Research
LiveJournal: Critical. Learning from the Layoffs
Abstract:
The January 6, 2009 layoffs of a significant proportion of the United States staff of the blogging/social networking site LiveJournal represented a critical moment in the life of the service. Many members of the LiveJournal community were certain that Sup, the Russian media company that owns the service, was going to shut it down. In light of those fears, they cast about for alternatives to LiveJournal but very few were willing to consider Facebook as an alternative service, despite Faebook’s replication of may of LiveJournal’s features. Based on the reactions of LiveJournal users, I examine why LiveJournal users are so loyal to the service, why they are unwilling to consider Facebook as an alternative, and what new social media outlets can learn from the LiveJournal community’s reactions to the crisis.
Presented at Internet Research 10.0.
Space and Place: The New Playgrounds of 21st Century Life
with Mark Gammon
Presented at Internet Research 8.0.
“ROFLMAO! 
“: (re)Embodiment of the Web-Based Chat Room.
Abstract:
Information and communication technologies have had an impact on ideas about the human body; the Internet in particular has opened up new possibilities for experimenting with embodiment. The web-based chat room is one site where this (re)embodiment takes place. Chat users announce and reassert the body’s presence in the virtual space, and chat services facilitate this process. In so doing, participants create a range of types of embodiment from representations of the physical self to wholly virtual bodies. This range of embodiments creates a tension for chat room participants because they cannot know which sort of embodiment is being pursued by other chatters. Additionally, these various forms of embodiment mean that Internet chatters perform embodiment quite self-consciously, in direct contrast to the way that the body is usually treated in offline interactions.
Comprehensive Examination in the area of Social Psychology.
Second place, Carl Couch Internet Research Award, 2003.
Currently under revision for Symbolic Interaction.
ASL Everyone!: Presentation and Maintenance of Gendered Identities in Web-Based Chat Rooms.
Abstract:
The Internet, especially real-time chat environments, offers a new site for the creation of gendered identities. I carried out participant observation in chat rooms on a server run by a major WWW portal. Based on grounded theory and keyword-in-context analysis, I found that participants in web-based chat rooms reinforce as well as challenge existing normative beliefs about gender. Gendered identity is in constant negotiation in the chat room, much as it is in face-to-face interaction.
Presented at Internet Research 4.0.
Ford, Sarah Michele. 2003. “Are We To Be Forever Trapped Between the Two?: The Internet, Modernity, and Postmodernity in the Early 21st Century.” Social Thought and Research 25(1&2):85-110.
Abstract:
Social theory has traditionally argued that the modern and the postmodern are chronologically ordered (that is, the postmodern comes after the modern) and mutually exclusive. I find, however, that contemporary American society is full of elements of both the modern/industrial and the postmodern/postindustrial. The Internet serves as an example of one social site in which these two concepts are in constant contact and sometimes tension. Based on an examination of the relationship between the modern/industrial and the postmodern/postindustrial on the Internet, we can begin to determine whether or not the concepts of “modern” and “postmodern” accurately describe 21st century society.
Comprehensive Examination in the area of Social Theory.
Presented at the 2003 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in Philadelphia, PA.
