One of the more consistent requests for a class from my students was a course on memes and their impact on culture and society. Most of the students would share gifs and memes via our Slack channels. There are times that I am a little lost in the visual language,...
The one regret I had from attending SxSW was that I didn’t plan out the panels that I wanted to watch. I was more concerned about finishing my presentation that was going out and enjoying myself. My plan for SxSW if I get accepted to present this year is to...
After reading many articles on sociable media and listening to conference presentations, I wanted to focus on the connection between the technology, students and the social psychological aspects of student development. It seems that Facebook exists between the confines of the technology and the participatory culture that's developed around the...
My interest in researching online social networks, especially Facebook, comes from my interest in other writers such as Howard Rheingold, Pierre Levy, and Henry Jenkins and their work looking at symbolic interactionism within social networks. Rheingold's methods always looked at the vortex between technology, culture and critical analysis. The "technologies...
The purpose of my dissertation will be to observe incoming "traditional freshmen" (e.g. 18- to-20 year old students coming to college for the first time) at three Midwestern universities whose hometowns are small towns, where the population is less than 5,000 residents, and see how those freshmen use Facebook as...
A majority of the analysis will come under the theoretical framework already laid out by Jenkins and Rheingold. Henry Jenkins has been a tremendous influence on my work for the past couple of years. "Convergence Culture" is a strong theoretical work and an exemplar of praxis in the field. Jenkins...
