Pew Internet Project’s research reveals Facebook is a kind of open forum where we on the left - the so-called liberal minded - actually meet and process difference, as opposed to the right on FB who simply confirm their biases. We grow and learn from this exchange. I have argued exactly this with some academically minded friends who dont see FB as a valid field of study or interest. I take the view that all human interaction is valid and truthful even when it seems contrived, or mediated by some secondary premise - hey, I watch Big Brother and The Biggest Loser! Thats how I came to use it, sociologically speaking, as exactly that kind of potentially evolving exchange. I was lacking a theme for a masters thesis, really, in around 2008, and I have almost unintentionally used my FB time since as a kind of fieldwork ever since. (Yes, you are all subjects! And so am I to all of you. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all do sociology, because we orient ourselves in relation to others and form interpretive understandings of social actions.) As a result, I have written about and interrogated and been taken by surprise across a whole range of discourses I would not have otherwise encountered or even considered. I have also found an unexpectedly dynamic range of friends and I value your posts as intimacies - in sickness, health, even death and despair, happiness, successes, all lifes intersections and crossing points.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 03:56:16 +0000
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