective: do the behaviors and results seen in the study give us evidence that supports my previous theory of Facebook’s architecture (Permanently Beta and Cyborging of the Mind, as established in my Masters Paper)?
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