There is nothing new under the sun.
In 2010, all you knew was that you wanted to use Facebook to gather your data. Your hopes rose as time and time again you found literature that studied Facebook users and Facebook networks. Not once did you find a study that actually believed Facebook status updates are worthy pieces of data. Your ego is boosted by Ethic’s decision that your study proposal was necessary, despite the warnings from methodology experts. Ethics is wary but social media is not going away. You formulated a plan. You experimented with ways to archive the data. In 2011, you spent 10 months ploughing through the (often mind-numbing) eating, sleeping, partying and studying habits of 17-18 year olds. You began your analysis. You find out it’s been done before.
I now know what most scholars in my field of knowledge already
know. Of course that study has been done -- and years ago. As I now finalise my
literature review, Neil
Selwyn’s name appears over and over again. I’m not sure how I missed it for
so long, but at least I know about it before submission.
The interesting story is how I actually found Selwyn’s
paper. By reading blogs.
After a Google Scholar search using the terms “Facebook” and
“phenomenography” I came across another PhD candidate’s conference paper (Bonzo
2012). As I store my references on EndNote and always record the author’s
expertise, I googled Justin Bonzo’s name and came across his blog. Bonzo lists other PhD candidate’s
blog rolls. I nearly didn’t bother looking but thought I’d just try one link. One
of Barry Avery’s (2009)
blogs used Selwyn’s reference.
What do I take away from this?
Traditional methods (imagine Google Scholar now being a
traditional literature search method!) can sometimes only get you so far. As
with my recent conversion to writing a blog and signing on to Twitter, I needed
to heed my own advice. I wanted to use Facebook status updates as my qualitative
data because I believed they were just as valid as the traditional interview or
questionnaire. I wanted to prove their worth for studying young people.
Likewise, in the academic life world, Twitter and blogs are valuable tools for traversing
the current knowledge base.
Selwyn’s (2007)
study is not exactly the same, but not far off. Selwyn archived 68169 status
updates from Facebook. I have archived around 457. Selwyn collected most of the
posts from his 909 participants. I only collected those status updates, from my
35 participants, related to university. Selwyn collected data over three slices
in time covering 15 weeks in total (before and after assessment and during the
Christmas break). I collected my data during four slices in time (totalling 14
weeks) highlighted in Penn-Edwards and Donnison’s (2011)
paper that highlighted key times first year university students contemplated
their affiliation with university. Selwyn used Grounded Theory (Glaser
& Strauss, 1967) for analysis. I have used phenomenography which,
according to Richardson (1997),
is closely related to Grounded Theory. At least I know I was on the right
track.
I know that this is not the end of my PhD’s contribution to
knowledge. To quote my supervisor, Associate Professor Cheryl Sim:
“...don't regard that
someone else has "done your study" - there will be unique differences
- and the fact you know of these enables you to make sure you do that - and of
course acknowledging the work of others in this same area, so
demonstrating you know their work exists is really good - so no more using
those words my girl!!”
I now follow Selwyn on Twitter and have read many of his
other papers. Our philosophy of social media seems to align (Selwyn
2011). I believe he may provide the doorway
to the academic publication.
We shall see.
Reference
- Avery, B. (20 July 2009). Facebook versus VLE. Retrieved from http://www.barryavery.com/blog/2009/07/20/facebook-versus-vle/
- Bonzo, J. (2012). A Social Media Networked Learning Ecology Perspective. 8th International Conference on Networked Learning. Hodgson V, Jones C, de Laat Met al. Maastricht School of Management, Maastricht, The Netherlands: 474-481. Retrieved from: http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/abstracts/pdf/bonzo.pdf
- Bonzo, J. (2011). Justin M. Bonzo: Connecting the dots. Retrieved from http://justinbonzo.com/blog/
- Glaser, B. G. and A. L. Strauss (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine de Gruyter. Retrieved from: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Discovery_of_Grounded_Theory.html?id=rtiNK68Xt08C&redir_esc=y
- Penn-Edwards, S. and S. Donnison (2011). "Engaging with higher hducation academic support: a first year student teacher transition model." European Journal of Education 46(4): 566-580. Retrieved from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2011.01501.x/abstract
- Richardson, J. T. E. (1999). "The concepts and methods of phenomenographic research." Review of Educational Research 69(1): 53-82. Retrieved from: http://rer.sagepub.com/content/69/1/53.short
- Selwyn, N. (2007). ‘Screw Blackboard... do it on Facebook!’: an investigation of students’ educational use of Facebook. Poke 1.0 - Facebook social research symposium. University of London. Retrieved from: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/informationSystems/newsAndEvents/2008events/selwynpaper.pdf
- Selwyn, N. (2011). "Making sense of young people, education and digital technology: the role of sociological theory." Oxford Review of Education 38(1): 81-96. Retrieved from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03054985.2011.577949#preview
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