More Facebook Sociology

Did Megan Hirt’s Jayplay article inspire the New York Times to write a story about how Facebook has become an academic Disneyland for social network analysis? Hey, it’s possible. This morning’s NYT article, “On Facebook, Scholars Link Up with Data,” examines how sociologists and other social scientists use Facebook (the 6^th most trafficked web-site in the U.S.) for their research. The article cites the “Facebook Friends” study I referenced earlier, as well as some other Facebook-centered research projects. As one of the editors of the American Sociological Review (the top sociology journal in the U.S.) noted in the article, “For studying young adults, Facebook is the key site of the moment.”

In Unit II, I will discuss Pierre Bourdieu’s contribution to studies of inequality. In a sentence, Bourdieu complicated Marx’s map of inequality by adding social capital and cultural capital to the mix. Social capital describes the strength and quality of one’s social network. A 5^th grader with strong social capital will have friends with whom to pass notes about the weird new kid (who has no social capital). If I’m a social scientist that wanted to study bullying behavior, social capital would be an important variable to consider, and Facebook would be one way to understand the flows of social capital in American schools.

The New York Times article describes Facebook as “a petri dish for the social sciences — sociology, psychology and political science — that particularly excites some scholars, because the site lets them examine how people, especially young people, are connected to one another, something few data sets offer, the scholars say.” The article quotes Harvard professor Jay Kaufman: “One of the holy grails of social science is the degree to which taste determines friendship, or to which friendship determines taste. Do birds of a feather flock together, or do you become more like your friends?” Another Harvard sociologist (Nicholas Christakis) writes: “We’re on the cusp of a new way of doing social science. Our predecessors could only dream of the kind of data we now have.”

From the article: “In other words, Facebook — where users rate one another as ‘hot or not,’ play games like ‘Pirates vs. Ninjas’ and throw virtual sheep at one another — is helping scholars explore fundamental social science questions.”

I think this means it's time for me to update my profile!

-- Brian