A Model of How Collegiate Online Social Networks Fits into Internet Communication

(Writer’s note: I would like to apologize for the next series of posts, as they are going to deal with my dissertation and may be slightly technical. I’ll mark this post as a dissertation in the tags. Thanks in advance.)

The development of a profile on an online social network begins with simple access to the technology (both hardware and software). This development could be examined as a digital divide issue or even a question of the portability of new communication technology, or it could be discussed concerning the democratization of the network. This access leads to the ability of the individual to add content through the network by referring to outside sources. The individual can create their content to add to the robustness of the network. Both of these points (access to technology & the ability to add content) forms the basis of a multimedia literacy for the individual.

One way that a user of an online social network can find value in the network is through the perceived interactions conducted online and the perceived connection point that the environment of the online social network provides. It is fair to make the statement that users of most online social networks use the service to keep updated on what their friends are doing, find where people went after they graduated high school and discussed plans for the future. These interactions occur within the friendly confines of the graphic user interface and the overall framework of the social network. It is through these gated gardens of the network that guideposts appear to point users to a “familiar” world that the user may or may not recognize. Pictures and videos that appear on the network and the textual clues present in posts creates an image for the user to construct and/or analyze. It is by the cultural power of these online artifacts that users can take those connections from the online social network and place them in the real world environment. The perceived value of the network and the ability to bridge online/offline relationships represents a basic version of social network theory.

The brick and mortar structure of the university exists, in one role, as the traditional mechanism of socialization to incoming first-year students. It is through the orientation process that individuals educate themselves and prepare them for the academic world. With the introduction of services like Facebook, the role of orientation is enhanced by students from the university assisting those incoming freshman to the environment of the university. This discussion of the university forces all of the stakeholders to examine the university through a critical lens. The university can be judged and analyzed based on a number of criteria giving the student a basic understanding of how good, or bad, is the college. The Internet plays the great equalizer to all information, public relations and spin.

The brick and mortar structure of the university feeds into the two opposing forces that form the conflict that is presented in the media when regarding the university’s position on online social networks. Those two forces are the emersion of the individual user into the online social network and the influence of the real world power structures on the online social network. The fuel for the conflict comes from the media presented created in Facebook. When there are pictures of underage students’ drinking, posts about students using illegal drugs and/or videos of other activities that would generally get a student thrown out of college, there is a good possibility that there will be some media focus of the story. 

Perhaps a more significant point of conflict regarding online social networks is that they can not be controlled from the top-down. For example, if one were to examine the role that Ohio State played in an attempted ban on negative comments on their Facebook page, one could argue that the news focus went beyond the initial point of conflict, and the “censorship” the university attempted was perceived as a lack of openness on the part of the university. OSU tried to formal public relations as the mode of communication on an informal social network (Facebook) within an informal communication system (the Internet). Such a move is a misunderstanding of the public sphere and how a system like Facebook work around blocks to the system.

It seems that the conflict could be mediated through a type of social network literacy. Users should be made aware of the potential audience of their online presentations. Also if all of the stakeholders to the system could take some time and attempt to play and/or understand the network, then there could be less misunderstanding regarding the presentations on online social networks.